From Memphis to Kansas City in the Cold

About September Glenna and I started to think about where we would go this year. She didn’t have too much time off since she and JR spent a two week honeymoon in Europe and Africa this summer, so that precluded anything out of the country. We couldn’t persuade JR to go with us to Texas, so we wound up with a trip from Memphis to Kansas City which knocked several things off Glenna’s bucket list.

The three of us had our Christmas on Christmas eve in Columbia after a steak dinner  which included mulled madeira. (JR likes to make specialty drinks.) On Christmas morning we drove to Summerville for Christmas with JR’s family. It was fun to watch the boys, Brayden and Kyler, open their gifts and ride their new vehicles and scooters as well as play with their new lab puppy Shadow. After a southern Christmas dinner, Glenna and I left late afternoon for the airport in Charleston to fly  to Charlotte and then Memphis. Arriving about 8:30 we quickly got our Rav4 SUV. I had never driven an SUV before. It was expensive but I didn’t want to take a chance of getting stuck in snow. As it turned out, we never drove in snow. But it was fun to drive.

We decided to drive downtown to see the neon lights on Beale Street before going to the hotel. There were very few people around, making the blaring music a little eerie.  The lights were pretty; some of the tall buildings around had lights too.

Beale Street lights on Christmas night

More Beale Street lights

Bells on a tall building

I lived in Memphis from 1968 to 1971 when I taught at Memphis State University (now University of Memphis) though I didn’t remember much about places I frequented. Glenna didn’t want to visit Graceland, Elvis Presley’s home, but I did want to drive by for her to see it on Tuesday morning. Much has changed. You can’t see anything but a bunch of institutional buildings and parking lots. When I was there, you could walk right up to the gate with the musical notes on it and see the house beyond. So much for that sightseeing jaunt.

Next was a fabulous breakfast at a place Glenna had found—Brother Juniper’s. We had an omelet and a potato dish, neither of which we could finish. We took the leftovers with us but didn’t have a way to heat them up in our hotel that night and thus couldn’t keep them, we felt. Boo.

Glenna's potato casserole breakfast

Then we drove around the University of Memphis. I only had in my mind the relative orientations of the math building and the building where I taught most of my classes, and I think I found them. I didn’t remember anything else, so we went on.

Betty in front of the math building

The next stop was Sun Studio downtown again. We just looked around the shop for a bit before we had to get to the Peabody Hotel, famous for the 11 AM duck walk along the red carpet from the elevator to the fountain in the middle of the lobby where they swim until 5 PM and then go back upstairs to spend the night. I never saw them when I lived there (fulfilling the usual phenomenon of not seeing sights in the place where you live), and Glenna wanted to see them. We were early enough to get a spot right on the rope line with all the excited little kids just inside, but we had to stand there for a half hour. The ducks were cute, and the hotel is one of those throwbacks to an earlier era.

The ducks on their way to the fountain

Ducks swimming in the fountain

Beautiful ceiling of the Peabody lobby

Then it was back to Sun Studio to take the tour of the museum above the cafe and the studio and control room adjacent which is used again today.  The tour was fantastic. Our guide was a musician who operates the recording studio today, and he gave us the whole history of Sam Phillips who started the whole thing and the recording artists he recruited and managed. Earlier this year my friends and I saw Million Dollar Quartet, the story of a famous impromptu recording session with Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash which happened right in that studio. The artifacts in the museum were so interesting—from the machines used to record and then cut a record to Elvis’ high school yearbook. We even heard the very first recording made of Elvis’ voice which Sam wasn’t at all interested in. He only relented when a later recording took off on the local radio station. This visit was my top event of the trip.  

One of many decorated doors in the area

The famous and original Sun Studio

Jukebox in the cafe which was blaring music

Original recorder (right) and record press

Elvis as a teen with his mother

Jerry Lee, Carl, Elvis, and Johnny
at the famous impromptu jam session 

The studio (Jerry Lee's piano in foreground)
and the control room in rear

We always like to try the foods local to the area, so for lunch we had Memphis dry ribs which Glenna really enjoyed. We also had slaw, baked beans and Texas toast at a restaurant noted for their ribs. Way too much lunch but tasty.

