844 Miles to Graceland

Hey you guys, remember that time I was a debt collector? Oh man, that was the best four days ago ever. I quit last Thursday and decided to take a spontaneous roadtrip to Tennessee to go to an Eddie Vedder concert. [Note: was not so much “spontaneous” as it was “planned far advance with tickets and hotel accomodations secured for months.”]

One thing that I didn’t fully comprehend before my girlfriend and I left was this: Memphis is really far away from Minnesota. Like, 844 miles to be exact. We left at 8am and got there at 10pm. “Wow, that’s a long time in the car,” I bet you’re thinking. “But at least you were driving through interesting scenery and not just boring midwest states.”

We drove through Iowa, Missouri, and Arkansas. Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas: this trifecta of boredom makes time go by about as slow as a bowel movement after eating a brick of cheese. Thirteen hours of corn fields, grazing cows, and simplist pro-life billboards with sayings such as: “ABORTION: THE ULTIMATE CHILD ABUSE.”

After being on the road for only a couple of hours, we needed gas. When we arrived at the nearest station that our GPS had led us to, we found a pair of old gas pumps with the loud, spinning meters that would seem at home in a 50’s themed diner. This diner would also include checkered tablecloths, a cranky waitress ashing her cigarette into a cup of cold coffee and a jukebox of some sort.

As I waited to pay for the gas, a shoeless man walked in and went in back to the coolers. He had long, greasy hair that parted in the middle, ripped jean shorts and an unbuttoned plaid shirt that permitted his bare chest to peek through. He grabbed his generic .40 oz of malt liquor and walked up to pay before setting his selection on the counter and stepping outside. He came back in to explain to me and the woman ringing us up that he had discarded a tick that he found on his leg. There was some friendly banter between him and the cashier, who was ignoring me to finish making cheese curds. I was not paying attention, so I can only assume this was the type of banter where one reminisces about typical situations and appropriate steps for when you find a tick on your leg. I paid and then we got back in the car and left Argyle, Iowa.

Another delightful town we passed through was Wentzville, Missouri. If you’re anything like me, you instantly wonder if it has any relation to Fall Out Boy and superstar axeman, Pete Wentz. I didn’t care what the answer is, because in my head I decided that the town was named after him. I decided that every fall, they have a celebration for their town’s history where locals get together. It would have carnival games and a potluck. There would be Miller Lite and sparklers for all. A facepainter would be there to decorate all boys and girls with dark eyeliner, so they could look just like their town’s founder. Then they would eat corn on the cob, exchange old Hot Topic gift cards, and resent their parents.

By the time we got to Memphis, it was Friday night. There was live music in every bar, so that driving through the city was akin to wearing nine pairs of headphones at once. Beer was flowing and good times were being had by all. We went to our hotel and fell slept, as the bass from the street below rattled the windows.

The next day, we stopped at Memphis’ Hard Rock Café for dinner. To me, a Hard Rock Café is a doubled-edged sword. On one hand, the food is normally delicious and there are hundreds of artifacts and historical instruments from a vast array of musicians. (For instance, the Hard Rock in NYC has a Hendrix guitar, the doors from Abbey Road and a Matchbox 20 setlist!) The downfall is that you are usually seated next to the worst piece of memorabilia in the restaurant, so you end up eating your cheeseburger next to a pick that was used on Maroon 5’s debut record. This is not just an exaggerated example; when you walk into the Hard Rock Café in Memphis, Tennessee —the epicenter of blues and soul in America— there hangs a Maroon 5 guitar and an autographed tee shirt once belonging to Adam Levine.

Sometimes I think part of the reason I like going to see Eddie Vedder in concert has nothing to do with the music at all, but because it allows me to see how normal I am by comparison. After driving an arguably fanatical 1,600 miles for a 2 hour concert, it is refreshing to see hordes of twenty, thirty, and fourty-something men waiting outside at a backstage door for a glimpse of their hero, as if they are giddy teenagers rushing the Ed Sullivan Theater in 1964.

I guess you could say grown men yelling “Thank you for everything, Eddie!” in between songs at a concert is a real self-esteem booster.

I learned that it is one thing to make a long drive when you are excited about going to a concert and exploring a new town. It is quite a different situation when you have to make the exact same drive back across the boring countryside. The odometer can say one thing, but the decrease in dead armadillos and Waffle Houses speaks volumes when it comes to getting home quicker.

Also, I saw a black hillbilly! I never knew such a thing even existed. I have of course seen hillbillies and black people seperately, but I never knew those two circles crossed in the Venn Diagram of life. This lady was holding a beer with missing teeth teeth and a dopey grin and everything! I wanted to be friends with her, if not for the ability to say that I am an associate with the one black hillbilly in the world— then to be accompanied by the banjo licks that no doubtedly follow her around daily.