Deep Into the Delta

March 31, 2023April 1, 2023 steveboilard2 Comments

A surprising number of you were interested in learning more about Anthony Turner (my Delta barber). I’ll share two anecdotes that have been running through my head since yesterday. First, there is a method to the madness of the Menagerie Museum. Sure, it’s a tangled and confused congeries of seemingly unrelated trinkets and kitch. But it’s all connected (quite literally, with fishing line and rubber bands) in a way that Anthony seems to have dedicated much thought and deliberation. What’s more, schoolchildren visit his museum as part of their curriculum, and Anthony teaches them an inspirational lesson about what’s probable versus what’s possible. The teachers seem to think it’s a worthy message, delivered with earnestness, kindness, and the most overwhelming number of props imaginable. There’s a method to all this madness. I’m fully convinced that Anthony knows every piece of his collection, and sees a purpose for each one.

*Even the markings on the floor have meaning and purpose.*

Second, Anthony told me a story about how there had been an empty spot in front of his shop that “needed something.” Then one day he spotted that something: A giant metal rooster that was for sale elsewhere in town. Alas, at $800, the rooster was beyond his means. He mentioned this in passing to a customer in his barber chair, and by the end of the day that customer had taken up a collection around town and presented Anthony with $800. The rooster now stands in the spot where it belongs.

We now return to today:

This morning I woke up in Clarksdale, Mississippi. As proof, the downstairs buffet had biscuits and gravy, and the map on my cellphone revealed there to be two blues clubs, three churches, and a blues museum in the immediate area.

Clarksdale (pop: 14,000) is the birthplace of Sam Cooke, John Lee Hooker, Ike Turner, and many other blues musicians. Muddy Waters moved here as a child. Just east of the mighty Mississippi River (or, as the locals call it, the Mississip), Clarksdale sits at the crossroads of US Route 61 (the Blues Highway) and US Route 49 (which runs south to the Gulf Coast).

That crossroads is sometimes called the Devil’s Crossroads. Legend has it that a struggling, less-than-skilled blues player named Robert Johnson went to the Crossroads one night about a century ago, where a strange man tuned his guitar for him and showed him some techniques. Johnson disappeared for a few months. He eventually reappeared as a blues guitar virtuoso, achieving fame on the blues circuit and earning the respect of the established bluesmen.

As you might imagine, things didn’t end well for Johnson, who died under mysterious circumstances at age 27. The legend holds that Johnson had sold his soul to the Devil that night at the crossroads. And the fact that Johnson recorded a song entitled “Me and the Devil Blues” seems to support that hypothesis.

I got breakfast at a place called Yazoo Pass in the historic downtown, where I met a literal fellow-traveler. Jim has been making his own Blues pilgrimage that began in (what I assume to be his home of) Pensacola. He’s now traveling north on 61, while I’m traveling south. We exchanged a few stories and tips. He put me to shame with his extensive knowledge of blues history, his obvious emotional attachment to the art form, and his extensive photo collection from this trip.

I continue to be struck by how much people are deeply affected by music, and in particular by the blues. I’m a mere novice when it comes to this music, but I’m quickly learning of its power to affect moods and impart lessons. I’m especially struck by how dedicated the musicians are to this music which they seem to treat as a religion.

After breakfast I went to the famous Delta Blues Museum, which is housed in a hundred-year-old building that once was the freight depot of the Yazoo and Mississippi Valley Railroad.

It’s a modern and slick affair, but it does a great job of illustrating the importance of the blues to the delta, and vice versa. I’m beginning to learn about some of the key names in blues history. (A number of them I dimly recognize from when friends Chris and Jerry and I all went to the San Francisco (!) Blues Festival some forty (!) years ago. I knew nothing about Albert King and various other headliners, but I sure liked their music.)

I also noticed that as I get deeper into the delta, the music changes. What started as twangy country music in Nashville became gospel-infused bluegrass in Jackson and slick, horn-centered R&B in Memphis. Down here in rural Clarksdale the music is a bit more stripped-down and raw.

After I left the museum I took a brief break from the blues and visited the J W Cutrer House. Built in 1916 by a wealthy local attorney, the house and the Cutrer family served as inspirations for Tennessee Williams when he wrote A Streetcar Named Desire and Orpheus Descending. I don’t know about all that, but it sure is an impressive mansion.

It was now time to say goodbye to Clarksdale and get back on Route 61. Truth be told, Route 61 is not the most beautiful highway I’ve been on. The countryside is relatively flat with large, treeless expanses of grasses, low scrub, and sickly-looking farms. I didn’t see much cotton, with the exception of this designer plot.

