After breakfast at Denny's in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, we found ourselves heading east on Interstate 40 again, with the storm clouds continuing to nip at our heels.
Four hours and some 308 miles (496 km) later, we were in Conway, Arkansas. We wanted to visit the Ozark Mountains, so we went north on U.S. Route 65 and State Highway 9 74 miles (119 km) to Mountain View, a touristy town in the Ozarks.
My grandmother put up quite a fuss about going to the Ozarks. I swear in her vivid imagination she expected the car to be ambushed by stereotypical barefoot hillbillies with shotguns.
My mother wanted to go to Mountain View in particular after reading about the Stone County Iron Works in a magazine. She visited their store, and purchased a courting candle holder.
Supposedly, a young woman's father would light and then raise or lower the candle using a wooden insert at the bottom of the holder to the height he felt appropriate when a young man came to court her. If the father thought he was a good prospect for his daughter, the candle was set higher. If not, it was set lower, because the courter would have to leave when the candle burned down to the top of the candle holder.
We spent some time looking around the main square of Mountain View, and then we continued on our way, traveling 74 miles (119 km) back to Interstate 40 and going east again.
Our time in Arkansas was during the period when then-governor Bill Clinton was running for president and touting achievements like how clean the rivers in Arkansas were. Perhaps I saw all the wrong rivers, because the ones I saw were anything but clean.
Just east of the Arkansas state capital, Little Rock, the storm which had been chasing us since Arizona finally caught up to us. The skies darkened, and rain began to fall as if from great buckets.
My mother turned the windshield wipers on, and one of them did the unexpected--it fell off and lodged in the space between the windshield and the hood. We stopped at a truck stop to see if someone could direct us to a repair shop. The only repair shop in the area was closed, but the cashier knew the man who owned it and called him to the truck stop to help us. $35 and an hour later, the wiper was repaired and we were under way again.
I took over the driver's seat for the remainder of the day to give my mother a rest. It was 132 miles (212 km) to Memphis, Tennessee, and the closer we got to the city, the worse the storm became.
It was late evening and dark out when we approached the city, and by then the rain was coming down in torrential sheets, accompanied by hail and bolts of lightning the likes of which even Zeus would be impressed by. Driving was perilous, made even more so by semi-trailer trucks playing musical lanes with little regard for the smaller cars around them.
We crossed over the Mississippi River on Interstate 40's Hernando de Soto Bridge. There was enough light emanating from the bridge lights to get a sense of how immense the river was. Once across the river, we followed Interstate 240 south into the city itself.
My mother has always been a huge fan of Elvis Presley, beginning with his first national television appearance in 1956. As a teenager, she and her best friend would walk six miles roundtrip just to see an Elvis movie at the nearest cinema. When he died in 1977, a cabinet in the corner of our living room was transformed into an Elvis shrine.
So it will come as no great surprise when I say the major reason for stopping in Memphis was so my mother could see Graceland. We had rooms reserved at Wilson World Hotel Graceland, located just down the street from Graceland.
When we arrived later than expected, we were informed that our rooms had already been rented out. However, they were happy to upgrade us to suites at no extra charge if that was acceptable to us. We had no objections. We had a late dinner at the Shoney's Restaurant next door. I remember eating a T-bone steak. It was very late when we retired to our suites for the night.
Total Travel Distance: 588 miles (946 km)
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