|
“Bucksnort & Elvis”
My beloved and I spent yesterday in Memphis. This great southern city is the only place between Bucksnort, Tennessee and Toad Suck, Arkansas that boasts a pyramid. I digress briefly here to wonder about these names: Bucksnort, Toad Suck and Memphis.
I can use my active imagination and come up with a fairly plausible theory about the naming of Bucksnort. Maybe a male deer was overheard snorting by an early explorer of the site. One can only surmise what the snort was in reference to. It could have been a romantic snort aimed by a young buck toward a female deer. Or it may have been a cranky old buck annoyed by the appearance of the pioneer.
Truth is, it could have been a two-legged snorter. Young men are sometimes called bucks too. And snorting is a manly thing to do. This would have been in a more primitive era, of course, and nobody can say anything definitive about the snorter, the snortee, nor the circumstance of the snort. However, there it is with Interstate Highway 40 running right through it arousing inquiring minds that want to know.
Also on I 40 west of Memphis is Toad Suck, Arkansas. More picturesque than Bucksnort, Toad Suck is more enigmatic. I don't even want to speculate on the source of its name. It is a fact that someone forever lost to history must have witnessed some kind of incident that led to the name of this place. However, only a perverted or criminal mind would have willingly told about "The Toad Suck Incident" even if it were a true story.
Now to Memphis, strung like a big pearl on the I 40 string between the lesser pearls, Toad Suck and Bucksnort. There's nothing much here to suggest the ancient city in Egypt except, perhaps, the Mississippi River. It is sort of like an American Nile. It is very long, wide and powerful. I can see how the founders, enchanted by tales of exotic Egypt, could give it an Egyptian name. It took a long time for the city business leaders to give it a signature structure--a modern building in the shape of a pyramid.
What I like most about Memphis is Beale Street and its All-American music--the Blues. Walk down Beale Street at night and you'll swing back in time and sing your troubles away.
Then there's Graceland. It is hard to imagine Memphis without Elvis and the shrine to his memory--Graceland--his home. Beyond the adoring fans, the garishness and glitter, the mirrored walls, the shag carpet on ceilings and floors in his "Jungle Room," and beyond his tomb in the side yard is Elvis' music about the God he adored. Elvis was nominated many times for his music but won only three Grammy awards. Each win was for gospel music.
Leaving Memphis, we turned south toward New Orleans. We sang with Elvis his 67 recorded gospel songs all the way across Mississippi. This was where he first heard and began to sing the soul of the South.
|