One of the sparse settlements along The Blues Highway is the town of Alligator (pop: 116).

Soon I came to Leland, Mississippi, where things shifted from the Blues to the Greens. For, incredibly, it seems that this is Kermit the Frog country.

Leland was the boyhood home of Jim Henson, who lived here until he was 12. Leland claims Henson as a native son, and the chamber of commerce has set up a small Jim Henson museum just off the road.

*It’s not easy being green in the land of the blues.*

Docent Heather explained to me the history, and directed me to the nearby “Rainbow Connection Bridge.”

*Shockingly, this bridge, which is directly behind the museum, is NOT the Rainbow Connection Bridge. But it should be!*

While I was in Leland I was hoping to visit the Highway 61 Blues Museum, which is touted as one of the most earnest (albeit small) of the museums along the Blues Highway. Alas, Heather reported that the museum closed at the beginning of the Covid pandemic and never reopened. As an alternative she recommended something called the “wildlife heritage museum.” I thanked her but I chose instead to head down to the next town: Indianola. It’s the birthplace (and final resting place) of B.B King, and it boasts the impressive B.B. King Museum. As you probably already know, B.B. King was one of the most successful blues artists of all time, and was known around the world.

Believe it or not, BB King’s “The Thrill is Gone” was the first record I ever bought. I was 8 years old, and my parents took my brother and me to a record store and allowed us each to pick a record. “The Thrill is Gone” was a crossover hit and playing on top 40 radio. Mom tried to steer me towards Blood, Sweat, and Tears’ “Spinning Wheel,” but I would not be moved. Interestingly, both songs seem to have a very similar groove and have stood the test of time.

Anyway, this is not the place to recount B.B. King’s life, which is well told in many, many other places. But I did want to share this small scrap I learned at the museum: When B.B. King’s mother lay on her deathbed, she held her son’s hand and said “Be kind. It will always bring you good things.” He was and it did. (It also sounds very much like something barber Anthony Turner might say!)

I’m spending the night in Greenville, which is just west of Indianola and right on the east bank of the Mississip. Tomorrow it’s onward to Vicksburg… as Ulysses S. Grant might have said…

Bonus Material!

I did come across an old theater in Clarksdale. The Marion Theater opened in 1918–one of the first theaters constructed to show (silent) movies. It was renamed the Paramount in 1931. It closed in 1976, and has only been partially and fitfully restored by a local performing arts group. Heaven only knows what all those upstairs rooms are for. There is evidence of a fire in those upper rooms. But on the ground floor, I did see some evidence of recent renovation. Let’s hope they’re able to save this impressive structure!

*Look carefully at the uppermost part of the sign over the entrance, and you can see “Theater Marion” cast into the cement*.

I Got The Blues

March 30, 2023 steveboilard6 Comments

If I had it to do all over again (and my wife reminds me that, if I’m not careful, I just might receive that opportunity), I would seriously consider living in a small town in middle America. But I’d put a lot of conditions on it: It would have to be out of the snow belt and out of the humidity belt. It would have to have an interesting history linked, ideally, to railroads or mining or the Marathon Motor Car. And it would have to have successfully preserved a large number of historic structures in its downtown. And it would have to exude vitality. Oh, and there’d be no dogs and the gas prices would be low.

To a large extent I’ve found that city in Jackson, Tenn. It’s a little larger than my ideal, with a soulless sprawl of undistinguished national chain stores and fast food restaurants around the periphery. And there’s always something a little sinister in the air in these former Confederate strongholds. But the historic downtown is wonderful. It’s here that one finds the restored Greyhound depot I described yesterday. There’s a performing arts center in another restored, historic building, which appears to be well-utilized by the residents. As Jackson is the county seat of Madison County, there’s a historic courthouse. And today the temperature was 72 degrees.

This morning I got my coffee and a galette (I’d never heard of it either) at a place called Turntable Coffee Counter. It’s almost directly across the street from the Greyhound station, in a historic building that had once been a department store. It had been vacant for years when in 2018 Anthony Kirk renovated part of the space and created this coffee place. It’s decorated in mid-century modern, with (probably faux) Eames chairs and a very hipster vibe. Racks of vinyl albums are for sale along one wall, and abstract art hangs on the walls. As I enjoyed my coffee I watched a churn of customers coming through: lawyers from the courthouse, writers with their laptops, a young couple who were getting lattes after their pilates class. This is an active community gathering place. (See related article from the local paper here.)

