Memphis Day 2

Actually, we were only four blocks away from all the action, but we didn't realise this.  Beale Street could be reached on foot in about five minutes.  In case you haven't read the Lonely Planet guide to Memphis  then I should explain that Beale Street, is Where It All Started.  It is the Centre of the Universe, music-wise.  When you walk down Beale Street, you are picking the up the Funkadelic Vibe of decades of bluesmen, hillbilly rebels, rock 'n' roll pioneers and just plain freaks who have made it what it is today.
 
A Major Tourist Haven.
 
Oh, I'm not going to whine on about tourists everywhere, spoiling things.  After all, I had spent nearly a year being a tourist by this stage, and I’m annoying even when I’m a local so really am in no position to complain.  But what I’m trying to say is that to get to The Real Beale Street you'd have to travel more than a few blocks and about fifty years into the past.  All the same, it is still a very atmospheric and groovy place, and the Memphis authorities have done their best to preserve the feeling by insisting all buildings retain their original facades. (However, developers can do whatever they like with the rest of the building.  This leads to the bizarre sight of an entire building having been demolished apart from the front wall which stays held up by metal braces while they reconstruct the back.)
 
Along Beale Street you can find the Royal Cafe, winners of the Ragin' Cajun Gumbo Cookoff ("Where the gumbo's so good you'll want to slap your pappy not once, but twice.")  You'll find the Blues City Cafe, the B.B. King cafe and the Rum Boogie Cafe with a neon sign permanently flashing, "EAT - DRINK - BOOGIE - REPEAT".  You'll also find Schwab's which is one of the oldest general stores in the US.  One of our tour guides told us that you might occasionally see Old Schwab in there.  "Yeah - he pretty much jest sets in theah - rockin' back and forth in his ole chair.  He look pretty much dead ah reckon, but if you go up to him, he’ll wake hisself up and talk to yuh."
 
(An aside:  EVERYONE REALLY DOES TALK LIKE THIS.  I don't know why I thought they didn't, really.  I suppose I just thought it was something they just invented to make “The Dukes of Hazzard” more interesting.  Still, it was a real thrill the first time I actually heard someone say that they had done gone got themselves something.)
 
Our guide added that Schwab's "is full o' junk ah reckon.  Yep.  Pretty much everthin' a body could ever want in theah.  Ole Schwab, he say if'n he don' have it then you-all prob'ly don' need it.  Yessuh."  Well Ole Schwab was right.  I went up and around three stories of the most amazing shit you ever saw in that shop.  Hideous tourist crap, but that's to be expected, recipe books from the Deep South, an old candy dispenser, some rusted farm implements, clothes, "Roadkill Sauce", wooden armadillos (you can never have enough of these) records and tapes covered in cobwebs, wind chimes, posters, pictures, books, pegs, postcards, welcome mats and lots and lots of Elvis memorabilia.  We never did see Ole Schwab though.