Mackinac Island by way of Milwaukee, Lake Michigan, Waukegan, Mackinaw City

We left Chicago and took the scenic route up the north shore of Lake Michigan along Sheridan Road, the famous route taken by Chicagoans when they sought weekend diversions and desired to sightsee the houses of the ½ of 1% of the uber-rich of the city.

It’s a twisty road with every style of architecture imaginable, some of which only folks with lots of money and very little taste could conjure up.

 Around every corner we would exclaim, “Look at that!” or “Holy Cow, did you see that one?”

The lakeshore properties had the best views and the most real estate value with a front door mostly facing the stunningly verdant green parkway lined with oaks, and the back door facing directly on the lake and private docks. Terminating our tour near the Wisconsin, Illinois, state line, we booked it to downtown Milwaukee, another old city on the lake front. As we drove along, Ruth mentioned that the neighborhoods didn't look the same as Chicago. I told her in fact that if you closed your eyes and were transported to most neighborhoods in Chicago it would look exactly the same, that we were just previously in an upscale youth-oriented entertainment area of the city. Much of inner city, middle-class Milwaukee has either the classic brown stone façade or older (and more fire-endangered) two- and three-story wooden frame and face buildings.

Our destination was downtown, in the midst of urban renewal, to the Mariner Building, a former Art Deco period office turned National Register Hotel, and a class act.

Our room had high ceilings remaining from the original office construction with living room suite separated from the bedroom, and a bath as big as our living room at home, by a partition wall. All the sofas and chairs were Deco period originals 

it seemed, and the hotel and room appointments were first class throughout. Our only entertainment this night was a long, slow, delicious, dinner, and an all-night lightning and thunder storm.

Before we left Milwaukee we had to stop at the European Homemade Sausage Shop

which had been at that location since 1973 in a building built for similar production in 1905, to get some Polish sausage and bratwurst for our camping dinner that night, across the lake in Michigan, at a campground with mostly large families and even larger, voraciously large, mosquitoes. That night, a night of the fullest and brightest moon of the year, and the Solstice, we sat at our picnic bench as darkness fell at 10:30 pm and watched the fireflies send signals of enticement to each other. Ruth went tentward to get away from the bloodsuckers and read, and I stayed by the fire to sit in the smoke and escape the mosquitos for a bit until I noticed a change in the smell of the air, to a sweet wetness. Looking up, I saw a line of clouds closing in on the super bright moonlight and realized that rain was imminent. Feeling the possibility, I had previously put up the rain fly over the tent. Sure enough, around midnight, we were wakened by drops of rain lightly tapping the tent top, building into a staccato, then joined by bright flashes of lightning, thunder, and a continuous waterfall of rain which serenaded us all night.

During the past year, while planning for our trip, I mentioned that I had never been to Mackinac Island. (pronounced Mackinaw and if this doesn’t make sense to you, go talk to the Indians who made up the word, which probably means “place of future flies,” or chat with the French who heard the word, wrote and spoke it as they thought they heard and as we don’t see today. I’ve never seen a Cadillaw but I've seen a Cadillac.) If you’ve ever studied French you will know that they are famous for throwing letters into words that don’t belong and have no consistent pronunciation.

We decided to take the car ferry across Lake Michigan to cut several hours off our driving time and mix in more adventure

As I am somewhat bound by the nature of this blog to describe portions of our musical entertainment, I will mention that we were held captive by the sing-song loud voice of Mr. Cell Phone Man, who drove everyone around him nuts with boring personal news, repeated more than once, until his phone lost reception suddenly and blessed silence ensued.  The deep thrum of monster diesel engines thrust us forward, leaving a mile wake behind us in a 360-degree panorama of only water.

Dang, these sucker lakes were carved out by glaciers 10,000 years ago and left a stunning amount of precious water behind for our sustenance and boating and fishing pleasure. Also an interesting YouTube video on how the lakes were formed.

Much of the real music, and blues of a northern sort, centered around the historical wrecks that occurred in these lakes from unexpected monster storms that arose. Here is a link to Gordon Lightfoot's famous song about the Edmund Fitzgerald. I pondered the possible eventuality of this happening while ferrying on the water, much like a claustrophobic person attempts to wish forward the light at the end of a long tunnel.