Turntable Coffee neatly illustrates what I appreciate about towns like this: They’ve created a modern (retro) space while respecting the history and flavor of the town. It works, and it draws people in. There’s a vibrancy and positivity about the place. And it’s unique–not just another Starbucks. The barista told me that Turntable began in a shared “incubator” space down the street, and after a bit was able to move to its current space. A couple of other businesses from the incubator (a book store and a record store) soon followed to the same location. So they’re doing something right.

After coffee I took a walk around the downtown and saw more examples of well-maintained historic structures that added to Jackson’s very successful formula.

*Jackson’s Nashville, Chatanooga & St. Louis Railway depot.*

Of particular interest to me was the restored NC&St.L Railway depot. It was originally constructed in 1907, and after passenger trains stopped coming to town it was converted to a museum. Alas, when I arrived today the friendly woman inside told me the museum had moved and that the building was now a photography studio (among other uses). While I would have liked to have been able to spend some time in Jackson’s railroad museum, this is a good illustration of that same principle I was just describing: Jackson has wisely preserved its historic buildings, but rather than making them all into museums that the locals probably wouldn’t visit very often, they have repurposed them into vibrant, viable and useful public enterprises for which there is local demand.

At the same time, I did visit two wonderful museums in Jackson this morning. The first is Rusty’s TV and Movie Car Museum. Rusty Robinson has been collecting cars for over a quarter of a century and he has them on display here in Jackson. Rusty was the only other person at the museum this morning, and I appreciated the opportunity to wander among his collection. It’s worth nothing that the collection is a mix of vehicles that actually appeared on the screen, as well as some reproductions that Randy himself has manufactured

*Jake and Elwood’s “Blues Mobile.” (One of many cars used in that movie.)*

*Garth’s “Mirthmobile,” from Wayne’s World. (Original from the movie.)*

Delorean time machine from Back To the Future. (Not from the movie. But it’s a real Delorean, which is rare in its own right. Rusty and I had a long talk about the new John Delorean documentary on Netflix.)

*Herbie from the 2005 relaunch of the Love Bug franchise with Lindsay Lohan. (Actual car from the movie.)*

*Rusty himself, in front of The Green Hornet’s “Black Beauty.” (Not original from the movie; Rusty built it himself!)*

The other museum in Jackson I visited was the Southern Legends of Music at the Carnegie. It’s a very small museum inside an old library built in 1901. (Hence the “Carnegie” part. As you may know, Andrew Carnegie funded the construction of almost 1700 libraries around the country between the 1880s and the 1920s….like this one, below, that I saw on my Route 2 trip last year)

*Unrestored Carnegie library from 1917, in Malta, MT. I passed it on my Route 2 trip.*

Here is the Carnegie library in Jackson–fully restored and open to the public as a music museum:

It’s a wonderful museum, focused on western Tennessee’s music history. (By “western Tennessee” they mean mainly Jackson and Memphis). While small, the museum is stuffed to the gills with guitars, recording equipment, framed photos, harmonicas, stage outfits, awards, guitar picks, sheet music, handwritten lyrics, and tons of other stuff.

In the center of the main room is a large, octagonal skylight. It must have been an awesome place to spend an afternoon reading.

Speaking of which, the docent who helped me (Roger) told me he was drawn to work at this museum because as a kid he spent many, many hours in this library. Over the years, though, he’s learned much about western Tennessee’s music history, and he was able to convey an enthusiasm about the music that’s infectious. I’m starting to get why music is such a big deal to this area. It’s partly a shared language, partly a relieve valve for emotions, and partly storytelling. Notably, each region out here seems to put its own stamp on the music. In Nashville it’s country; here in Jackson it’s moving more to bluegrass. By the time you get to Memphis it’s blues. But there are intersections and overlap among these styles, and they all fall under an American Roots umbrella. It’s heartfelt and earnest and moving. In just a short time at this museum I got a better feel for why this music matters. And I was able to connect the through lines linking Elvis and Johnny Cash and Ray Charles and Roy Orbison and Jerry Lee Lewis and on and on….

*Docent Roger sharing stories about the music of western Tennessee.*

I was thoroughly enjoying my music history lesson but unfortunately I had to get back on the road to get to a haircut appointment at noon. I’m not making this up.

Before I’d left California I had learned about a quirky museum in Brownsville Tenn. that also served as a functioning barber shop. It’s only open by appointment during the week, so I called the owner (Anthony Turner) and asked if I could make a visit on Thursday. “For a haircut or for the museum?” he asked. I figured the right answer was “both.” I arrived at Anthony’s “Master Barber Shop Menagerie Museum” at the appointed time.