Memphis-style dry rub ribs, baked beans and Texas toast

Next stop was the Crystal Shrine Grotto which was in Memorial Park Cemetery.  The grotto was the idea of an insurance company owner who wanted to build a cave encrusted with real rock crystals that would tell the story of Jesus. He hired an immigrant who couldn’t speak English, Dionicio Rodriguez, to figure out how to build it. He designed a cave with ten niches and artistic backgrounds which display Biblical stories. My favorites were the scenes that were carved right out of the rock. This quirky place is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Colored lights in the grotto

Jerusalem and Calvary carved into wall

Jesus in Gethsemane

Rustic bridge in the cemetery

This being Boxing Day (we concluded after this day that Memphis has adopted the closings of this traditional British holiday), several of the places we would have enjoyed were not open. We drove by the Lorraine Motel where Martin Luther King was shot (strangely I was flying to Memphis on that day). The motel is now a Civil Rights Museum, but it was one of those places that was closed. The whole scene has been left as it was that day. So we could see the spot on the balcony where he was standing and the vintage cars in the parking lot. 

Lorraine Motel just as it was in 1968.

Wreath marks the spot on the balcony where Martin Luther King Jr was shot

We looked in the window of Earnestine and Hazel’s (also closed), a place where the musicians used to hang out. The outside is really run-down as was the area generally, but it is trendy. A coffee shop nearby, Bluff City Coffee Shop, was also closed. In fact, wherever we went, we saw very few people. 

Glenna in front of the run-down Earnestine and Hazel's

A glimpse inside the once popular spot
(and maybe now, for all I know)

That was about all we could do in Memphis (we couldn’t even visit the art museum which we always do), so we took off for Hot Springs, crossing the Mississippi and passing into Arkansas.  We stopped in Little Rock for dinner at a modern noodle and dumpling place—pretty good—and arrived in Hot Springs about 8:45.

Leaving Memphis

Lights in Hot Springs park by our hotel

More lights in Hot Springs park

Our hotel was an historic one—Arlington Hotel--from the heyday of the bathhouses. The lobby was very pretty though the room was pretty ordinary as hotel rooms go these days. Actually there were three dead bugs in our room. The best part about it was the spa which we visited on Wednesday morning. This was a traditional treatment, done the way it was back in the days when the gangsters and sports stars (Babe Ruth era and before and after) and everyone else came to Hot Springs for the waters—or the illegal gambling. We first had a mineral water bath, then a sauna, then were wrapped in towels to cool down and then a shower. The attendants were very good. It was a really fun experience.

The old Arlington Hotel 

Giant gingerbread house in the lobby

We packed up our things and ventured outside. It was cold! Breakfast was the best croissant I’ve ever had and a good scone and hot chocolate. Then we walked down Central Avenue to see Bathhouse Row and the lovely buildings across the street from them. The whole street is a National Monument. It was so interesting since all the bathhouses are different. The Fordyce is now the visitor’s center, so we got to walk all through it to see the various rooms. The men’s section was much more beautiful than the women’s section (hmm). We were so glad we had come to Hot Springs even though it was quite out of the way.

The petty Ohio Club opposite Bathhouse Row

Quapaw Bathhouse

Buckstaff Bathhouse

Entrance to Fordyce Bathhouse, now the national
monument headquarters

View of women's side with changing room

Beautiful stained glass ceiling on men's side

Water controls

We headed north out of town toward Eureka Springs more than four hours away. (Glenna drove for two hours the night before, but I did all the rest of the driving on the trip.) We drove through two mountain ranges and a couple of national forests. Glenna’s stomach was upset most of the way because of all the hairpin turns. At one point when we hadn’t seen civilization for some time, Glenna happened to look down at the gas gauge. It was totally on empty! Let me tell you that was a nervous 20 miles or so until we finally came to a little store with a gas pump. We could both see ourselves running out of gas and not having cell phone reception. Thank goodness that didn't happen. The drive was really quite nice though—lots of trees but also meadows populated by isolated farmsteads and grazing cows.

The old gas pump and our Rav4

We eventually got to Thorncrown Chapel about a half hour before it closed. We weren’t even sure it was going to be open since phone calls and Facebook posts went unanswered. But it was totally worth the trip. This is a chapel designed by E. Fay Jones, a protégée of Frank Lloyd Wright. It is set in a woods and thus had to be made of wood—according to the principles of the prairie style. It has a gorgeous highly polished stone floor, 425 windows and long planks of hardwood hanging from the ceiling. Very simple. Very elegant.

