Elmwood Cemetery

Elmwood Cemetery was established in 1852 when 50 Memphis gentlemen each contributed $500 to purchase land for a new cemetery 2.5 miles from town. It was expanded to 80 acres after the Civil War, and is now the final resting place for 75,000 people (with space for 15,000 more). Elmwood's design followed the rural cemetery movement, and it reminded me of other grand, beautiful cemeteries from that time period, including Green-Wood and Woodlawn here in New York. 

At the entrance to Elmwood is the Carpenter Gothic Cottage, built in 1866. It is topped by a bell that has rung for every funeral service since it was installed in 1870. It's free to roam the grounds of Elmwood, but like Hollywood Forever Cemetery, you can buy a map for $5. There's also an audio guide available, but I opted to just follow the map on my own, loosely following the audio guide markers. I enjoy exploring historic cemeteries from a purely visual standpoint, but knowing more about the people interred always adds to the experience. 

Beginning in 1831, cemeteries began to be relocated outside of city centers and church yards due to overcrowding and health concerns. This rural cemetery movement created expansive, manicured grounds with a focus on nature. It was not uncommon for people to use these new outdoor spaces as they use parks today—families would picnic in the cemetery on a Sunday or couples would meet up for a romantic walk of the grounds (sounds like the ideal date to me). 

I'm always a bit surprised in Southern cemeteries to see so many monuments to the Confederate dead. It makes sense, of course, but I haven't spent enough time in the South to feel anything but uncomfortable when I see a Confederate flag. Elmwood contains the graves of veterans from all American conflicts, starting with the Revolutionary War, as well as a monument to the more than 300 enslaved Africans buried here between 1852 and 1865.

After Captain Kit Dalton fought for the Confederacy, he rode with Frank and Jesse James, resulting in the offer of $50,000 for his capture, dead or alive. He alluded capture for so long that he was eventually pardoned, promising that he would lead an exemplary life going forward, which, according to his headstone, he did. Virginia "Miss Ginny" Bethel Moon was a Confederate spy, known as an "active and dangerous rebel," who maintained her fierce (aka stubborn) allegiance to the South until her death in 1925.

Other famous inhabitants include politicians, local celebrities and notorious criminals. A marker labeled "No Man's Land," marks a public lot that contains the graves of 14,000 victims of several Yellow Fever epidemics. The Tennessee Children's Home Society has a marker at Elmwood to mark the unknown graves of 19 children, who died "under the cold hard hand" of the adoption agency that was also operating as a black market for babies.  

The two candidates for my favorite headstone at Elmwood are William Eastman Spandow's and Lillie Mae Glover's. Spandow's stone throws some major shade, explaining that he was "killed in chemical laboratory of Columbia University by an explosion due to the carelessness of others." Glover was known as the "Mother of Beale Street," but she referred to herself as Ma Rainey #2, after the blues singer she admired. Her obelisk headstone is inscribed with a very relatable epitaph, presumably said by Glover herself, "I'm 78 years old ain't never had enough of nothing and it's too damn late now." 

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Elmwood Cemetery
824 S. Dudley Street
Memphis, Tennessee 38104
Grounds: Mon-Sun, 8 AM-4:30 PM
Office: Mon– Fri, 8 AM–4:30 PM, Sat, 8 AM– noon, Closed Sun

Hillcrest High School Viking

Erik, a 20-foot-tall viking statue has greeted students entering Hillcrest High School in Memphis, Tennessee for nearly 50 years. Several of these statues—some call this style a Spartan—were made for the Viking Carpet chain. Erik was placed on the roof of Hillcrest High (home of the Vikings, appropriately) when he was donated by a family sometime between 1969 and 1971.

Through a hidden speaker system, Erik used to actually speak—saying "good morning" and "good evening" as students entered and exited the building. Originally voiced by the assistant principal, he went silent in the '80s as the school fell into disrepair.

A few years ago Hillcrest became a charter school, and received $600,000 in renovations, including a fresh coat of paint and new supports for Erik. There were plans to make him speak again, but I'm not sure if they ever came to fruition (I visited after school hours). My dad kept insisting that Erik resembled my boyfriend, David, and while I think the similarities are tenuous, at best, it's no surprise that I would seek out my very own, real life Muffler Man.

Beale Street

My dad and I couldn't visit Memphis without checking out Beale Street. Most cities have streets or districts that everyone has heard of—Bourbon Street, Times Square, Hollywood Blvd—and they're often crowded and touristy precisely because they're so well known. Beale Street is no exception, and it reminded me of a smaller (and slightly less stinky) Bourbon Street with tons of neon signs, bars and live music.