Getting over to Mackinac Island, which has no vehicle transportation except bike and horse as I mentioned, is a wonder of modern logistics. You get your hotel in advance by the way. Make your reservations on the ferry in advance (and if you don’t print out your e-ticket the system crashes -- um, e-ticket?). You meet a man who directs you to another man who finds out your hotel, takes your luggage from you, and tells you under his foreign-accented breath that your bags will be ready for you when you get to the island. He takes away your car, you wait in line, get on, and ride the ferry for 20 minutes, then hop off into controlled chaos. You walk, unless you are staying at the super-expensive Grand Hotel, which has a shuttle (and which charges $10 just to see the lobby), to your hotel. To be fair, the entire “public” area of the island is concentrated in one tiny approximate two-block area right on the lake front, and our walk took a little less than 10 minutes. Oh, and the luggage? You get to the hotel and tell the desk people and within minutes, a guy magically shows up at your door with your bags…whew! It all seems to work after over 100+ years and millions of tourists.

The walk to our hotel kept us chuckling and chortling like barnyard chickens as we passed the ubiquitous T-shirt, fudge, tchotchkes, resort wear, restaurants, buggy ride kiosks, and stores, packed into a two-block concentration. No cars…now, I gotta tell ya, if I moved here and had to work, I would run, not walk, to the town horse-shit sweeping office, because this is the best game in town. It’s everywhere, friends, and wherever it is, there are flies. Now, wherever there are flies, the horses are really cranky and when they get cranky, they crap on the street, so working in this field of endeavor is self-perpetuating and in demand!

After a grand night at the best restaurant we could find, where we bought a “found” bottle of Napa cabernet, we closed our evening off at Horn’s Pub, where the barman congratulated us for being "old people with cool meaningful tattoos" (WTF!). We were entertained by a lone guitarist who used his iPad to provide voice accompaniment (how the heck does he do it?) and played decent folk, rock, and blues. Our barmaid recommended that we go to Marquette, Michigan, next because it’s such a cool place…and by golly, we are going there next!

Did we break down and ride the buggy? Ruth will tell the story.

Chicago:There are many stories in the naked city...

...these are just a few of them...

After leaving Chicago 43 years ago, every time I go back it feels like I'm seeing into a multi-dimensional time tunnel. Every face looks familiar, every place, every building, sparks memories not only from my childhood but somehow I see them framed as they were when new. This can be disconcerting at times for Ruth and me walking when she sees me stop suddenly to mumble a word or phrase and gaze blankly into space. Multiple cities live in time and space at the same time for me. I hear music coming from old bars and smell the tobacco and liquor smell wafting out into the street from long ago defunct neighborhood hangouts.

Walking along the street, I pause...there used to be a garage here...yes, the location of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, long ago torn down and a trendy condo complex housing their ghosts. Over there, two old Jewish men, the Cook Brothers, who smoked cigars continuously, ran the neighborhood hardware store. There, everything you could ever need or imagine was available on some dark, messy, unorganized shelf, or in the dark recesses of the unapproachable basement where they would disappear and return with your requested object in hand, smelling like cigar smoke. It was a city of magic, opportunity and pulling into its embrace the tired, the poor, the seekers, and opportunists that give Chicago the vitality it has today.

My grandparents had a house on Fullerton Ave., a beautiful tree-lined street in the heart of the city just a few blocks from large, lush, Lincoln Park.

The old house was built in 1886, and my times there were full of explorations into its nooks and crannies, huge walk-in closets that bent around corners, an always-mysterious basement where my grandfather used to shoot his pistols (much to the consternation of the neighbors), and an upstairs apartment that housed the living quarters of my two spinster great aunts. 

They were both born a few years after the Civil War, a couple of decades before the old house was built, and shortly after the Great Chicago Fire that was the greatest American disaster of the 19th century. Being with both gentle women was my first choice, as they had a peace of mind and presence that enveloped me with so much comfort I could hardly move a muscle. I would often ask for my hands to be washed, and remember them clearly turning on the warm water in the high-ceilinged, bright white octagonal-tiled room, pulling down the bar of ivory soap, and with crinkly, ancient, twisted fingers, gently enveloping my hands to wipe clean any thoughts but the bliss of timelessness.