Anthony greeted me with a thousand-watt smile and took me to the building, which looked like a circus had exploded.

*A tiny fraction of the Menagerie Museum.*

I asked what it all meant, but Anthony directed me to a tiny room with a barber chair. For the next hour he cut my hair and told me his story. I can’t do justice to his whole spiel, but the basic outlines are as follows:

*I told Anthony just to do whatever he thought needed doing on my head. “All’s you need is a high fade.” And so it went.*

Anthony grew up here in Jackson, and after graduating he attended barber college. For reasons he doesn’t really understand, his fellow students and instructors kept bringing him various items (pieces of art, antiques, odds and ends). He opened his barber shop next to where his chum from public school, Billy Tripp, was building an enormous sculpture out of scrap metal. He felt there was a synergy between their two projects. In his shop Anthony displayed the various objects he’d received while at barber’s college. But he kept feeling he was supposed to have a bigger impact. He planned a grand opening, and for reasons not entirely clear, decided he’d invite Oprah Winfrey’s father (whom he’d never met) to MC the opening. He tracked down Mr. Winfrey, who accepted. The museum grew and grew, and more and more people brought him more stuff. Anthony was also always looking for specific additions that he would purchase, including this horse:

In a repeat of the Oprah’s dad trick, Anthony managed to get John Wayne’s grandson to show up for the unveiling of the horse, as he needed a “real cowboy” for that job.

Again I asked Anthony what the whole museum is all about; what unites everything? And he responded sincerely and convincingly that it was all united by positivity. Anthony is a man of faith, and believes that God has led him to do this project to make the world a more positive place. And if my hour with him is any indication, he’s doing a good job.

After my haircut Anthony had another customer to take care of, so I browsed his small museum and then checked out Billy Tripp’s sculpture in the back. Words cannot describe how enormous, complicated, and overwhelming the sculpture is. And pictures don’t do it justice, because it’s so large and contorted you just can’t get a full picture. But here are a few attempts:

Anthony tells me that Billy works on the sculpture almost every day, and that he plans to keep working on it until the day he dies. I suspect that Anthony takes the same approach with his museum.

Finally, freshly shorn, I was back on the road to Memphis. I had been in Memphis just last year on my Route 70 trip. While I was there I saw the outside of the building where Stax records made music history in the 1960s and 1970s. I have a fondness for Stax in part because my dad had Booker T. and the MG’s “Greatest Hits” album, and I thought it was the coolest thing in our household. (It actually was, considering that most of Mom and Dad’s other records were stuff like Motovani and Percy Faith.) I also saw Booker T give a talk in LA a few years ago, when he was promoting his autobiography. He’s a remarkable and articulate man. Booker T and Stax represent a magical time in music history, and they’re central to the so-called Memphis sound. Recall that earlier I mentioned how Jackson merged Nashville’s country into more of a bluegrass? Well, Stax merged bluegrass and blues with soul and R&B. In addition to the MGs, classic Stax acts included Issac Hayes, Otis Redding, Sam and Dave, Albert King, and various other acts that you’ve heard on the radio.

You’ve heard this before, but you might not have known the title.

Anyway, when I’d visited the Stax building (which is now a museum) last year it was closed, so I made a point to see it today. And I’m glad I did. It further deepened my appreciation for Blues/R&B and all its variants.

*Full disclosure: The original Stax building was razed in 1989, This museum was built on the same site, faithfully recreating the facade and the interior recording studio.*

*The Hammond organ that Booker T Jones used to record “Green Onions.”*

Since I’d been to Memphis just last year, Stax was my only stop this time. So afterwards I got back into the trusty Trailblazer and got onto Route 61– the Blues Highway!

I stopped for the night in Clarksdale, Mississippi. I had dinner at the estimable Ground Zero Blues Club (owned in part by Morgan Freeman).

I had some good BBQ (as it’s called in these parts) and enjoyed listening to some live blues. It was a perfect end to this day. It’s one thing to learn about music in museums, but there’s no substitute for hearing it performed live.

BREW OF THE DAY

I’ve noticed that most of these music venues have a pretty crappy selection of beers. The Ground Zero Blues Club is no exception; their most interesting beer was an IPA. So I decided instead to order a cocktail. How about an Old Fashioned? That’s pretty basic, right? The waitress (Mandy, who was being very patient with me) came back and told me the bartender couldn’t make me one because they’re “out of bitters.”