Beale Street was established in 1841 (originally called Beale Avenue) and it runs 1.8 miles from the Mississippi River to East Street in downtown Memphis, Tennessee. In the late 1800s many black traveling musicians flocked to Beale Street and in 1890 the Great Opera House was built (now known as the Orpheum). The street was filled with black-owned businesses, and it was home to the anti-segregationist paper Free Speech, co-owned and edited by NAACP co-founder Ida B. Wells.

Beale Street simultaneously claims to be the "Official Home of the Blues," "America’s Most Iconic Street" and "Tennessee’s Top Tourism Attraction" (Graceland might try to argue that last one). The 1916 song "Beale Street Blues" precipitated the name change from avenue to Beale Street—but it was Marc Cohn's 1990 song "Walking in Memphis" that kept running through my head for our entire trip (When I was walking in Memphis / I was walking with my feet ten feet off of Beale). Louis Armstrong, Muddy Waters, Albert King, Memphis Minnie and B. B. King all played on Beale Street, developing a style eventually known as Memphis Blues.

By the 1960s—especially after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at the nearby Lorraine Motel—Memphis was a ghost town and many of the businesses on Beale had closed. This decline is more obvious in some parts of town than others—Beale Street was lively while we were there, but it's still a long way from what I imagine it looked like in its heyday.

Graceland

When my dad and I decided to meet in Memphis, the first thing we planned was a tour of Graceland. I wouldn't call myself a diehard Elvis fan, but I do appreciate the worldwide phenomenon that is Elvis. I love historic home tours and I love 70s kitsch, so it's surprising that it took me so long to get to Graceland. My parents actually took me when I was 8 months old, but I don't remember—my dad jokingly said he thinks they left me in the car.

Graceland is a 17,552 square foot Colonial Revival house with 23 rooms, sitting on nearly 14 acres in Memphis. 650,000 people visit Graceland in a year, making it the second most-visited house in the US after the White House. The second floor—including Elvis's personal bedroom, office and the bathroom where he died—is not open to the public.

I was told that Graceland is "much smaller than you would expect" so many times that I wasn't at all disappointed. I would move into Graceland in a second and not change a single thing. My favorite room was the living room with its long white couch and peacock stained glass panels, and although Graceland is objectively a grand home, it still feels very personal and lived-in. 

Graceland is a time capsule of the '70s and the details are fantastic—basket weave wall-coverings, poodle print wallpaper, corduroy drapes, TVs in every room, mirrored hallways, gold accents, and shag carpeting. It's hard to imagine a place where fur lampshades, log slice tables, grass green carpet and tiki statues could coexist, but in the Jungle Room it all somehow makes sense. 

Elvis bought Graceland for $102,500 in 1957 as a gift for his parents, Gladys and Vernon. Elvis lived there until his death in 1977 and while he was initially buried in a local cemetery near his mother, Vernon Presley was able to reinter both of them in the Meditation Garden of Graceland and add a memorial marker for Elvis's twin brother, who was stillborn. Vernon and his mother Minnie Mae were buried beside Elvis and Gladys when they died in 1979 and 1980, respectively. 

Graceland is much more than the house—the property includes a racquetball court, offices, a trophy room, shooting gallery, two planes and a new complex across the street with museums, gift shops and restaurants. Lisa Marie Presley has sole personal ownership of the mansion itself and her father's personal effects including costumes, wardrobe, awards, furniture and cars.

As much as I loved the house, my favorite part of Graceland was the surrounding wall and gates. In 2016, Graceland welcomed its 20 millionth visitor and it seems as if every single one of them has left a message or their name scrawled along the wall. Everyone knows about the jumpsuits and the sideburns and the drugs and the songs, but it's the fans that have ensured that Elvis will indeed live forever.

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Graceland
Elvis Presley Blvd
Memphis, TN 38116

Nashville: Recap

My dad and I were talking last night and we started reminiscing about how perfect our Nashville trip was—and how quickly it went by. I wrote posts specifically celebrating Nashville's signage and the legendary Hatch Show Print, but we did so much more in the three short days we were there.

My dad had been to Nashville before, but it was my first time so I of course had a small list of things I'd like to see. Studio B wasn't on that list but it definitely should have been because the tour was a definite highlight. Studio B hosted Dolly Parton, Waylon Jennings, Chet Atkins, Willie Nelson, the Everly Brothers, and of course Elvis, who is everywhere you look in some for or another.

