Memphis, Tennessee home of the famous Graceland, Elvis Presley’s mansion and museum. It’s also home to the beautiful Bass Pro Shop at the Pyramid. The “Great American Pyramid” is taller than the Statue of Liberty and houses a supersized Bass Pro Shop, a hunting lodge-themed hotel, an indoor swamp, a bowling alley and two restaurants. Yes it is quite the site to behold, especially at night when it is all lit up. It sits right on the banks of the mighty Mississippi river. So in case you didn’t get a chance to read last weeks episode the link is here, if you did you will remember that we reached Memphis running from a tornado and only stayed a couple hours for Kurt to decide we were heading on to Jonesboro, Arkansas, which is an hour outside of Memphis.
So we get past the few days of tornado watches and Kurt decides it’s OK for us to go to Memphis. We hop in the car and expecting to make a day of it have Blue dog with us. We decided we would go through an area that we were looking out houses to buy first then we could head down to do some sight seeing. Except somehow Kurt didn’t get that memo when it came out during the meeting. After driving an hour to get there, spending almost 3 hours going through these neighborhoods, and what clearly looks like another storm on it’s way, Kurt wants to head back. Now I should probably back up and give you a little more insight into why Kurt was more than ready to be out of Memphis.
You see Kurt hasn’t done as much research, as I have, into the Memphis market and therefore is still learning. As many of you ladies know, men prefer to learn on their own instead of asking questions or listening to others give them the info. So he locates the properties and maps out our route. Unfortunately this was after quite a heated discussion with me about the importance of mapping it out and not driving aimlessly. You see I wanted it mapped out so we would be very efficient and still have plenty of time to go do fun things. Kurt on the other hand did not have fun things as a priority, but thankfully he finally set a route, not quite as efficiently as I would have liked, hence the reason it was almost 3 hours.
While we are going through these different neighborhoods Kurt is getting a better idea of why the houses are so cheap. He didn’t pick the best parts of town. So then when we were pulled over to the side of the road looking at a house, we got approached by Christian Ron. This man came walking over to our vehicle and introduced himself as Christian Ron. He claimed he was helping to do some work on the house across the street. He asked if we were looking to buy a house there. We told him we were and he proceeded to tell us which houses were owned by white folks and there were only 2. Then he went on to tell us that they were no longer owned by white folks. He also thought it was wise to let us know that we should not consider buying anything past the 2nd block down, nor should we even drive down there, not even to turn around. He felt it was in our best interest to simply turn around there since he didn’t want to see anything bad happen to us. We thanked him for his concern and left that neighborhood. We finished looking at the rest of the houses on the list and I saw Kurt was not happy. I figured we just needed to eat some food and he’d fell better. We all feel better when we are not hangry!
So one of Kurt’s favorite meals is 8 piece deli chicken from Albertsons or Safeway. So we pull up our trusty google and find the nearest deli location.
What google lies!!?? We went to 3 different locations only to find out they had no deli, or deli chicken. So then I tried to pull up a KFC that just happened to be near Graceland 😉 , except we get there and they have jacked the prices up to $42 for an 8 piece bucket and 2 employees didn’t show up so it was going to be another 30 minutes before it could be ready. Well Kurt is fading fast so I only get to drive by Graceland, which was closed, and take the dog out to walk near the fence of the Presley’s plane to go potty. Then it’s on to the hunt to find chicken. We finally find a store that has deli chicken and we are enjoying it, when the skies darken and the rain and hail start. Needless to say, I only got to see anything else in passing, it was time to go home, except google keeps misdirecting us and we knew something wasn’t right. Next thing you know,”Welcome to Mississippi”, what wait?? Yes we turned google off and found our route back the old school way, maps and road signs.
Unfortunately, I was unable to get Kurt to go back to Memphis at all because now he thinks it all is like that rough area we went to. So I only had time to go through a few of the multifamily properties we were walking, when I went back myself, no sightseeing. But one day in the not so distant future, I will get to “the Great Pyramid” and I will get to tour the beautiful parts of Memphis. Don’t worry Memphis, I’ll be back!
