Memphis & Graceland

Bit of a drama on the the from Birmingham to Memphis, a trip of 3-4 hours, Peter the tour leader took sick...as a dog. Pat & I were in his bus, so long trip, as Allie the driver had to keep stopping to let him throw up. Finally we stopped in a little town, Jasper, which had a great hospital, & he was seen straight away, & scanned etc. They kept him & Liz & Allie drove the rest of us to Memphis, straight to Graceland.  
It was a kidney stone, & they drugged him & gave him something to help pass it & was  discharged .
Allie had then to drive straight back to Jasper to pick them up, as no bus to Memphis, or back to Birmingham.
On the way we stopped at a gas station & Arbys for lunch on the run & after all the drama Pat & I thought we deserved a beer to have with our lunch....which you can but cold in the shop, singly..... the girl behind the  counter asked us for id to purchase alcohol....... when we questioned her...........It's the laaaaw in Tennessee, honey.........what a laugh.
Graceland was fabulous, big, big business, crawling with rubbernecks, amazing after all these years.  The house while very gracious externally, was decorated in the most godawful taste, but maybe that was the 70's & I have forgotten. The house was built in 1939 for a doctor & Elvis bought it at age 22. The rooms are not huge & ceilings quite low.  Really a very good tourist trap, of course the requisite shops full on stuff to buy. Some of the group have bought stuff at every stop, amazing, not sure where they are putting it.

Then onto Sun Studio, which is of course when Elvis got his start, along with Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, etc, even U2 have recorded there,   a very good tour here also, chap had great personality, if you wanted you could have a photo taken posing with the very mike Elvis used!!!!  .....maybe in private, not infront of everyone. One chap put on quite a performance,, he could even have been an Elvis impersonator, the way he was dressed & then I caught him outside, taking a picture of himself with the studio in the background. He caught me eying him, & said," it's a selfie, alright?" 

Memphis is a lovely city, quite old architecture, very gracious, quite unexpected (by me at least) on the Mississipi,  quite a bit of wealth from trade in history it looks ike, judging by the old buildings,, trolley car down Main St, which our hotel was on & 1 block to the river. We walked down to Beale St which is hopping every night of the week apparently, a cacophany of noise as Pat put it,  dancing in the street, lots of cops, mostly tourists by the looks, as most had cameras, We were set once we found our rooftop vantage point, from where we could here a band playing Otis Redding & others songs in the park across the road. As we left at 9ish everyone coming in was being frisked!  Beale St started out as a black business area then morphed into this entertainment street.  Great fun, but stuffed so home to bed