Many times the old women would share stories from their past with me and I had so many questions to ask. One day I saw, vignetted in oval frames, pictures of two beautiful girls wearing white-laced high-necked blouses and hair pulled up in fashionable waves on their heads,

 and asked who they were. They looked at me with crinkled, smiling, sparkling eyes and said, “Why, that’s us!” I didn't believe the old stooped women before me were those same two. They laughed in a gentle way and told me stories of those times that seemed like fairy tales. They spoke about how amazing it was to see the Columbian Exposition in 1893, it being such a large area lit up in electric lights, a new invention. (It's hard for us to imagine what life must have been like before the light bulb with gas, kerosene, and candle illumination.) They rode the first moving walkway, and felt vertigo at such a wonder. The first illusion of moving images were seen there, a precursor to motion pictures. They saw Scott Joplin play ragtime, rode the first Ferris Wheel, and were some of the first to own a Kodak camera in the 1890s.  They told me how exciting it was to ride in their first car, a Duryea, in 1898. 

Oh what stories fell upon such eager ears from those centenarians whose eyes had seen so much change in their lives!

 Ruth and I made our pilgrimage to connect the dots of our journey, to several of the most popular blues clubs in Chicago, B.L.U.E.S. 

and Kingston Mines across the street from each other. We remembered from a previous visit to B.L.U.E.S., that whoever was on stage had a line of musicians either waiting to jam with them or become the spotlighted players. This night, 3-4 musicians held the command stage. As it turned out, we were sitting next to the owners of the club by the back door and we struck up a brief conversation through the musical interludes about our journey and quest. They bought us drinks…then more…and then invited us across the street to the much bigger venue as their guests to listen to more fine Chicago blues. I must admit that I remember taking a video of the musicians but after that things got significantly hazy. The next day, Ruth asked me if I remembered taking the taxi home, or the conversation with the desk clerks? I looked at her with bagged, blood shot, squinted eyes, and groaned. I’m pretty sure it was the best blues I've heard…Ever!

St. Louis-Confluence

In geography a confluence is the meeting of two or more bodies of water, as is the case in St. Louis with the merging of the Mississippi and the Missouri, the two longest rivers in America. Through its earliest days as a home for Native American settlements, through French discovery and eventual inclusion into the huge Louisiana Purchase, which doubled the size of America, St. Louis has been a place of convergence and divergence.

Since its early days, the city has been a gateway to the West, and today the world famous Arch, built in the 1960s, is a testimony to and symbol of this westward-facing expansion and opportunity. Many people, particularly the poor and opportunistic African American southern population, saw St. Louis as a vortex of fortuity and fortune. The confluence of not just rivers but of culture brought to and through it fresh ideas that spread like wildfire across the nation through the hunger for entertainment.

Chicago is often considered the primary urban area where the blues flourished but St. Louis may stretch a nose ahead. W.C. Handy, considered the father of the blues, said that he first heard the blues in 1892 on the levee in St. Louis: "While sleeping on the cobblestones in St. Louis, I heard shabby guitarists picking out a tune called 'East St. Louis.' It had numerous one line verses and they would sing it all night."

The video above is the W.C. Handy recording of Saint Louis Blues from 1914 in which you can hear the jazz interconnection and interestingly inspired the "foxtrot" seen below.

Marches and jigs were extremely popular after the Civil War and the echoes of this could be heard in the earliest blues recordings, which then progressed to ragtime, which Scott Joplin
popularized from the saloon and-brothel hopping minstrels. It was said that there was an area outside of St. Louis called "Shake Ragtown" that might have contributed to this moniker, others claim it comes from its ragged syncopated rhythms.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a6/Maple_Leaf_RagQ.ogg

The emergence of the word "jazz" in the early twentieth century sparked one of the most sought-after word origin searches in the English Language. It is believed to have come from the now obsolete west coast slang word, "jasm" from around the year 1860, meaning spirit, energy, vigor. Jism is often used derogatorily today to mean sperm or semen along with the word "spunk," which interestingly reconnects it around to the original meaning in use such as, "she showed a lot of spunk."

We went out in search of the St. Louis-accented blues and discovered BB's Jazz, Blues, and Soups Club which along with being a great old bar/restaurant/music venue, is partly a museum of jazz and blues records and pictures of the artists who created  them.

Lady Luck smiled on us that evening with music by the Saint Louis Social Club, an awesome group of musicians with over 300 years of combined musical experience and heritage from playing and studying with many of the original local blues and jazz greats. These guys were handed the torch from the past masters and carry it with pride and a strong desire to marry the sound of "old school" blues with artistic musical authenticity and uniqueness. We are witness to the evolution of the genre from generation to generation. Enjoy this video of their virtuosity.

