(I forgot to mention that on the trip up, M had been intrigued with some of the water towers and standpipes that had been painted decoratively, to relieve their basic boring function. She particularly liked one that was painted to resemble a hot-air balloon, and another at Mount Jackson, Virginia that L drew to her attention, painted like a basket of ripe apples. I’d been asleep when we drove past it on the way up 81, but on the way back L pointed it out, and I agreed it was very well done, and above the level of much water-tower art.)
Sunday morning we started early, meaning to cover the rest of West Virginia and all of Kentucky, stopping at Memphis for the night. The scenery continued to be gorgeous through the rest of the mountains, and I look forward to going back that way the next time we go east. L says the route is only fifty miles or so longer than going up I-40, and the lack of traffic on the several I-60s is enough to make the extra mileage MORE than worthwhile.
Early in the day I started flipping round the left side of the radio dial, looking for a station broadcasting Morning Edition. I didn’t find that, but I did find an absolute treasure: WOUB radio, which was airing a music program called Below the Salt, an ohmyGODFANTASTIC old-fashioned thematic free-form show, the kind where it’s a challenge and a game to follow the association in the announcer’s head. We tuned in during the second hour of a three-hour show, and listened for as long as we could keep the signal. I tell you, when John Aielli finally dies retires from KUT, I think Keith Newman at WOUB would be a fine candidate for a replacement based on breadth of knowledge and taste. Below the Salt has become my new favorite listening on Sunday morning.
Eastern Kentucky was still hilly and not that different from West Virginia, but after we passed Lexington, it began to flatten out into rolling Upper Midwest kind of country, like Indiana and Illinois. (L spotted another water tower/tank painted with a Thoroughbred racing scene as we circled past the Lexington airport.) We stopped for a late lunch at a diner in Elizabethtown that had been decorated in a combination of Rockabilly Fifties Retro and Musician Camp. Pride of place was given to life-size statues of Jake and Elwood Blues, dancing away in the middle of a planter right in the center of the room. Lunch finished, we turned west and then south on US 51 to Memphis—perhaps a more valid road for us to travel than US 61 out of the Mississippi Delta. Lots of rockabilly boys ended up going down 51 to Memphis. On the way in, we found another really good public radio station, WYPL, which programs lots of local music (and Memphis has a lot of local music available to program). As it turned out, 51 comes in through a definitely tough-looking part of town that I didn’t have any inclination to poke round, so we just kept driving until we got back to the river. L pointed out the Pyramid to M again as we went past, and a tug pushing a raft of barges downriver. I pointed out the railroad bridge to L, and remarked on railroads’ preference for painting the metalwork of their bridges black rather than silver. They do, but I have no idea why. Since it was early enough that stopping seemed pointless, we ate supper in West Memphis, then drove on and finally stopped for the night in Little Rock.
Monday we ran for it. We all wanted to be back home, so sightseeing went by the boards as we sped south on I-30, across the Arkansas line into Texas, and back down US 59. Our original intention to have lunch in Jefferson foundered on the lack of places to eat in Jefferson, so we went on down to Henderson and had lunch at a cafe-cum-burger place in the middle of town where the locals seem to go. (I want to go back to Henderson when I have time to spend most of a day wandering round it. They did their Main Street project right.) Once we got closer to Austin, L said I really didn’t want to fight my way back through Taylor and Hutto and Round Rock to the interstate, now did I? and I allowed that didn’t sound very entertaining, so she plotted a back-road approach to Austin that involved turning off at Rockdale and going south on US 77 through Lexington and then down FM 696, around the back of the Elgin-Butler brick plant by the clay pits, and out onto US 290 a ways east of Elgin. From there it was a fast run in through Elgin and Manor, and we got home before six.
And that seemed to be plenty, so we went to bed in our own beds that night.
A cellular inkwell communicates with the electric aardvark in the Western Hemisphere. Fnord.
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