Ok, fine. How about just a Scotch then, served neat? Again Mandy consults with the bartender, and comes back with the sad news that they’re “out of Scotch.” Borrowing a line from Monty Python’s cheese shop sketch, in which a neighborhood cheese shop was out of even the most common cheeses, I spluttered “How can a bar be out of Scotch?! It’s one of the most basic staples for making cocktails!”

I settled for the “featured cocktail,” which is a “moonshine margarita.”

The Moonshine Margarita is essentially lots of margarita mix and some “moonshine” (i.e., distilled whiskey that hasn’t been aged in a barrel). Let me give you the pros and cons:

On the pro side, it contains alcohol, which goes well with a BBQ dinner at a blues club. But it’s cloyingly sweet, like sno-cone juice. And it’s the same color, as well. Of course, when all you have is hammer everything presents as a nail. So I ordered a second one.

First drink: 1 star out of five.

Second drink: 3 stars.

Cars · Road trips · trains

Highway 61 Revisited

March 29, 2023 steveboilard8 Comments

Much of this trip will be spent on US Highway 61, which is sometimes called The Blues Highway. It runs from the confusingly-named town of Wyoming, Minnesota, down to New Orleans. Until about 30 years ago the highway reached further north, passing through Duluth on its way to the Canadian border. Attentive readers (I’m looking at you, Peter D) will recall that I’d visited Duluth last May as I was traveling west across the country on US Route 2. While in Duluth I visited the boyhood home of one Robert Allen Zimmerman, who you and I would know today as Bob Dylan. Dylan famously released an album in 1965 called Highway 61 Revisited, an influential, landmark album with notable roots in the blues tradition. Dylan said this about that: “Highway 61, the main thoroughfare of the country blues, begins about where I began. I always felt like I’d started on it, always had been on it and could go anywhere, even down in to the deep Delta country. It was the same road, full of the same contradictions, the same one-horse towns, the same spiritual ancestors … It was my place in the universe, always felt like it was in my blood.”

For this trip I’m going to travel the southern part of the Blues Highway, through Tennessee, Mississippi, and Louisiana. But first I’m starting in Nashville (pop: 690,000), from which I’ll head due west to pick up Route 61 in Memphis. Why am I starting in Nashville? Because the Roadtripper guide told me to.

I arrived in Nashville about 9:15 am this morning and “promptly” picked up my rental car. (I put “promptly” in scare quotes because while I went directly to the Dollar counter, the “workers” didn’t share my sense of urgency. The line ahead of me took half an hour to clear, one hapless renter at a time.Then, after finally getting to the counter, I cooled my heels while the “worker” used a single index finger to re-type all the data I’d already filled out online. (Bottom line: Don’t patronize Dollar.) Anyway, by 10:30 I was in command of a Chevy Trailblazer, making my way to the downtown Nashville farmer’s market.

By now you know that these road trips of mine don’t normally linger in big cities. But given that a theme of this trip is music (especially blues), I figured I should pay a little homage to Nashville’s iconic music scene. And who better to help me do that than the Jugg Sisters??

Brenda Kay and Sheri Lynn–The Jugg Sisters–kindly agreed to pose with their bus.

For decades now, The Jugg Sisters have been doing a comedy bus tour of Nashville’s music history. They created, managed, and have starred in the “NashTrash tours” that present tourists with the irreverent musical highlights of downtown Nashville. Recently, however, they’ve been farming out some of the tour guide duties to a new duo: Hank and Jenny. Today was only their sixth time giving the tour. For two hours, driver Darron drove the big pink bus while Hank sang country songs accompanied by his guitar, and Jenny mainly told him “that’s enough now.” Still, they managed to point out literally dozens of music-related sites and share tons of music-related trivia. I confess that I didn’t realize how big the music industry looms in Nashville. There are recording studios, halls of fame, museums, statues, music venues, theme restaurants, and on and on. Nashville has claimed an association with Elvis, Loretta Lynn, Dolly Parton, Chet Atkins, Rosanne Cash, and a bunch of famous people I’ve never heard of. A person could easily spend a week here soaking up the music history.

My only complaint is that, as a country-music novice, I had a hard time separating the genuine factoids from the exaggerations and jokes. Still, the overall effect was to appreciate the musical importance of this city.

I should mention that today’s bus passengers were mainly just me and a group of 10 folks from Iowa. They let me take their picture, and when I asked them how I should identify the group in my blog, they said “Just call us the Iowa Shit Show.”

Hank and Jenny let us take a 10-minute break at lower Broadway’s honky tonk district to attend to our biological needs. I used the occasion to get my fortune told by one of those animatronic fortune teller booths. But instead of a Zoltar or a gypsy or whatever, this one had….Elvis. I took a video of it, just because I didn’t think you’d believe me.