Interesting Anecdotes
Big Joe Williams, the famous Delta blues guitarist, singer, and song writer, played a custom-made nine string guitar primarily to keep others from playing it. Here is a shot of it with rudimentary electric pick-ups and wacky wiring all over the place.

                                            

                                                                                                
                                         Big Joe, and you win points if you can guess who he is with.

He came to St. Louis in 1934 and in 1935 recorded the famous blues song "Baby, Please Don't Go" which he said he stole from Bessie Mae Smith, (the St. Louis Bessie not the other car wreck Bessie!), after hearing her sing it to him. This is the original recording and after this, watch the cover of this song by an older Muddy Waters and very special guests who join him on stage to share vocals.

Oh! and Bessie Mae? Here is an original recording of her singing, "He Treats Me Like a Dog", 1930. She was the common law wife of Big Joe and I'm getting lost in the infinite web of stories and interconnected facts. Oh Joy! Confluence is not confusing.

Mac & Cheese, and Deep-Fried Oreos

OK, time to get a little bit down about the food. The following will either make you hungry, or make you never want to eat again...

1. Mac & cheese. And I'm not talking about the store-bought stuff here. In one of my last posts, I talked about Ben finding the best fried chicken in New Orleans. Well, it was (see below), but it came with a side of mac & cheese that was truly inspiring, smooth and creamy, the pasta just chewy enough to differentiate it from the mornay-soaked jalapenos.

2. Fried chicken. We sat in a little dive restaurant, the overhead air-conditioning vents dripping on our shoulders, eating the most divine fried chicken ever, with our hands. Moist and flavorful on the inside, with crispy skin and a coating of batter that defied identification. All I know is, it was delicious and yes, the best fried chicken in New Orleans, perhaps in the whole South.

3. Fried green tomato Benedict. Topped with poached egg and super-rich "Creole" hollandaise. Believe me, it was hard to decide between that and the andouille hash, the boudin* Benedict with smothered collards, or the crawfish frittata, but I think we made the right choice. Had we waited a bit longer, it would've been lunchtime, and we could choose between gritcake and collards, rabbit cassoulet and collards (are you getting the pattern?), crab gratin, broiled Brussels sprouts with bacon vinaigrette, blackened alligator with pea cakes, or boudin-stuffed deep-fried hen. (Note to cooking friends: we are making all of these!)

4. BBQ. Miscellaneous places, all yummy, all a bit different, but:
   a. Abe's at the Crossroads (Highways 61 and 49) in Clarksdale. Chopped up with cracklin', served with Abe's Comeback Sauce (because you keep comin' back for it).
   b. The Pig in Memphis (side dishes OK but boring, pork ribs out of this world, with sweet or spicy sauce).
   c. Pappy's Smokehouse, St Louis. You wait in line for up to two hours, hope they don't sell out before you get to the front, and enjoy a little piece of heaven, on the bone or off.

5. Deep-fried Oreos and cream. Exactly what it says it is. Paired with homemade strawberry ice cream, I don't believe there is a better dessert on the planet. Unless it's the whisky-pecan ice cream.

6. Vegetables. Don't laugh. All throughout the South, the closest to a real, honest, not-over-cooked vegetable was potatoes and corn (well, except collards and sometimes they seemed more of an afterthought). Last night, in Chicago, at a place called Topo Gigio -- a plate of pasta with freshly-cooked, perfectly al dente carrots, squash, spinach, peas, snap peas, broccoli, and cauliflower, topped with EVOO, garlic, and capers. Ahhhhh... never have I enjoyed vegetables more. Even the hockey game that broke out on the ice during the fight on TV didn't distract me. Ben had the squid-ink linguine with salmon, shrimp, and scallops, which he says was the best he's ever had. Scallops and shrimp from the ocean, salmon from Scotland.

And now, off to find some more vegetables (or maybe even fresh fruit?!?) in Chicago. If wine counts as grapes, does beer count as ... ?