Glenna looking very cold 

Thorncrown Chapel on appoarch

Closeup of entrance

Interior of chapel in late afternoon sun

I totally loved this chair

Looking back toward the entrance

The highly polished stone floor

We then traveled to Bentonville, home of Walmart. We were there to see Crystal Bridges Museum, an American art museum that the Walton family and the company financed and built. It is known worldwide for its art collection, for purchasing the best of an artist. The building itself is sprawling, built among the hills in a wooded setting and around an existing river. There are architectural pieces outside, such as Buckminster Fuller’s Fly’s Eye Dome, not all of which we got to see for it was soon dark. We saw most of the collection inside as well as an exhibition of Stuart Davis’ works.

Some of the roofs of the sprawling museum

Maman, the giant spider, in the courtyard

Buckminster Fuller's Fly's Eye Dome

Part of the atmosphere of the place

I liked this sign in the chldren's area

One of the buildings reflected in the pool

A Chihuly makes a nice contrast to the ceiling

Look carefully--this is an alphabet sculpture

An incredibly life-life self sculpture of Evan Penny
as he will look one day

We also ate at the Eleven Restaurant, recommended to Glenna by one of her colleagues. Wonderful meal. My favorite dinner of the trip. Chicken and trout and a fabulous chocolate treat and cheesecake for dessert. 

The wonderful Eleven Restaurant in the musuem

Our incredible desserts

Thursday morning we headed toward Kansas City but not before we drove by Walmart headquarters with Glenna’s eyes rolling. 

The utterly un-prepossessing WalMart Home Office

She had found another Fay Jones chapel, Mildred B. Cooper Memorial Chapel, only a little out of our way, so we stopped there. I think I liked this one even more than Thorncrown Chapel. The wooden beams here were curved, an effect which I liked, and it felt even more a part of its surroundings, I think because the individual windows were larger. 

Mildred B. Cooper Memorial Chapel

From back to front

From front to back

Closer view of the front which makes the
chapel look like a part of the outdoors 

Three and a half hours and we were in Kansas City. We stopped at a mall which didn’t look like a mall (just the bottom of a high rise building) and had a lunch of tacos and cauliflower rice. We were in that area because two of the sites on our list were nearby. 

We walked a long way up to the World War I Memorial and Museum. It was incredibly cold and that was a lot of steps for me, but I made it. The memorial I didn’t think was especially appealing, but the museum was terrific—telling the story of the war by concentrating on the people who fought it. The wall labels were excellent, the videos were very good too, and there were loads of interesting artifacts. It was arranged chronologically from the lead-up to the war to post-war.

The so-so-looking World War I Memorial

One of the big guns

Recreation of a WWI trench

A field of poppies below the walkway

Across the street (a lot farther than that sounds!) was Union Station, a train station built in 1914, just in time to carry all those soldiers to war. It was ornate and nicely decorated for Christmas. 

Union Station at dusk

Nice ceiling of the train station

Pretty decorations in station concourse

Finally we got to our hotel. We had thought about taking in a movie but decided to get carry-out food and watch a Netflix movie in our comfy room instead. The movie was Viceroy’s House, about the end of the British raj in India. One of the joys of the way Glenna and I travel is that we often just change our plans and do something different.

We started Friday with the news that my Facebook account had been hacked and my friends were getting ridiculous messages about some crazy scheme. We stopped at Crowe’s Coffee for pastries and cocoa and chocolate chai. The night before in driving to the carry-out place we had seen a nice neighborhood which we decided to explore further this morning. The area was called Country Club. There was street after street of large, beautiful old homes. There must have been a lot of money in that town in the early 20th century. Some of them reminded me of two of the houses my Anderson grandparents owned in Iowa.

One of the Country Club section houses

Another house I liked

And a third--I'm a sucker for half-timbering

Next stop was the Steamboat Arabia Museum. Kansas City was the starting point for many a voyage on the Missouri River taking supplies out west. There were often fallen trees (called snags) in the river which caused problems for lots of steamboats. A boat only lasted on average 5 years; many of them sank as did the Arabia in 1856. A group of five men in 1988 decided to look for this boat. They knew the Missouri had changed course, and they found the Arabia underneath a cornfield. They brought parts of the boat and the cargo up bit by bit. There had been 130 people aboard all of whom got off, but the 200 tons of goods did not.  A 15-minute movie told about the incident as well as the salvage effort. We even got to ask questions of one of the men involved.