One of the rare non-music-related sites Hank and Jenny pointed out was the Marathon Motor Works. You’d never heard of it either? Apparently for five brief years in the very early 20th Century, Nashville had its own automobile company. An engineer named William Henry Collier at the Southern Engine and Boiler works in nearby Jackson decided in 1909 to try his hand at a new technology called the motor car. For a few years thousands of the vehicles were produced, but the whole operation slowed and ultimately died about the time of World War I.

It’s an intriguing story, so after NashTrash I returned to the Marathon Motor Works on my own and puttered around for a couple of hours. I was entranced by this place. Notably, the century-old buildings are remarkably well-maintained and they house museums related to the marque as well as various independent, tourist-oriented shops. (One of them is the antique shop from the TV show American Pickers.)

*Parts of the complex predate Marathon.*

There are said to be only eight surviving Marathon automobiles. (Their production just before World War I made them highly susceptible to scrap metal recycling as part of the war effort.) Impressively, five of those remaining cars are on display at the Motor Works. Numerous other artifacts are also displayed.

*One of the few extant Marathon cars. This one is a roadster.*

I’m not sure why this car plant resonated with me so much. Part of it is just the novelty of a short-lived, hundred-year-old automobile factory that’s still standing. This particular operation is not flashy like some museums can be, so you feel like the environment isn’t that different at all when workers were casting wheels and assembling frames.

After Marathon I made another transportation-related visit to Nashville’s Union Station. Surely you’re familiar with Union Stations in other cities (Washington DC, Chicago, Louisville, Los Angeles, etc. etc). There must have been scores of them back in the Golden Age of Railroading. Nashville’s Union Station was built in 1898 and was in operation until 1979. It was slated for demolition, but local preservationists and others managed to save it from the wrecking ball. Today it is a luxury hotel, retaining the main structure and many of the appointments from its heyday.

*Union Station is the gothic-looking building on the right.*

Finally it was time to leave Nashville. I got onto I-40 West toward Memphis, and made it to the halfway point at the town of Jackson, TN (pop: 68,000). Jackson has lots of music history in its own right. For example, it’s the birthplace of Big Maybelle and of Denise LaSalle. I’m spending the night here and will report more about Jackson in tomorrow’s post. But I did want to highlight the Greyhound station I saw on Main Street. Check it out:

It’s a beautiful art deco, streamlined structure built in 1938. It closed in 2018, but quickly was restored and maintained as a historic structure. There was a young lady cleaning the outside windows when I drove by, and she told me it recently became the third restaurant called Doe’s Eat Place. (Doe’s has its own interesting history dating back to the 1930s which you can read here.) Since it was dinner time I went in and had the best fried shrimp I’ve ever had. I also chatted with the employees, who were all friendly and seemed to love the idea of a down-home restaurant in a converted Greyhound station.

*Chris and Kendall provided southern hospitality.*

*Since I’m spending the night in Jackson, I went back to the Greyhound station/Doe’s Eat Place to get this picture of the restored neon signage.*

And thus we’re almost done with today’s blog post. All that’s left is the….

BREW OF THE DAY

For all its good points, Doe’s Eat Place has a boring beer menu. So after dinner I went to Hub City Brewing, which is just down the street. The bartender explained to me that Jackson is known as Hub City because of its strategic location halfway between Nashville and Memphis. It’s at the crossroads of I-40, US 45, US 70, US 412, and various state routes. It also was historically a railroad hub. (Alert readers will recall I visited Casey Jones’ home and his grave here in Jackson three years ago when I drove across the country on Route 70.)

Anyway, Hub City Brewing makes a healthy assortment of beers, including a few good porters and stouts. I chose the Snowplow Vanilla Porter. The first thing you notice about this beer is how dark it is, like a Starbucks cold brew. It has just enough foam to visually remind you it’s not a coffee but a beer. The nose is slightly sweet, with vanilla notes (as you’d expect) but also with a little molasses or brown sugar.

It’s incredibly drinkable. It’s malty without being cloying, and it’s roasty without any of the acidic sharpness a porter sometimes can have. The mouthfeel is meatier than your typical porter as well, reminding me a bit of a stout. With an ABV of 7.2 percent, this warms you a bit but it doesn’t kick your ass the way an imperial stout (my preferred beer) can. I give it 4 out of 5 stars.