* Boudin: French-style spicy blood sausage (yummier than it sounds, just trust me on this)

Ferrying the dead to Graceland

In 1974, after graduating in the first paramedic class in the state of Alabama, I began working at the University Hospital in Birmingham on weekends and Hank's Ambulance Service weekdays. Previous to our graduating class, which consisted of 90% fire department personnel at that time, the cusp of the age of "drive fast, pick em' up, and haul ass to the hospital," was passing but still king (aka: rednecks with fast cars). On-site stabilization and emergency care was non-existent. I was relationship- and time-free back then, and an opportunity arose while working with Hank's (great name for an ambulance company in the south, eh?) to transport a motorcycle rider who had crashed into a bridge one night and died, back to his Memphis funeral home. The transport vehicle, a 1970 Ford Country Squire,

 was specially outfitted to handle the insertion of a hospital gurney

into the back section of the wagon with lockdowns. Before embarking in the morning, I met with the family and hospital personnel to formalize the transport. They tearfully informed me that their son was a serious motorcycle and Elvis enthusiast, who also shared his riding passion. 

I respectfully promised to make the transport safely and quickly; and in a non-redneck fashion, proceeded to hit the highway. It was about a four-hour journey, and being a hot summer day, the air-conditioning was up high. Back then those cars could cool down a house. Cruising along the highway, it didn't take long for me to realize that my passenger was exuding a very strong smell...and...I was having a bit of a problem with his arm, which kept dropping off the gurney onto the floor directly behind me. The sweet putrid smell of death became overwhelming as I drove along, and the only solution was to turn off the air-conditioning and open all the windows to clear the air. The arm kept dropping. With one hand on the wheel and speed accelerating to increase the wind through the windows, I reached back and tucked that pesky arm back up next to the cold corpse. That sickly-sweet smell began to permeate every sense in my body and, maddeningly, the only other diversion I could think of was to turn on the radio to whatever station would occupy my mind -- which back then was...you guessed it, country music. I cranked it up loud enough to wake the dead, though it didn't work. The wind was insufficient to take away the sickening smell, so I pushed the accelerator to the floor, glanced at the speedometer, and saw the needle bounce somewhere around 110 miles per hour. I heard that arm drop down to the floor of the car again with a "plonk!" as if it was reaching out for a breath of life. Like a stock car racing contortionist, with one hand on the vibrating steering wheel, one eye on the road, the other glancing in the rear view mirror at the porcelain-skinned appendage stretched to the floor, I reached back and jammed it back up to its uncertain home. The countryside whisked by, and soon I stuck my head out the window like a dog to avoid the stench. I prayed that I wouldn't get stopped by the police and have to explain why I had a dead man in the back of a station wagon while speeding...no, no, no! "Boy! Where you goin'? And what you got in the back?" No, no, no!

We arrived in Memphis at last, and I began to think about me and my dead, stinking occupant's options. The words of his family rang in my ears. I had never been to Graceland. Perhaps we could visit and satisfy two dreams? Pulling out my city map as I drove, I found Elvis's home and pulled up to the gate, which was, of course, locked. He might have been home? (This was 1974, remember, three years before The King passed.) With no options ahead of me, I climbed out, left the car parked in the driveway in front of the gate, and with my hands planted in reverence on the cold musical-notated metal,

expressed an impromptu homecoming for me and my dead companion. I managed to secure my dead pilgrim's hands at last securely to the gurney, for his closing short segment home to rest.

Ruth and I now find ourselves back in Memphis, and the memories flood back. This time, however, we are not driving a round trip with a dead man, but are destined for the Madison Hotel,

very upscale, downtown, and close to Beale Street, the center of tourist attraction. In this establishment we are mindbogglingly struggling with the contrast to our last few night's rest stop, the Riverside Hotel and associated Juke Joint jaunt. Its simplicity and lack of on-suite amenities, compared to our now luxurious king bedroom suite, with roof-top 24 hour penthouse overlooking the Mississippi River, was making our heads swim.

Our first town stop was at "The Pig," on Beale Street, renowned for BBQ. First a word about Beale. It pretty much sucks. Sorry, but if you've ever been to "Every Tourist Town USA," and visited the hot spots, you have seen Beale. Hooters, Hard Rock Cafe, T-shirt and cigar shops, horse carriage taxi rides, bars, musical venues of all sorts owned by famous personalities, selling cheap beer and patronized by camera-toting families with cranky kids. We had plans to visit a music spot on-street that night and pulled the plug to save our souls for a night-time old trolley car ride around the entire Memphis downtown district, no sidewalk barkers and hustlers to disturb the sweet, warm, moist night air. Previous to that we ate a fine meal at the hotel to avoid Beale's giant sucking sound and describe to our waiter, Jonathan (JP?), in passing our travel adventures. Taking the elevator up to our room afterward, a woman came on board and asked us if we were the couple traveling America writing. Apparently she had heard this from the waiter, who mentioned it to the bartender and to her. Later on the penthouse roof,

our tapster, Chris, after serving our drinks, asked the same question...news travels fast...all these folks got the blog link, and a quicky, quirky, cordial anecdote.

