Waking up in Memphis

Can't you feel the soul?

Arriving at the Memphis bus station around 7:30am on Monday, July 10th, I was so tired. I felt twice my age, and looked it too. I couldn’t get to my hostel bed until 3pm, and the concept of staying awake for the next 7 hours made me want to cry and lie down and die. My grand plans about getting a bus from the Memphis station to my hostel seemed laughable. The bus would take at least an hour to get there, and the Uber would take 15 minutes. The sun was warming up the city, and I couldn’t bear to think about navigating a new place in the heat.

My hostel was located in a church building in Cooper-Young, a progressive part of the city with rainbows as sidewalk crossings.

I interviewed the hostel manager Penny Karwacz as soon as I arrived. I didn’t have much else to do, and she graciously had time to talk to me. Together we had some some delicious coffee in the hostel kitchen and I began my first real conversation in the city of soul.

Penny has been living at the hostel with her 18-year-old offspring for the last three years. She writes poetry, children books and has organized museum exhibitions. For her, the best thing about living here is the people.

“There’s lots of room in Memphis to create from the ground up. And I like to talk to people and listen to their ideas and support their visions for themselves in Memphis,” she told me.
  
I asked her what the worst thing was about living here.

“The heavy sadness, the poverty and the violence. Dr. King was shot here, and I think that Memphis is recovering and finding itself still. The violence and poverty has gotten worse. There’s so much need here and that’s an opportunity to be better for one another and I want to see Memphis come together and make the best decisions for ourselves.”

I appreciated Penny’s thoughtful answers.

It was interesting to think about the sadness and the history as soon as I got off the bus. Memphis and how I observed it was a whirlwind, partially due to my lack of sleep. My darling partner Josh back in Australia has been kindly sending me crime stats about all the places I’m visiting, I guess in his desire to make sure I take lots of care. It worked too much. I read a lot about violence in Memphis.

After our interview, I waited to get into my room and I walked down Cooper Street, looking for a café with Wi-Fi, aware, similar to how I felt in Little Rock, that there weren’t that many people on the streets. I hated how worried I was about my surroundings. They were cute shops though, it was clearly an interesting part of town. I settled at a café which was recommended to me by Perrion in Little Rock. He gave me a list of things to go to and one was Otherlands Cafe. It was a great way to kill some time while feeling delusional, ha the name says it all.

I don’t know if it was Josh’s worry and Penny’s reminder about the sadness, but something about Memphis felt a little bit heavier, a little bit more bluesy in more ways than one. It could have been because of my own exhaustion and I was simply projecting. People were kind, as they always are, but particularly on the first day, people seemed wary and more cautious. Like myself, people seemed tired. Maybe I was just tired.   

Later that same day I met up with a friend of friend’s named Andrew. Originally from Chicago, he moved down here with his wife Lauren whom I sadly couldn’t meet as their baby was sick that night. I waited for Andrew outside the restaurant, where I also noticed a police car parked and an officer hanging outside. Andrew arrived shortly thereafter and gave me plenty of tips. In the past he’s put on a radio show for Memphis Community Radio station WYXR. He knows all kinds of things about this city.

If I was interested in urban renewal, I should check out the Crosstown Concourse, which for years was a massive Sears Distribution building back in 1927. The National Civil Rights Museum was a must, he told me, and after I missed Central High in Little Rock, I knew I had to go.

Side note: I am aware that the path that I’m taking and the locations that I’m in are deeply connected to slavery, civil rights, racism, regression and activism in America. While I haven’t been explicitly writing about it yet, it is on my mind and part of a greater story I hope I’m capable of telling, although it’s definitely not going to happen while en route.

Andrew and I ate great food at the Soul Fish Café, and then he asked if he could help me with anything while he was around. I asked if he could drive me to a nearby ATM . He did so and then after I asked him if he could drop me back to my hostel, less than a minute away.

“I don’t know am I being too cautious?” I asked him, laughing.

“Yep, I think you are,” he said. ”You can see there are people out walking around, walking their dogs. This neighborhood is fine.”

Like my moment meeting the chillest Uber driver in Little Rock, I felt silly for worrying. I may be from this region, but I haven’t lived here in a long time. I don’t know Memphis at all, and I need to be aware of how little I know. Josh stressed all those stats with me because he wants me to be as safe a possible, but living in fear is hardly living.

As we’ve established, I was exhausted. I said bye to Andrew and fell into my hostel bed and slept like a rock. It was the cutest little room, too.

It’s wild the power in a good night’s sleep. The next morning, refreshed I decided to try to use Memphis’ public transit system. I was able to catch a bus, but not before I went into a nearby shop and asked staff where the bus stop was. Wanda the friendly bus driver later explained people had been taking down bus stops as some homeless/unhoused folks had been leaving their belongings there. The bus stops are going, so the bus drivers don’t always know where to stop. I waved big for her to pick me up. She was so sweet to me. I got off at Overton Square where I ate dynamite tacos at Babalu and interviewed a lovely young Guatemalan woman named Natalia. Originally from Guatemala City, she was happy to talk to me about safety between the two places. I didn’t seek her out to talk about this, but she mentioned it, and I thought it was interesting.

After that I walked to another bus stop, but I wasn’t quite sure if I was in the right place. Another man waited, older, with a mask around his chin. He helped me navigate, and I asked him if he took the bus often.

“Just every two weeks or so when I need to go to the liquor store,” he told me, laughing.

I got on the next bus with him, but sadly once I got off that bus to try to make the transfer to Crosstown Concourse, I got confused. I waited at least 30 minutes with various interesting characters until I watched the bus I was meant to get drive past me on the road to my right. I had read the map wrong. It was once again time to call on Uber, and I was at my destination in less than 15 minutes.