*If you ever find yourself in the Hub City, get yourself one of these!*

Uncategorized

Cruising the Blues Highway

March 28, 2023 steveboilard5 Comments

About a week ago winter officially ended and we entered that most glorious of seasons, the springtime. And that means a resumption of road trips. It’s time to return to the road, throwing caution to the wind and an inadequate supply of socks into my backpack.

Of course, the part of this continent that seems to have missed the “end of winter” memo is the Mississippi Delta (tornadoes, flooding, plagues of locusts and frogs). And, perhaps predictably, this is the location of my newest road trip.

Specifically, I stumbled upon a recommended road trip described as “The Blues Highway,” from Nashville, Tennessee to New Orleans, Louisiana. It takes you through the land of Elvis, BB King, Muddy Waters, and Booker T. Jones, not to mention various quirky landmarks that are best left to be revealed as I encounter them.

So my loving wife (who is always eager to help me leave) is about to drive me to Sacramento Intergalactic Airport, where I’ll be taking a red-eye on United. I’ll be landing in The Music City tomorrow at 9 am local time. (The flight goes by way of Washington, DC, which seems a little inefficient. But hey.) I’ll be blogging daily over the coming week…unless I get taken out by a pelting of toads.

Feel free to send me a message if you have any suggestions for stops generally along the Mississippi River. As is my usual approach, this trip isn’t planned out in any great detail….

C’est tout! Allons!

California history · Hydrology · trains

Polar Express

December 17, 2022 steveboilard7 Comments

In the 1860s, the Central Pacific Railroad began laying tracks from Sacramento that would cross the Sierra Nevada mountain range and eventually connect with tracks that the Union Pacific was laying westward from Omaha. The two railroads were joined at Promontory Point, Utah on May 10, 1869. The country’s first transcontinental railroad was complete.

*“The Driving of the Last Spike,” by Thomas Hill (1881). This painting, which isn’t entirely historically accurate, hangs in the California State Railroad Museum in Sacramento.*

Much of the new railroad was hurriedly and haphazardly put down in a relatively straight shot across the Great Plains. But the much more difficult, dangerous, and impressive work involved cutting a roadbed across the Sierras. Fifteen tunnels would have to be dug through solid granite, using hand tools and blasting powder. Daily progress was measured in mere inches. In addition to the tunnels, various cuts, fills, and bridges were constructed to keep the roadbed at a manageably gradual incline. And because of the heavy snowfall in the Sierras, about 40 miles of snowsheds were built to protect tracks in the areas given to especially heavy snow and avalanches.

Today, over 150 years later, most of the original route is still in daily operation. (Some small improvements to the route have been made over the years, most notably the abandonment of the 1,687-foot long Summit Tunnel at Donner Pass. My friend Bill and I were able to walk through that abandoned tunnel a few years ago.)

*Bill, literally walking in the footsteps of Chinese railroad workers.*

Amtrak (the country’s only remaining interstate passenger railroad) runs a daily train called The California Zephyr between Chicago and San Francisco, and naturally it travels the historic route over the Sierras. Now, you can catch glimpses of the railroad and its tunnels and snowsheds from your car window on Interstate 80, which roughly parallels the railroad. (I recommend the book Sierra Crossing by Thomas Howard, which describes the history of various routes over the Sierra Nevada.) But by car you just can’t appreciate the engineering marvel that is the Sierra route as well as you can by riding the rails themselves.

And so it was that, a few years back, my son (Ian) and I flew out to Chicago and boarded the California Zephyr. We were excited to experience the Sierra passage from the window of our compartment. But alas, Amtrak (which notoriously and habitually runs late) reached the Sierras not at midday as scheduled, but rather in the middle of the night as we slept.

Yesterday Ian and I tried again. This time we are boarding at the historic Sacramento station and heading east. We’re only taking the Zephyr as far as Reno, because the whole point of this trip is to finally experience the Sierra crossing in daylight.

*The historic Sacramento Station, built by the Southern Pacific in 1926.*

*Interior of the station, in all its Renaissance Revival glory.*

*The California Zephyr arrived on time!*

As the train started rolling we settled into our seats and began watching out the window at rather sketchy parts of Sacramento, Citrus Heights, and Roseville. We decided this might be a little more tolerable if we had beer, so we repaired to the club car. Fortified with our beers and some microwaved food, the scenery began to improve. Upstairs from the snack bar is a friendly and casual observation area, with nice big vista-dome windows and comfy chairs and tables. This is where we spent most of the trip.

After a bit we started to climb into the foothills, and soon we encountered snow. Our climb over the Sierra had begun!