Sleeping with Muddy Waters

Ruth really did her homework when she found a place to stay in Clarksdale, Mississippi, that was "close to the earth." We are living for the next several days in the former G.T. Thomas Afro-American Hospital. There are many famous ghostly memories floating around this place. The great Bessie Smith, who got her start busking street corners, reached the zenith of her career playing big halls and pleasure palaces, and now was on a back-end downward slide.

She was on her way to perform in the region and, while on Highway 61 (man, this road has some serious stories connected with it!) in an old Packard with wooden frame driven by her driver and lover, they didn't see a truck that had pulled over for a tire check and was returning back out to the road. The two vehicles collided and Bessie, who had her arm out the window, took the full brunt of the crash. The roof of the car was torn off and the driver of the truck fled the scene. A doctor, traveling with a friend returning from fishing, happened upon  the wreck and in the light of their headlights assessed the scene. Bessie's arm was attached by just a few ligaments and an artery and the doctor applied a tourniquet. Bessie had severe internal injuries to her chest and abdomen. To make matters worse, another car then crashed into the doctor's car and suddenly there were more injuries to deal with. Things get really hazy at this point as back then, due to segregation, blacks and whites couldn't go to the same hospitals or even be carried in the same ambulances.

Eventually, after quite a while of searching for help, an ambulance arrived based on a call from the runaway truck driver, picked up Bessie, and brought her to the G.T. Thomas Hospital. Bessie was probably close to death upon arriving but they performed an amputation of her arm in this room,

though she was pronounced dead at 11:30 am, on September 26, 1937, at the age of 43. Her doctor said that she would have probably died even if she had been taken to a better-quipped white hospital in a closer location. After her death, Bessie was taken to Philadelphia, and buried in an unmarked grave, until a tomb stone was paid for by Janis Joplin in 1970. Bessie was remembered again...

In 1943, Mrs. Z.L.Ratliff rented the hospital from Thomas to use as a hotel and eventually bought it and extended the building to include 21 rooms over two floors. It opened in 1944, and has remained in the Ratliff family to the present day. Up until a couple of months ago, when he died, the hotel was run by Frank "Rat" Ratliff, who was just a child when his mother began the hotel. He, and eventually his wife, Joyce, and now his daughter, Zelena (known as "Zee"), run this hotel, which has seen the blues greats such as Sonny Boy Williamson, Duke Ellington, John Lee Hooker, the Staple Singers, Muddy Waters (whose room we now sleep in),

 

Muddy Waters

Ike Turner, and many others. Ike Turner recorded his demo of the song, Rocket 88, widely considered the first rock n' roll song in 1951, in the basement. The hotel was for years one of the only places in the state where a black man could stay. I say man, as it was run as a rooming house for men only to avoid the kinds of "troubles" that women could bring in. It remains pretty much unchanged since its early days -- basic, clean, creaky floors, doors that have moved in their frames, plywood painted walls, not necessarily a place Mr. and Mrs. America would come to stay but a super clean, friendly, deeply historic place that, if it isn't in the National Register of Historic Places, certainly should be. Oh, and it's now co-ed...

Long dark hallway in Riverside Hotel

Still, the old creaky hotel can be strangely spooky, as you might expect from an old hospital converted to a men's rooming house. Under different conditions you might see this place on an America's Haunted Houses TV episode. What you feel instead is a warm and welcoming home away from home. John F.Kennedy, Jr. stayed here for four days surreptitiously, to find the roots of the blues and be away from the limelight.

J.F.K. Jr.

