In Tupelo, Miss.
Where Elvis Was Born...
A few years ago, I went through a phase driving trips around the US. A little while before I had lived there and in retrospect these visits were a way of saying “Goodbye”. The US is the only country I know where I would choose to travel by car, it seems well suited and scaled a view through a passenger window. When i think back on them, I can believe how lucky I was to be able to do this. I did lots of silly things with my money at the time, but I don’t think was one of them.
Initally, I would stay a night or so with my friend Sandra (I wonder how she is) in Atlanta, slowly building inertia, until I couldn’t sit still any longer and would fly off across the country in my hire car, driving late into the night – I was on my own and could stop and start where I wanted. I have mixed feeling about the American goverment, but the American people have never let me down, always ready with a word or suggestion or two. Just odd words here and there in diners and supermarkets. Shared laughter, hiding from a storm in a supermarket in Wilmington (the lights kept going out).
This is the house that Elvis was born in. There’s a museum in the background. Apparently they are called “shotgun shacks”. It looked immaculate. I’m not sure it was like that when Elvis was a resident.