As far as silly attractions go, my dad might not have exactly understood the purpose of the Parthenon ("I drove past it once and thought, 'Who would ever want to see this?'") but I was beyond thrilled to finally see it in person. It's a full-size replica of the actual Parthenon, built for the Tennessee Centennial Exhibition in 1897, which is enough like a World's Fair to make it on my must-see list.

While it currently houses an art museum (which was closed when we went) it also basically falls under the "just-for-fancy" category of things that don't really exist for any reason other than because they can, which of course means I love it.

The food in Nashville was pretty incredible. We had the most delicious pulled pork, green beans, corn bread and mac n' cheese from Jack's BBQ, where mac n' cheese is considered a vegetable so I liked the place before I even took a bite. While I'm definitely no stranger to lines, the one that wraps around the Pancake Pantry every morning is no joke. Neither are their pancakes or breakfast meats, and months later my dad and I are still talking about that breakfast.

We also discovered the dangerously good Goo Goo Cluster, most of which I gave away as souvenirs but now I'm thinking I should have hoarded more for myself. My only real regret, however, is that we didn't get to eat at Arnold's, the famous "meat and three" place because they were closed all weekend (next time!).

We also somehow fit in trips to the Grand Ole Opry, the Country Music Hall of Fame, Printers' Alley and the Johnny Cash museum, where we saw Roy Orbison's glasses and the blue suede shoes in addition to some really iconic pieces from Cash's amazing life and career.

Nashville is small and pretty walkable—or you could always take a pedal tavern if that's your thing. Also of note: I've never seen so many bachelorette parties in my entire life in one place—seriously half the town belonged to one or another. Even so, it was definitely the perfect place for my dad and I to meet, containing plenty of the things that each of us are interested in, with enough overlap to keep us both happy.

Oh, and Dolly Carton and Johnny Trash say hi!

Nashville: Hatch Show Print

The first thing my dad and I planned when we decided to go to Nashville was to take a tour of Hatch Show Print. Started in 1879 by the Hatch brothers, Hatch Show Print is a letterpress shop most famous for its concert posters for Johnny Cash, Elvis, Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton and pretty much everyone that has ever performed at the Grand Ole Opry or the Ryman Auditorium.

I have known about Hatch about as long as I have been interested in graphic design and I adore their style. They emphasize "preservation through production," which means that they do not add to their wood type collection and they use everything they have in their collection to create all of their posters. None of the design is done digitally—from a hand sketch, to the final letterpressed poster, computers are never a part of the process.

The tour wasn't much of a tour in the traditional sense, since you can see most of their one-room, glass-walled shop just by walking by. Hatch moved to its current space in 2013 when a custom shop was built specifically for them in the same building as the Country Music Hall of Fame (which Hatch has been a part of since 1992).

Pretty much everything in the shop is part of their collection and moved with them, including the shelves that hold the wood type (some of which are made of discarded printing blocks). The guides were informative and I learned a lot about the shop's history, which I find endlessly fascinating.

We then got to actually print our own poster (the orange type portion—everything else was pre-printed and each ink color takes 24-hrs to dry) which was unexpected and a great souvenir. Of course they also have a gift shop with actual souvenirs like posters, cards, t-shirts and mugs, in which I tried my best to restrain myself but still left with four posters, a t-shirt, a few postcards and—the holy grail of all souvenirs—a squished penny.

Nashville: Signage

My favorite part of any city is usually the signage, and Nashville was no exception. My dad and I met in Nashville for a Memorial Day/dad's birthday father-daughter weekend trip, and we had a great time. The first store we went in was the Ernest Tubb Record Shop, which had an incredible sign that not only rotated, but included neon and a replaceable-letter marquee.

It was impossible not to be enamored with all of the neon signs downtown—cowboy boots, cowgirls, guitars, flying pigs. It's really hard to pick a favorite, but the flying pigs and the Hats/Boots cowboy were ones that had me majorly swooning. As with any proper sign, they looked great in the daytime as well as when they were lit up at night—the pigs even flashed in sequence to make it look as if they were really flying.

The signs aren't exclusively limited to downtown, of course, and there were great ones wherever we went in the city. Printer's Alley had a few really wonderful ones—neon and hand-painted. I'm not sure how many of the signs are original/vintage and how many are new, but even the ones that I suspect are new were still really beautiful.

I loved all of the western-style typography, but my very favorite sign was the one for the Dejà Vu Showgirls Gentleman's club. We drove by it a few times and when we finally walked by it I was so happy that I was able to get a picture of it in all of its neon-pink, fishnet-ed, classic-script glory.