life in the country...

back from tennessee, memphis to defeated in one swoop (for those of you who don't know, the town i grew up in is called, 'defeated creek', or just 'defeated' for short, or 'hogtown' if you're from the area...s'wonderful way to begin a childhood).
just to begin where i left off in memphis, i did end up going to the stax museum, and yes, i did end up eating the fried biscuits...and honestly, i can't say which one was better. i've been trying to find a way to best describe the fried biscuits, but there really aren't words for them. if you've ever had buttermilk biscuits, you know they're already damn good, so to take these little slices of wonderful and deep fry them, cover them in powdered sugar and serve them with chocolate sauce and honey was something to be cherished (but, i'm afraid, only tried once, as afterwards, i thought i might actually die). it seems, somehow, over the years, southerners have taken the stereotype that they can 'deep fry anything' as a challenge, we actually visited a bar that not only served deep fried moon pies, but battered and deep fried candy bars, each and every flavor you might ever want...it was really all i could do to keep from ordering the deep fried reeses peanut butter cups, but i thought better of myself. after our lunch experience we headed over to the stax museum of soul, or soulsville usa, on the corner of mclemore (and, i might add, not the best of neighborhoods, just as the waitress had warned), but an AMAZING museum. i think i might have lost my head if we had missed this one. they wouldn't let you take pics in the museum (in fact, they make you check your camera at the door), so here are some shots of my precious
chotchkiis, purchased in their lovely giftshop.
after the museum, the only thing we were ready to do was to go straight to soul-la-lujah at zuzu's back in cambridge and dance our fried biscuits off, but unfortunately, we were far away from zuzu's and we had a long ride to my parents house in defeated...so we popped in my bill withers cd and hit the hiway.
the visit with family wasn't nearly as stressful as i had imagined, with everything sort of on the 'backburner' as they say, and nothing anyone can do about them anyway, we tried to be in the best of spirits and keep things positive. my brother's banjo and lots of beer helped with that. a short and sweet trip, we went antique-ing one day in lebanon and found some unusually odd items. this, definitely, won the award for "most offensive item ever found anywhere". it's an ashtray, if you didn't realize.

no, we didn't buy it. we thought long and hard about and looked deep inside ourselves, and realized that the offensiveness definitely outweighed the humor. i was able to actually find some nice jewelry, a pair of silver and amber earrings for ten bucks, and a nice siam pin. ernie found an iron rooster for his mom's evergrowing collection, and a jack daniel's shotglass. nothing truly exceptional, but we were more than happy roaming around all the attics full of iron pots, depression glass and baby doll heads.
a long long long way home, waiting hours in the airports because of rain, or some sort of weather disturbances, i kept the xannex flowing and slept on the floor of the airport, while ernie finished his faulkner. finally back in mass around two a.m., we settled our heads into our pillows and dreamt of banjos, blues, stack shoes, otis, aretha, isaac and ray...all fried up to perfection and covered in powedered sugar, of course.
the real king in memphis...