I loved Crosstown Concourse. The rehabilitation of an old building is really cool although later I learned some people felt the Memphis community wasn’t consulted enough when it was revamped.

I met a lovely woman named Christy who now subscribes to my Substack, (thanks Christy!) and she took me up to a special part of the building, where  I got a view of the Memphis skyline.

I also interviewed Logan of the Memphis Listening Lab. Like the restaurants, shops, galleries and more in the massive building, the Listening Lab is another awesome spot where everyone can come and listen to records for free. Here’s a little bit more about Logan, if you want to hear the unedited interview.

I sat down and listened to Memphis’ Anne Peebles for a little while at Logan’s recommendation. She was great.

I could have kept going that afternoon, but when you’re travelling constantly, it’s hard to know how much you’re capable of. Christy said she wouldn’t walk more than five minutes away from Crosstown Concourse, so I took an Uber home. The driver, Koko was another interesting African Immigrant, this time from Sudan. He talked to me about good places to eat in Memphis, pointing them out as we drove past. He likes living in Memphis. “There is trouble here, but only if you go looking for it,” he said.

I felt a bit bad that I had done so little with my day, and that evening I went back to my street and ate at the Young Avenue Deli that multiple people had recommended. I had enormous cheese sticks like a good American.

Back in my hostel, I was trying to plan how to get to the Civil Rights Museum in the morning, if I should brave the bus. Suddenly I got a phone call from a woman in Memphis named Queen.

Queen had seen my Substack post in a Memphis Facebook group and thought what I was doing was entertaining and crazy. She worked for local government and offered to pick me up from the Civil Rights Museum the next day and show me parts of the city. She said she might even be able to get me to my Greyhound that afternoon. It felt, as it has been with so many who have bestowed hospitality on me so far, so special. I wanted to cry.

The next day, Reggie the amazing Uber driver took me to the Civil Rights Museum. “Don’t believe the hype” he said when I asked him about Memphis and the topic of crime came up. I spent nearly three hours at the National Civil Rights Museum, and I am going to wait until I am less rushed to write properly about it. I barely scratched the surface.

Afterwards Queen picked me up, and the fun began! I can’t tell you what a godsend it was to hang out with her and listen to her story. From her career, to her journey from Ethiopia to Memphis, every story was great, and she was so brilliant, kind and entertaining. She showed me so much about Memphis. Memphis is developing a greenways trial! Memphis has a trolley, and we rode it back and forth together.

She joked that now because of our time together, Memphis will be the best place I visited, ha! She definitely enhanced it, but I could never pick a favorite. ;)

Queen shared her tasty Ethiopian lunch, and then even shared her extra frozen lunch with me, afraid I wouldn’t get enough to eat, how generous. She introduced me to her colleagues and let me interview her! (Stay tuned for that.) After we had driven around Memphis and walked around City Hall, she kindly drove me 30 minutes to the Memphis bus station where the Greyhound was waiting. She gave me a City Hall bag, and a pin. The next morning when I checked my emails I saw that she had connected me with her friends in New Orleans.

I keep feeling overwhelmed with gratitude, and yet I’m also aware of my shocking hypocrisy in my quest to be generous and love all people deeply. As I waved bye to Memphis and headed on the Greyhound to Nashville, I had my first experience sitting next to someone else (full bus).

His name was Ed and he had one of the strongest, loveliest southern accents I’d ever heard. Like several other people so far on the trip, the stronger their southern accent, the less likely they are willing to be interviewed.

Ed was 42 with a bandanna around his head, simple shirt and sweat pants, coming from Arkansas. He was headed East, back to his home of London Kentucky, and tragically, he had a bus journey from hell to get to get there.

At the same time, my Mom was coming to get me from Nashville and driving me back to Bowling Green, Kentucky. We had an hour to get home. If we had offered Ed a ride with us to Bowling Green and he then had a friend with a car to keep driving, he could have gotten home in 2.5 hours. Sadly because of the South’s abysmal transportation system, (especially in Kentucky) he had to go in the wrong direction towards Indianapolis, before heading back to where he needed to be. He had at least 24 more hours of transit.

We talked about all kinds of things, music we both liked (Colter Wall) gold in Australia, technology. He even surprised me with a cherry sprite at the pit stop. To my knowledge, he didn’t have a phone. He grew up on a tobacco farm, and he had a family and kids. I offered to let him use my phone to call someone to have them come get him from Nashville.

”It’s too expensive to have them do that,” he said.

I guess it’s kind of interesting if you made it this far, readers, because here’s where generosity and kindness get hard, when it doesn’t fit in your safe box or your comfort box. Ed and I arrived to the Nashville bus station and closer to 10pm instead of 9 when it was scheduled. The bus stop was not in a nice part of town. I wanted to offer him a ride with my mom, to help get him closer to his destination. I kept thinking about all these people, mostly women who had showered me in generosity. But also, I barely knew him. I didn’t want my mom in a car with a man I’d just met on the bus, but I still hated how much longer he had to travel. If it was my dad or my brother I would have felt differently. I toyed with the idea of paying for an Uber to get him part of the way there, but when I had casually mentioned it to him, he didn’t seem interested. I wondered if it felt emasculating to him. I want to be generous, but I don’t want to be condescending. I am aware that on a few occasions now I might have come across as such at bus stops.

I gave him my Substack details, another thing I’m finding is almost laughable and completely out of touch at the bus. If you read this Ed, I hope you got home okay. Thank you for the cherry sprite and the list of songs.

Readers, I typed the majority of this on a Greyhound bus from Raleigh to Columbia SC, where, along with bus tardiness, I have had other crazy new experiences. You’ll read about that soon. I hope these fast simple observations can play a role in something better and something bigger.

Bigger stories are here, on the bus with everyone around me. So much truth is in the soil and in the soul of America.