Red’s Blues Club, an original juke joint,

resides just up the street from the Riverside Hotel, and has been one of Clarksdale’s premier institutions in spotlighting local and national blues greats. Part of the Red’s experience is the location on the edge of downtown or whatever is left of a once-thriving downtown (more on this later). The front of this corner establishment, which once was a music store when town was hoppin’, is packed with old shoeshine chairs, trash cans, “stuff,” and on the street at least one, maybe two, huge truck-pulled rolling BBQ smokers. Red, a stocky black man of undetermined age, greeted us as we walked by shouting out some anachronistic racial comments which, frankly, were quite refreshing in a turnabout sort of way. I quickly saw that if someone said the sky was blue he would say it was red (pun intended) just to mess with you. Keep in mind now, that any conversation here in the south is not a simple question & answer or comment response. Everything just takes its time and course. With Red, we jived and bantered for about half an hour -- Ruth and I had to be worthy adversaries. Seeing that he couldn't “woof” us, he brought us into his club, which was closed until evening, to show some of the pictures of blues greats who had played there and write-ups on his club.

Later that evening we returned, upon the advice of our hotel manager, to Red’s to listen to a 15-year-old blues guitarist, a 14-year-old drummer, and an “old” bass player. Let me start by saying that this young man, “Kingfish” was his moniker, was one of the finest guitar players I have ever seen, and this is not a light statement. He could have stood up on stage with Stevie Ray Vaughn, Eric Clapton, and just go down the list from there.  

When he first walked in, plugged in his guitar, amp, and a couple of effects pedals, then played a quick riff to check out his fingers and tuning, I looked over at Ruth and said, sight unseen, “This is going to be good.” So, do you think you have some latent skepticism when someone says, “Go see a couple of kids play the blues?” Yeah, we did…so we listened for an hour and a half and the kid hit every fret with every string in every possible blues, rock, rhythm, riffle, country, whatever style you can imagine, with the presence of an 80-year-old. He made his guitar sound like a violin, played with his teeth, played with both hands making chords, chopping, slicing, -strumming, drumming, -trilling, sustaining, -bending, picking, and rarely repeating musical patterns. 

You hear some great players and soon tire from monotony, but Kingfish kept everyone wanting more and did it with style.  He even did this, mind you, while in the same room, with a bright-as-daylight, 50-inch TV, showing two guys beating each other to a pulp, boxing, while Red dispensed beers out of a cooler behind the "bar." This was a juke joint! When they finally took a break and we went out for some smoked pork rib tips, I asked Kingfish if he had a CD. He said he only had YouTube videos and would come out with a recording soon. I am including a taste of him here at 13-years-old for you to keep an eye on and say you knew him when! OK...I'll give you one more taste of his music from a video taken at  the Juke Joint Festival recently.

Just up the street, around the corner, about a quarter mile away sits Ground Zero Blues Club, 

an oasis in the midst of the blight of downtown Clarksdale. It is co-owned by Morgan Freeman and Bill Luckett, the mayor of the town, and was named as one of the "top one hundred bars and clubs in America." During our visit to cool off with a beer at the bar, we witnessed loads of mostly young, hip, well-heeled people, smartly dressed, wandering through taking pictures big-eyed, of the interior, the walls of which are covered from floor to ceiling with graffiti. This is the place where the big names come and has a full service bar and kitchen. There are a slew of blues clubs and bars in town and this stands at the pinnacle of them all in "status."  

Now I did emphasize that last word with purpose, and we did walk by late one night and saw people crowded at the front door waiting to get in or be checked in with their wrist bands, but this is not necessarily the "real deal," as a street person and musician claimed. The closest to the earth of the blues we had seen so far was Red's, where some of the folks at Ground Zero might be a little uncomfortable hanging out. Red has a way of finding a person's hot buttons and pushing them to their un-comfort level, the music there can be impromptu, someone standing at the bar might jump up and either sing or play or be called up to join the musicians. People at Ground Zero can watch, sing, dance, and be served by smiling, friendly servers in their "Great America Music Hall" comfort zone.

Inside Ground Zero Blues Club-Clarksdale, Mississippi

Speaking of comfort zones, when we first arrived at our hotel next to the river, our check-in assistant, Jesse, warned us that, "You have no need to cross over to the other side of the river. There's nothing you need to see over there." Ruth and I looked at each other in a pregnant pause. The next day, I found the D&T Supermarket with the words large on the wall stating: "Any five-pack from the freezer, $17.99," went in and the Chinese man behind the counter looked at me and immediately asked, "You're not from around here are you?" He called his wife out, went to check on a price, and soon we were having a cultural exchange in quick time. I asked them how having a store there in an obviously super poor downtown was like. They smiled and said it was a doable business and wished me well with the reminder that I should steer clear of the "other side of the river"...did we go there?!

