Red Truck Road Trip – EAST Coast Team

Like a sibling living in the shadow of his older brother’s accolades, to mainstream America, Memphis is a city of Soul existing under the coattails of Graceland. We arrive in the small downtown in the mid-afternoon and watch one local, blues band in a gated park. There are harmonicas jammin’, bebop and scattin’ and a park bench filled with folks absorbing and critiquing the free vibes that are played. The band’s leader bows his chill hat and begins singing a ditty that goes, “Tip, tip, the band. We’re goin’ to bring the best that we can. So, tip, tip, the band.” Then, their top fan, “Old School” who wears a hu$tler hat, swaggers like a snake among the crowd with a bucket pleading his case to why you need to deposit. The band continues their tip-the-band rendition and randomly jests with each other in the middle of their song. The park bench groupies throw up their hands, grabbing at the empty air as if they are catching the fireflies of soul.

Demarcus Landfair approaches me and asks if I am a journalist. I answer, sort of, because I am unsure where his question is leading. He tells me instantly that he’s an aspiring writer who feels that Memphis needs to be exposed and to be known for more than Elvis.

I ask, “What would you write?”

“I have the itch to expose things for what they really are.”

“Demarcus, I’m intrigued, what do you mean?”

“Subliminal segregation, I’m tired of it. I’m too free minded for it.”

I try to get Landfair to explain what he means by “subliminal segregation” and his answer doesn’t further than the recognition that there’s still a big separation between black and white. He wants more mixing between the races, he wants people to be more cultural diverse. It seems a little cliché in the explanation, but I know there is more. I can see it in his eyes. That phrase “subliminal segregation” is too strong for a hint of an issue of old truism and then I notice a tee-shirt in the window of the souvenir shop across the street: No Black, No White, Just Blues.

As far as the blues goes, Downtown Memphis is vast with its music and the good old southern cooking. Beale Street is the heart. It’s packed with one restaurant and performance area after another. Both the entertainment and the food are feeling fantastically filling. We hit a spot during the early evening and watch on the street what they call flippin’. Flippin’ is a group of relatives and friends in their teens that perform acrobatic somersaults, sometimes with just one hand. Tourists and regulars alike love the kids, holler at their performance and then load up their buckets. Tipping the performers is an essential element to the life of the downtown.

Later, in the evening, Bill and I hit the nightlife for what we thought would just be an hour to capture the happenings. It turns out that we are enthralled and stay the entire night listening to the hippie soul of Free World. In the back of my mind, I can’t stop thinking about what Landfair had said earlier and am trying to place my finger on his deepest thoughts. I look into Free World’s audience and it’s a mixed crowd of races, many of who have gone shoeless to dance without restrictions. Bill and I find out that a lot of their fans travel two hours from Mississippi to see this band every Sunday and one woman even extended her trip to hear them again. The funk, the passion, and the fun exude and my feet love it, too. I dance with the crowd and later the singer thanks me for dancing. My friends have called me Elaine from Seinfeld, so it is the first time that I have ever been thanked for dancing. We leave and I wonder still about “subliminal segregation.”

The next day, Bill, Dan, and I pay our respects to legend at Graceland. I enjoy the set-up of the tour. It’s a headphone audio guide as you walk inside the palace of the king. The audio is laced with speeches from Elvis, Lisa Marie, Priscilla, and the guide. There are also oddments of Elvis’ classics. The grounds of Graceland are lush and smell pure. The rooms are decedent and become even more ostentatious as Elvis rises in his career. I wonder of the appeal of Elvis and can only relate to the fact that I’m personally drawn to appreciate the rhythms of this revolutionary performer. He is handsome, charming, showy but humble, and talented. He is something to watch, there are people that just have that draw. But why do we watch those we do? Did Landfair try to imply something before my visit?

We cap our downtown Memphis visit at a park that overlooks the connecting bridge to Little Rock, Arkansas. We had taken that bridge by mistake and u-turned, which we like to do on this trip. While Bill and Dan capture footage of the area, I lie in the grass on my belly and write. I hear silence and I need that. I remember a time from long ago when a college boyfriend said that he dreamt of us going across country on a train. When he said that to me as a nineteen year-old I slighted his fantasy by giving a non-response; I didn’t realize the romance in his suggestion and what it entails to travel. I honestly thought; a train ride, how about Hawaii? I didn’t get small details, I was looking for grand. Now, I’m trying to absorb it all, not in a romantic sense – well, maybe – I’m falling in love with our country. It’s so diverse, spacious, and unique but then there are common denominators. But still, what about “subliminal segregation?”

I’m not naïve enough to not recognize it nor separate enough to not taste it. But, how do you solve it? Or define it without platitudes when there is a role played by all hands? Though, I only want to see blue, I’ve been forced to see white and black, male and female, straight and gay, goth and prep, Elvis and Big Mama Thornton. Can’t the list continue? I wish music, comedy, sports were the solution, but it’s in there, too. However, can’t we make everything subliminal and nothing concrete, too politically aware and not true? So, what do you do with it? Flip the coin, I say, and embrace the negativity as much as the positive. Subliminal segregation exists, but I agree with Landfair, expose it and you will own it. As a tourist, my time is more of a grand scope than the real fine details that Landfair knows. So, I want him to take any kitschy actions, be the hometown artist and give the victims a voice. Yet, I also hope he can hear what a visitor heard, Beale Street singing, to D-up and attack the subliminal, too. People who do not want the concealed to kill the revealed are in Memphis. Times have progressed some and there are those mixed and dancing for better.

Here is a link to Free World’s Myspace. This is the band that Bill and I had a great time listening to in Memphis. Thematically, their song “D-Up” relates to this piece. Check them out, they’re fun. Free World Myspace