had a wide selection of sugar-filled baked goods which I did not want. I ended up with an Osiago bagel with cream cheese. It was tasty, but so huge I could only eat half. Sucker was big as my head! Oh, and I had my second cup of coffee of the morning. I had grabbed a cup with the driver of the shuttle earlier. From there, time seemed to move along at a
steady clip. Before I knew it I was boarding my first airplane since 2001. While it was a smaller aircraft, at least it wasn’t one of those puddle jumpers like I had ridden on in the past. As the pilot started down the runway for
takeoff, I heard a blood curdling scream com- ing from behind me. It was a woman’s voice and everyone in the plane turned toward the sound in a panic. An embarrassed 30-some- thing guy in a Walking Dead t-shirt was pan- icking, trying to silence his cell phone. He said to no one in particular, “Sorry! It’s my ring tone.” several passengers said x-rated things to him, but everything was fine by the time we lifted off the runway. Later on, after we had deplaned in Memphis, I spoke to the guy. “You must be a big horror movie fan.” “Yeah,” he said. “I write horror screen-
plays.” I wanted to engage him further in conver-
sation as a fellow writer, and fan of sci-fi and horror, but everyone was moving to the front of the plane like we were caught in an under- tow. Outside, I completely lost the guy. It was okay, I was ready to start “walkin’ in Mem- phis.” Little did I know just how much walk- ing I would be doing. I ended up getting there before Craig. He
was coming in from D.C. and got there an hour later. We hoofed it over to the car rental where we picked up a Ford Taurus, the same vehicle he drives at home. We were off and running. Both of us were
hungry, so our first stop off was Cracker Bar- rel. Then we were off to our first museum, Stax.
The staff at Stax were very nice, and
pointed us toward a small theater where we viewed a short introductory film before our self-guided tour. The tour begins in a recre- ation of a 1906 Mississippi Delta church that has been carefully reassembled inside of the museum. Gospel music is the place where soul originated, and the church is beautifully
detailed.It reminded me of the country Bap- tist church I grew up as a member of. I really enjoyed seeing the vintage record-
ing equipment and the old instruments like Donald “Duck” Dunn’s Fender P-bass and Steve “The Colonel” Cropper’s guitar in Stu- dio A, an exact replica of the legendary con- verted movie theater where Stax artists cut their records, down to the gently slanted floor that contributed to Stax’s special sound.
THE STAX MUSEUM & SUN STUDIOS The big adventure began with a visit to the
Stax Museum of American Soul Music. (
www.staxmuseum.com) Now, I dearly love music history, and visiting the site where all of that wonderful 60s and 70s soul originated was the first of many somewhat surreal mo- ments Craig and I would experience during our museum run.
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