As fun as it has been I have to leave Oxford this morning. I am feeling a little slow from my late night carousing. I sleep late and get off around 11:00am. I head east towards Tupelo where I pass close by Elvis’s childhood home. Personally I though Elvis sucked. He had a few good tunes but let’s face facts he basically stole every song from black people. Now if he had taken this material and made it better then I would not have an issue. Unfortunately essentially what he offered was lame toned down whitened covers of what were actually great songs. Try comparing his songs to the original version sometime. Enough said, you can disagree but I won’t believe you.
So I waved Elvis goodbye and I got on the Natchez Trace Parkway heading north. This Parkway travels diagonally across all of Mississippi and was originally a trail used by the Choctaw and Chickasaw tribes. When settlers came and killed the Indians it was a fur trading and pony express route. Now it is a scenic parkway much like the Blue Ridge parkway. There are no towns or commercial things on it whats-so-ever. You wind your way through pine and hardwood forest broken up by an occasional open meadow. It is quite nice, however a bit boring. In truth I would rather just drive a rural road. More to see. Never the less it was the most direct route and pleasant enough. Somewhere along the way I entered Alabama and shortly after pulled out onto a regular road……the change is palpable. Within just a few miles I notice that scenery has gotten a lot less good. Mobile homes are everywhere; the rich apparently have modulars. The rolling hills subside into flatness. Basically things start looking really shitty. Pretty soon there is just general crap on the side of the road. Sort of an anything goes format as long as it looks ugly. Look! There is a concrete company and then a dreadfully poor mobil home park and a gas station and a church and a car deal ship and a school and a chemical plant and a vegetable stand and a burned out building and a ….you getting the picture? So I keep going headed for Tuscumbia. I remember circling that town on the map because someone in a chat room said they liked it better then Florence. I stopped in Tuscumbia for lunch. It was a bleak affair. This the birth place of Helen Keller. My suspicion is when she got old enough to realize where she was living she considered her blindness a blessing. The road into town had lots of check cashing places, pawn shops and a parole-reporting center. Very nice. The town was dead. One single thing stood out which was Franks Restaurant. I went in for lunch. Nice place. They have really worked hard at offering something above what you would expect to find. The food was good. I rolled out of town as soon as I was done. I wish them the best.
I passed through Muscle Shoals. This is the place where Eric Clapton and Duane Allman recorded Derek and the dominos - Layla sessions. Florence is just across the bridge. Florence did nothing for me. Some nice homes a main street half-intact. Surround by an endless sea of sprawl. No thanks. I pressed on to Athens. I rolled into town about 5pm looking for a place to stay. Honestly I don't remember anything about the town. Other then I am certainly not living there. Still a night in the actual town might have altered my opinion. I stopped and asked someone on the street if there was a place to stay nearby. He told me all the hotels and restaurants were out by the highway. Yes I said, I should have known that, sorry to bother you. I got myself a nice room at the Best Western. Room 212. I had to be careful not to open the door to abruptly, I feared I would hit someone coming out of Applebee’s. Well at least I don’t have far to walk.
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