Home of the King

• Everybody is talking about King Elvis and Graceland – except me
• B. B. King – yeah man, he got the blues
• Martin Luther King – his dream came true, at least of it

The two days we spent in Memphis we did some walking trough Downtown, including the famous Beale Street. And as the streets in New Orleans, the ones here were very loud. Reason for that is probably the expectation of customers entering the bar with the loudest music. So anything you hear standing in the middle of the street is cacophony. But we’ve been there, so we can check this off our list.

We’ve also been on Mud Island at the River Park. It was awesome! They built a huge model of the Mississippi river. Did you know that the river drains 32 US states and 2 provinces in Canada? It took some time to walk along the model. Unfortunately there was no water in it due to it being cleaned.

Near Mud Island there is a big pyramid building – a Bass Pro Shop. Home of all sportsmen. Of course we had to step in and spend some time watching the fishes, ducks and alligators in between all these poles, boats, quads, …

Back to the music. We did a visit at Stax. Long time ago it was a theater and a recording studio. Now it is a museum of (song)history. Lots of blues songs were performed and recorded here.

Stax got in trouble the day when Martin Luther King was murdered. Black and white men were performing together ‚til that day. But it was different the day after.

And that leads me to the last museum we visited: the National Civil Rights Museum.

Since mankind lives on this planet there was slavery – mostly based on captives. But by conquering America, Africans were caught and shipped abroad. So the disaster of race discrimination began. In some areas it is still present. But one man – and of course many people with him – did a great job in the 1960s.

May the dream once come true!