Day 6: Clarksdale MS -> Memphis TN

Firstly, what kind of quality control do they exert at Plastic-Cutlery-Я-Us LLC that they allow a fork out into the wild with mutant tines that make spearing a sausage a hit-and-miss affair?  I shall write to my MP as soon as I return to London's Famous London…

And so to here:

which is housed in an old railway depot, part-owes its existence to Billy Gibbons out off of ZZ Top and is well worth fifteen of your Earth dollars.  If you like your blues from Chicago, or Texas, or California, or Eel Pie Island this is not the place for you.  This is the Delta and they brook no substitute.  With the advent of mechanised farming in the Delta many locals upped sticks and moved to the industrial cities of the north and natch the musicians followed, most notably to Chicago where Muddy Waters subsequently invented electricity^[1], but this is where it all started.  Sadly they don't permit photography inside so you'll have to take my word for it, but when, Constant Reader, have I ever lied to you?

Nice lady Mary-Jane at the museum asked me whether I was a musician, a misapprehension possibly brought about by long hair, band^[2] T-shaped shirt and bass-player-inna-stoner-rock-band sunglasses.  I allowed as how I wasn't, whereupon she gave me a free plectrum:

I shall stick it on the kitchen wall next to the one Alonso
out off of Flor De Loto gave me last week…

and opined that this might encourage me to buy a guitar.  I think it will take a little more than that so I drove down the road a bit, to here:

I went to the crossroad, fell down on my knees…

but the Devil utterly failed to turn up like he allegedly did for Robert Johnson, Tommy "No Relation" Johnson and Peetie Wheatstraw, there to take possession of their souls in return for mastery of the blues.  The bastard. So I revisited Highway 61 yet again.

Highway 61 goes straight to Memphis from Clarksdale but it was only 11:30 and check-in time here wasn't until 15:00.  Plus while I hadn't

Stayed in Mississippi a day too long^[3]

it was time to try a new state and I didn't want Arkansas to feel left out so I took US-49 back across the river to Helena, where they have a nice park by the river, containing this:

Use your Junior Pocket Microscope (model 3a) to spot
Rocky Raccoon to the right of the tree

To kill more time I went north through the Arkansas Delta which is very much like the Mississippi version but contains evidence of actual cultivation of cotton.  And so to I-40 and back across the river to Tennessee.

I-40 bridge, Memphis

Still no getting away from those bluesmen though:

B.B. King mural, Tennessee Welcome Center, Memphis

1. On the other hand, Lou Reed claimed that electricity comes from other planets, but I don't think that's true either.
2. The Zac Schulze Gang.  It seemed appropriate.
3. His Bobness, Mississippi, from "Love And Theft", 2001.