There’s something very relaxing about watching scenery through the window of a railroad car. The train moves steadily and smoothly, and the car is warm and comfortable. The passengers adopt an attitude like they’re in their own living rooms. Young parents entertain their kids, college students take pictures and send text messages, an older couple plays cards. One friendly guy was gushing to his seatmate about how he prefers train travel to the stress and hassle of flying. A few people were napping. Many just watched out the windows. It’s a remarkably relaxed way to travel, where you wear no seatbelt, you have freedom to move from room to room, and someone else up at the front of the train is in charge of getting you where you need to go.

Of course, I had my own specific interest in this particular route. I kept trying to imagine how the Central Pacific work crews managed to build this railroad over the Sierras using 1860s technology. They worked in subfreezing temperatures and massive snow drifts battling avalanches, gravity, and relentless granite walls. And yet they completed the job in just a few years. It’s hard to imagine CalTrans, even with all its modern equipment, ever matching that record.

After a few hours we reached Donner Pass at about 7,000 feet. The snow was at its thickest here, but it was pretty scanty by historic standards. A snowplow had passed through about a week earlier. Fortunately, brother-in-law Scott found a video of that very event: The plowing of Donner Pass around December 10.

The other thing I really like about going over the Sierra by train is the visual access to California’s remote and relatively untouched lands. In the more urbanized parts of the state where most of us live, very little evidence of our history remains. Historic buildings are torn down as soon as they are deemed “outdated.” Those that do remain are often rebuilt with modern materials or modified for ADA access. But here in the Sierra it’s not unusual to see 150-year-old relics still standing proud–Like many of those original tunnels that we passed through.

*I did not take this photo, since I was onboard the train! Photo taken by Tom Taylor, who does excellent railroad photography.*

Another relic from a century ago is a collection of wooden flumes conducting water along the Truckee River. The water powers several century-old hydroelectric plants that are still in operation today.

*The flume is the railroad-track-like structure at the lower third of the photo. Note the icicles hanging beneath. Evidently the wooden flumes aren’t watertight.*

Speaking of Truckee, the town still has its old Southern Pacific station from 1900. It’s remarkably well preserved, and according to “The Great American Stations” website, “Renovations and modernization in 1985 altered the historic fabric only slightly.”

Eventually we got over the Sierras and dropped into Reno, NV (pop: 270,000). Reno’s current Amtrak station was grafted onto the city’s 1926 Southern Pacific depot in 2005. That same project lowered the railroad tracks into a 2-mile long ditch (a two-track-wide concrete canyon), in order to eliminate 11 grade crossings at street level. We got off the train down in this concrete canyon, enter a waiting room, and then climb stairs to the street level.

*The Reno station at street level. (This is the original Southern Pacific portion of the structure; the Amtrak section is to the left.)*

*Reno’s Southern Pacific station in the steam era.*

So, that’s about it for our Amtrak adventure over the Sierra. (We returned today, but obviously covered the exact same ground.) But it’s worth noting that we spent some time walking around Reno last night…

…and naturally I was able to squeeze in a Brew of the Day. So, without further ado, I present:

THE BREW OF THE DAY

Just a few blocks from the Reno station is a brew pub named The Depot. Appropriately, it’s housed in the old Nevada-California-Oregon Railroad depot, which was built in 1910.

It’s a cool old building, remarkably preserved, with an impressive bar and attractive decor. There are neat old and anachronistic features everywhere, including the railroad’s ancient walk-in safe standing in the Men’s room.

Feeling good about our find, we set ourselves down at the bar and studied the extensive beer menu. After much consideration I ordered something called a “Yankee and Kraut.” Let me quote how the menu describes it: “German beechwood smoked malt and Bavarian pretzel smoked sour ale.” (5.9% ABV.) I was intrigued. I’d literally never heard of anything like it. But I like Bavarian pretzels, and I like smokey drinks like Scotch or Mezcal or a smoked porter. What could go wrong?

The first sip I took definitely had a smokey profile, but it was fleeting and became immediately overwhelmed by a sour, vinegary assault on my tastebuds. This wasn’t a fun or playful sour like you get from sour gummy worms or Lemonheads. This was reminiscent of swimming pool acid. What’s more, the acidic, sour taste kept increasing with each new sip. And then, just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, a “finish” reminiscent of off-brand window cleaner washed over my tongue and singed my sinuses. Meanwhile, there was not the slightest hint of “Bavarian pretzel” anywhere–not even the requisite salt or mustard, which would have been a welcome distraction for this beer. I cannot in good conscience give this anything higher than zero points. (The Mac ‘n’ Cheese Bites were awesome, though.)