drive like an Egyptian
Jun. 21st, 2011 07:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacSo you drove all the way down to Memphis and back again from St. Louis? You must be a real Elvis fan, then. - So people say.
On the contrary: to measure my interest in Elvis, you'd need negative numbers. I went to Memphis for the food. I had barbecue at Corky's, by words of many mouths the best barbecue in Memphis. I found it OK but not dazzling, most distinguished by the encouraging exclamations the waitress made every time she walked by. Elsewhere, I had what was supposed to be great fried catfish, which came across more like a fish-flavored cracker. I had a hamburger from the hamburger parlor on Beale Street that legendarily hasn't changed its cooking oil in a hundred years. It was a pretty tasty hamburger, but there's a limit to what you can do with a hamburger. And maybe it was that, rather than the barbecue, that kept me up all night.
Beale Street reminded me of Olvera Street in LA: a couple blocks of riotously intense local color that smelled as if it had been gingered up for the tourists, surrounded by a sea of nondescript in the rest of the neighborhood.
Better food was had on the way down. You might not think that a small-town Missouri lunchroom and bar with a buffet setup would have, in one of those hot trays, some of the best fried chicken ever, but it did. Light and crispy and delicately spiced, just wonderful. And, in the dining room of a fishing resort somewhere between Kentucky and Tennessee, really juicy catfish with much the same quality. Both of them standing retorts to the idea that fried food must be heavy and greasy. So is what St. Louis calls "toasted ravioli", also actually fried, to be found on the appetizer menu of several restaurants there.
On the way down, I satisfied a curiosity on geographical anomalies. I visited bits of Illinois on the Missouri side of the river, and bits of Tennessee on the Arkansas side of the river. Few had any sort of signage, so a detailed map was needed to know where you were. Or where you were going: the Tennessee bits of Arkansas, in fact, may only by visited by turning off the highway at half-deserted villages of the plain, driving for miles on gravel roads through flat farming country, crossing the levee, and finding even flatter bottom land where the gravel roads quickly degenerate into random dirt tracks.
Fortunately, at least, Arkansas was dry, though my car was attacked by an overeager puddle. The state of Illinois was waterlogged. I found more roads there closed due to flooding than everywhere else. And little signage, either: the road would just disappear into water, and you'd realize you can't go that way.
Two other geographical achievements:
1) With my having now visited St. Louis, the number of cities where I have changed planes, but never left the airport, has now gone down to one: Paris.
2) I've driven over every open road bridge across the Mississippi River between St. Louis and Memphis. All eight of them.
More anon ...
On the contrary: to measure my interest in Elvis, you'd need negative numbers. I went to Memphis for the food. I had barbecue at Corky's, by words of many mouths the best barbecue in Memphis. I found it OK but not dazzling, most distinguished by the encouraging exclamations the waitress made every time she walked by. Elsewhere, I had what was supposed to be great fried catfish, which came across more like a fish-flavored cracker. I had a hamburger from the hamburger parlor on Beale Street that legendarily hasn't changed its cooking oil in a hundred years. It was a pretty tasty hamburger, but there's a limit to what you can do with a hamburger. And maybe it was that, rather than the barbecue, that kept me up all night.
Beale Street reminded me of Olvera Street in LA: a couple blocks of riotously intense local color that smelled as if it had been gingered up for the tourists, surrounded by a sea of nondescript in the rest of the neighborhood.
Better food was had on the way down. You might not think that a small-town Missouri lunchroom and bar with a buffet setup would have, in one of those hot trays, some of the best fried chicken ever, but it did. Light and crispy and delicately spiced, just wonderful. And, in the dining room of a fishing resort somewhere between Kentucky and Tennessee, really juicy catfish with much the same quality. Both of them standing retorts to the idea that fried food must be heavy and greasy. So is what St. Louis calls "toasted ravioli", also actually fried, to be found on the appetizer menu of several restaurants there.
On the way down, I satisfied a curiosity on geographical anomalies. I visited bits of Illinois on the Missouri side of the river, and bits of Tennessee on the Arkansas side of the river. Few had any sort of signage, so a detailed map was needed to know where you were. Or where you were going: the Tennessee bits of Arkansas, in fact, may only by visited by turning off the highway at half-deserted villages of the plain, driving for miles on gravel roads through flat farming country, crossing the levee, and finding even flatter bottom land where the gravel roads quickly degenerate into random dirt tracks.
Fortunately, at least, Arkansas was dry, though my car was attacked by an overeager puddle. The state of Illinois was waterlogged. I found more roads there closed due to flooding than everywhere else. And little signage, either: the road would just disappear into water, and you'd realize you can't go that way.
Two other geographical achievements:
1) With my having now visited St. Louis, the number of cities where I have changed planes, but never left the airport, has now gone down to one: Paris.
2) I've driven over every open road bridge across the Mississippi River between St. Louis and Memphis. All eight of them.
More anon ...
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no subject
Date: 2011-06-23 05:36 am (UTC)Another list I could make would be of cities with commercial airports that I've visited but never flown to, or airports that I've visited but never flown into or out of.