SOUTHERN EXPOSURE -part 2-

Saturday I had to drive to Kosciusko, Mississippi (birthplace of Oprah) to pick my grandfather up from the veterans home he lives in now. After arguing about whether or not I could check him out, we left and wearily drove up the Natchez Trace to his house unoccupied house in Vardaman. But not before we stopped for fried catfish!



Ol' paw paw kind of mutters a lot and has the alzheimers so he asks the same things repeatedly and has to take like sack of medicine a day. We hung out with him until he went to bed around ten at which point we left and drove up to Memphis for another show. A two hour drive from where we were. Basically when in the south, it's easy to calculate any given location that you're at to another point you want to be is likely going to be two hours away.
We hit Memphis again around 12:30 a.m. and got to Murphy's again just in time to see supergroup, The Limes. The Limes are a gnarly southern garage band made up of local legends Monsieur Jeffrey Evans, Jack Oblivian, Shawn Cripps, Harlan T. Bobo, and Quinn Powers. They basically sound like what would happen if CCR got drunk with The Minutemen and decided to form a bar band. It was a good time with the exception of a near altercation with Abe from The Oscars who got kind of surly when Jay Reatard's girlfriend invited us to stay at her place. But we're smooth operators so we calmed Abe down, and kept the lurk to a minimum with no party foul. Though Abe did punch a paper towel holder off the wall and almost got kicked out of Murphy's till Jude put it together for him. See, we're not such bad guys.


We got back to my grandfather's place around 5:30 a.m. and almost died about fifty times on the way. Thus began day two of running on empty. We crashed out only to wake up to paw paw getting up and leaving the house around seven to go down the road to visit a relative. this sounds harmless but he gets confused so that means I had to get up and go with him and give him his medicine. I felt so fuckin' ill from not sleeping and eating fried food that the only thing that made sense was to more. We said our goodbyes to my grandpa since my cousin that lived next to him agreed to take him back to the home. So we drove to my mom's house and crashed out for about five hours (the most sleep we'd gotten since Thursday). We got up and went out to eat with my mom and Elliot at this place called Grill. It wasn't particularly southern so I won't go into detail about the Filet Mignon we had. Just sayin'...
So around ten p.m. we said goodbye to Mississippi and headed back to Memphis to find something to do for our last night. We found the city dead. An unseasonal cold front had hit. That combined with it being Sunday night made for a pretty depressing night with no partys, shows, or even movie theatres that were open late. We found ourselves without a place to stay and playing Ms. Pac-Man at Young Ave. Deli. When we'd given up hope, some Memphis folks i knew dropped in and saved the day. We kicked it with Angry Bob who used to play bass in Death Threat and Pat who bar tended the deli when I used to work there. We got a couple of couches to sleep on and I got punched in the arm and called a fag by Bob. Overall better than sleeping in the truck.
The next day we got up after finally having slept enough to not want to fall over. I know where the good thrift stores are so we did a little record shopping and I ended up spending $87.00 on seven vintage Swatch watches.



We ended the trip by eating BBQ from The BBQ Shop on Madison and letting it settle long enough to eat again at Gus' Famous Fried Chicken downtown. This weekend was the closest I've ever come to forcing diabetes on myself in one go. But that's how the south is... one long death drive filled with great food that'll kill you and random characters who'll let you sleep on their couch.