They meticulously clean all of the items they bring up. The metal items had to have the oxidation taken off, but the glass and china items only needed to be washed off. It takes four months to bring a pair of boots gradually back to the original state. Since there was no oxygen around, food was preserved. The man we spoke to told us he ate a pickle from one of the jars. The museum was full of all these artifacts which looked brand new as indeed they were. An amazing display. 

Lots of household goods retrieved

Look at all that footwear

The gunk on the metal items and a ball of iron nails

Part of the steamboat and the paddle wheel

Glenna wanted to add another state to her list, so we crossed the river over into Kansas and had some good brisket and Polish sausage at Slap’s Bar-B-Q. Then it was back to Missouri to visit some shops—first Bottoms Up Antique Market, a very nice shop where we nevertheless didn’t get anything. Some others on our list were closed (story of our trip), so we stopped in to Hammerpress, a shop that sells paper items that it prints (we could see all the old presses behind a glass enclosure) as well as lots more interesting craft items. Here we got several things.

The Missouri River between Missouri and Kansas

Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts

After a stop at a chocolate shop for some very chocolaty drinking chocolate, we shopped at Midcoast Modern, another place with an eclectic mix of items. Glenna got some shrub for JR which we mailed home (in a glass container) but which broke in the mailing! Very disappointing. We had it well cushioned, so they must really have thrown it around.

Chocolates at Christopher Elbow Chocolates

In the early evening (when the lights were just coming on—the best time, according to Glenna) we visited Country Club Plaza, a popular shopping area that is really lit up for Christmas. Very striking. Glenna walked across a bridge to get a better view while I walked all around Restoration Emporium, a store like Restoration Hardware that I am familiar with from DC.

One of the lighted buildings in Country Club Plaza

More of the lighted buildings and a carriage

We’d planned to go to a documentary (Visages Villages—Faces Places in English) and so had some time to kill. We got what turned out to be mediocre Italian breadsticks to take in. But the movie was great—an 88-year old filmmaker and a 33-year old photographer joined up to take photographs of people all over France, printing them out in very large format, and posting them on buildings and other places. It was so touching to see how thrilled the people (working class types at their jobs for the most part) were to have this attention paid to them. I really like performance art, and I guess you could call this a form of that.

Saturday morning we packed up our stuff and checked out of the hotel. First stop was Andre’s Confiserie Suisse, a really cute coffee shop with a simulated Swiss chalet inside and fabulous-looking pastries, breakfast and lunch items and drinks. I got a soufflé with cheese, bacon and tomato on a roll and a Bailey’s cocoa. They lost our order, so it took forever but it was good.

Pastries at Andre's Confiserie Suisse--can you tell
that I like chocolate?

Then it was off to two really good second-hand bookstores, Prospero’s Books and Half Price Books. That took a long time, so lunch was next. More bar-b-que at a big Kansas City place. We got long ends, only guessing what that was. It was a huge plate of ribs slathered with a sweetish sauce and beans. Too much. 

Honestly, our car was the only one
that wasn't full of snow residue

Our last big stop was the Nelson-Atkins Art Museum. We actually didn’t have enough time to do it all justice. The building itself was interesting. Glenna wanted to go there anyway, but an added bonus was a Picasso exhibit which had stops only there, Montreal and Paris. Again the wall labels were very good. It was a large exhibit and took a long time. The main theme was how much Picasso was influenced by the African and other indigenous masks he saw at the Trocadero Museum in Paris early in his career. We hurried through the rest of the sections before it closed. 

One of the African objects that influenced Picasso

One of Picasso's most famous paintings--
Les Demoiselles d'Avignon

Picasso's Baboon and Young--I made it big so you could see that he used
found objects to make it, like a car for a head. Cool, huh? 

We killed some time in a coffee and wine shop before heading for the airport to return our rental car and get a shuttle to our airport hotel. We had dinner delivered—a good salad for me which I hadn’t been getting much of on this trip. 

Sunday was just travel. Up early for our 7:15 flight. It was only 7 degrees, so it was good we didn't have to be outside much this day. The layover was at O’Hare where we got a cinnamon pretzel. Back in Charleston we got Wendy’s chicken nuggets (amazingly good—I hadn’t had them before) for our drive back to Columbia. It was even cold in South Carolina. After about a half hour at their place where they opened a few more presents, I drove back home to Greenville. 

It was a short trip for which I didn’t have high expectations. But I enjoyed everything we did. I like lots of variety and making our way around ourselves, and we certainly did that. How wonderful to be able to travel with your daughter!