Memphis, TN
As veteran “Lunch Boxers” know, my interests can be a bit eclectic. No place exemplifies this more than my time in Memphis. Memphis sits atop a line of bluffs on the east bank of the Mississippi River and spreads out like an open fan to the east. Home to more than 650,000 people, downtown is an area that I will not be visiting. The Lunch Box and large cities are a tough match. However three of my destinations are on the fringe of the downtown core in all three directions (north, southeast and south) so I can’t entirely avoid it. I am pleased to be able to announce that the Lunch Box escaped our Memphis adventures unscathed! Be reminded that the journal never pretends to be a comprehensive review of a destination, but rather like a selection of goodies from a box of chocolates. Let’s start nibbling!
National Ornamental Metal Museum (NOMM)
Just as interesting as the National Ornamental Metal Museum is the site which it is part of. Sitting on the east bank of the Mississippi River in the shadow of the I-55 bridge between Tennessee and Arkansas, the museum occupies a site that traces its heritage back to prehistoric times. The Chicsa Indians occupied the site when European explorers first arrived in the early 1700’s but prior to that the mysterious “Mound Builders” lived there, leaving a number of the mysterious mounds they built as their heritage. Just across the street from the NOMM sit two of the mounds.
The mound closest to the river was used as the base for a fort by the French in 1739 but at the beginning of the Civil War the confederates established Fort Pickering on the mound, hollowing out the top of the mound to provide protection for artillery and digging into the side of the mound to create storage for ammunition.
A brief gun battle on the river in 1862 lead to a Union victory and occupation of the site. The Union forces expanded Fort Pickering to include over 55 cannon and extended the grounds all the way north to town, but the fort was never tested in battle and was demolished after the war. The next chapter in the development of the site came as a result of the Marine Hospital Fund, first established in 1798 by President John Adams. It created a tax of 20 cents a month to be withheld from each seaman’s pay in order to support marine hospitals for “all officers, seamen and marines” of the United States Navy.” A scandal in 1870 over the implementation of the fund led to the creation of the Marine Hospital Service, which built a number of grand hospitals around the nation for the benefit of servicemen. The hospital complex in Memphis was built in the 1880’s for the benefit of the men working on the river. The main building sits in magnificent deterioration across the street from the Indian Mounds.
The stage is set. Let’s go to the National Ornamental Metal Museum. The museum is house in a collection of buildings between the main hospital building and the Mississippi River. The art galleries of the museum are housed in the former nurse’s quarters for the hospital.
Artwork from various artisans is on display.
Outside a plaza is surrounded by a library/gallery to the east and the working foundry to the north.
To the west of the plaza is a wrought-iron gazebo overlooking the Mississippi.
Various sculptures decorate the grassy plaza.
The foundry is staffed by a crew of resident artists, who demonstrate their skills and were remarkably patient with this particular tourist and his questions!
Got to say, a really interesting stop on the trip – following up on a tip from a fellow traveler in the RV Park! Continuing my pursuit of unique experiences, next up I crossed to the north side of town to the Bass Pro Shop (yes, you read that right!)
Memphis Bass Pro Shop
The Memphis Pyramid was built in 1991 a sports arena seating over 20,000 people that was home to the University of Memphis Tigers and the NBA Memphis Grizzlies. The arena was used for the next 13 years until the larger FedEx Forum opened in 2004. Virtually unused for the next eleven years it re-opened in 2015 as the home to the Memphis Bass Pro Shop. This place is absolutely unbelievable! Here are the statistics: the pyramid is nearly 32 stories tall, encompasses 535,000 square feet of floor space and 22 million cubic feet of air space. In addition to all of the retail the interior includes a hotel (Big Cypress Lodge), several restaurants, the tallest free-standing elevator in America, an alligator pit, a river stocked with several species of native fish as well as several large aquariums (Billings people think of the new Scheels but many times larger, Portland people can just be envious but write to the county commissioners about a new use for the old Memorial Coliseum!). Again this place was amazing. I started by heading to the blue column in the middle, which is an elevator rising 32 stories to The Lookout, a restaurant and observation deck. From up here there is a 360 degree view of the Memphis area.
The place is amazing, starting with the entry hall and yes, even the bathrooms!
The elevator shaft is unmistakable, a shaft of neon blue reaching to the peak of the pyramid.
The view from the lookout is stunning in every direction (west, north, east, and south in clockwise order).
Back down the elevator the place just unfolds around you.
And, of course, there’s the alligator pit.
Finally, on the way out the door (after the cash registers, of course!) is a forest tableau.
Definitely a fascinating experience and something I’ve never seen before. Leaving this temple to excessive outdoors consumption I head to what turned out to be a most sobering experience, the National Civil Rights Museum.
National Civil Rights Museum
The National Civil Rights Museum was not what I expected, which was more a focus on the history of black America. Instead it follows through on the promise of its name and focuses on the history of civil rights in America. The setting creates a somber atmosphere as it is inside the Lorraine Motel, a motel in south Memphis that historically hosted blacks and more importantly, the site of the assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968. The shell of the museum is the Lorraine Motel, looking exactly as it did 47 years ago.
Across the street to the west is the back of the fire station (where police surveillance of Dr. King was taking place) and the back of the boarding house from which James Earl Ray shot at Dr. King (small window third from left on second floor of taller section).
Martin Luther King was standing on the second floor balcony outside of his room when he was shot. The site is now marked by a memorial wreath.
This is not a particularly safe part of Memphis and security is tight, both in and out of the museum. When I pulled into the parking lot a security guard directed me to a spot close to his booth, noting that thieves were in the practice of pulling up next to vehicles and breaking in to them and he didn’t want anyone to be able to hide from him behind the Lunch Box. Entering the museum was kind of intimidating. There is a double door entry with a security station between the two doors where people have to empty their pockets, get “sweeped” by a metal detector, and store backpacks, etc., in lockers.
I can’t pretend to be able to reproduce the atmosphere inside the museum, which walks you in chronological order through the development of the Civil Rights movement in the United States. The museum underwent a major renovation in 2014 and is now a state of the art combination of memorabilia and interactive technology. Highlights include the actual bus that Rosa Parks staged her protest on, a re-creation of a sit-in at a southern lunch counter, as well as the ruins of the bus attacked and burned in 1961 while Freedom Riders were still inside.
The Black Power movement of the 1960’s is remembered in a powerful walk.
Towards the end of the tour the display starts to focus on the series of events leading up to the assassination of Martin Luther King. A sanitation strike had paralyzed Memphis that spring and he had come to try and help resolve the issue. He stayed in room 306 at the Lorraine Motel (behind a glass wall, accounting for the reflections in the picture).
Dr. King and his brother were getting ready to leave to go to dinner at a friend’s house when he stepped out onto the balcony. The fateful shot rang out and the moment was caught on video as the people by his side pointed across the street at the back of the rooming house.
The rooming house across the street is also part of the National Civil Rights Museum. On the second floor preserved behind glass are both the room rented by James Earl Ray and the communal bathroom with the window raised in exactly the same position as it was in 1968 when Ray fired the fateful shot.
The view from the room next to the bathroom shows the line of sight that Ray had when he fired.
Again, this was an incredibly educational and sobering experience and I again have to complement the National Civil Rights Museum for a respectful and polished presentation. Definitely worth the visit…
After such an experience I needed a “pick-me-up” and fortunately for me, across the street behind the museum is one of the icons of southern barbecue, Memphis’ Central Barbecue.” It, too, was worth the stop!
My visit to Memphis is about to culminate in an iconic American experience. Grab your panties and hang on, it’s about to get crazy!
Next up: Graceland
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