Downtown Clarksdale beauty

BBQ at the gates of Hell!

Here at last! The intersection of Highways 61 and 49,

the site where Robert Johnson purportedly sold his soul to the devil. Yesterday we visited his presumed grave site

just down the road from our living shack for the evening, Tallahatchie Flats. Most stories seem to confirm this grave site as genuine, as well as reports of the wife of his grave digger, but Robert was a very complex man in life and death. There are four grave markers here in the area. It seems that it is a great way to draw an audience, and next to each grave site is a church.

Ruth and I were talking about throwing up a Johnson marker in front of our carport and see what cash we could gin up. More on Robert in a bit.

During our research into local area Greenwood, Mississippi, lodging, we discovered a plantation just a quarter mile up the road from Robert's grave that had restored sharecropper shacks, much like they would have lived in back in the day...(by the way, in case you don't already know it, you can click on the picture to view it in larger format.)

These had air-conditioning, and believe me, with temperatures in the 90s and humidity close to this, it was welcome. It didn't escape us though, what it must have been like in the early 20s and 30s for the people who lived here. If you've ever driven in the south and witnessed folks sitting out on their front porches, this was their air-conditioning. The interior of our shack was simply appointed

and being in it reminded us of being in a funny house with sloping floors, offset doors, and optical-illusion doorways that began in one part of the house at a height of five and a half feet and then opened up to six and a half elsewhere. There was a lot of "echos" of the past in that place. The skeptic that Ruth is, she woke up in the middle of the night creeped out and needed an escort to the "room." Something about shoes being rearranged in the night?!

Down the road from Tallahatchie (why does it always seem to work this way!?) we passed a small building on our way out to a fun meal in downtown Greenwood,

with huge radio antenna towers beside it. I told Ruth that when we returned we had to stop there and see if anyone was around.

We pulled up the gravel driveway to the radio station just as the light in the sky was fading into a muted pumpkin orange, and knocked on the door. I looked in the front window around the American Flag and saw a man getting up from the console. My heart was in my throat as memories of Wolfman Jack, who worked in a building similar to this, just over the border in Mexico from Del Rio, Texas, and was depicted in American Graffiti, blasted out 50,000 watts of "Boss Soul Power." It was said that the station was so powerful that birds dropped dead when they flew near the broadcasting towers and the signal could be heard at night from New York to LA. When I was a kid, I tuned my old tube set radio to this station to hear his mysterious growl and mind-expanding musical epiphanies. I didn't learn until much later that he wasn't a black man. 

The door to the station opened and we were greeted with a smile by an African American gentleman in a freshly-starched white shirt, tie, and dress slacks and highly-polished shoes.

He called himself Poe (after Edgar Allen Poe, he was a fan). We began a trip down our mutual memory lanes discussing how he got into the business, eventually migrating to Greenwood to put his life and money on the line to buy a small radio station that plays the blues and news to the community. Granted it was only 1000 watts and reached out to about 100,000 listeners over a range of about 100 miles, but it is the real deal in a time of corporate ownership and multiple stations sequestered in one office building in New York or LA, faking a local broadcast.

We told Poe our story about seeking the roots of the blues and he asked us if we would submit to an interview on air and then a taped one to follow for editing. We looked at each other and I said partially under my breath, "Hell yes!" I looked over at Ruth and her eyes were as big as saucers thinking about speaking in front of people, which she hates like a New Orleans cockroach hates the light. Needless to say, she let me take the lead.

Much of our conversation spun around what the crossroads really means, symbolically. It's a powerful concept. The crossroads live in us all. It is the intersection of heart and mind, the place where we find our solitude, where life decisions are met and decided. It is the beginning, the end, the place where things intersect but don't stop, a place of choices. If Robert Johnson ever extracted himself from his agreement with the "devil," we will never know, and if he tried renegotiating, we can only conjecture. The blues, however is all about coming to these crossroads expressed through such emotions such as "Needing," "Leaving," "Toasting and Boasting," and it has caught the cultural waves rolling in from many "tribes" and locations as we have been exploring in previous blogs. We all move into and through crossroads, small and large, and the blues reminds us that these times are nodes of power in growth and opportunity.

So, what about the BBQ in the title? you ask. Can you think of a more appropriate place to have awesome beef and pork BBQ with those you love than "At the Crossroads?" Devil be damned!