July 1, 1985 (Revisiting the Past)

I'm going back through what comprised my senior year of high school and first semester of college in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Come along for the ride. New posts every day or so mixed in with other things.

July 1, 1985. My trip to Mississippi and then Memphis continues. I must have visited the First Monday flea market in Ripley before we left for Memphis as I bought a bootleg tape of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers's Southern Accents. I knew it was a bootleg, but boy was it a bad dub. I'd get the real thing when I got back to Murfreesboro. We wouldn't be staying in Memphis though. We'd be staying with my beloved Aunt Bea in Munford, Tennessee. She was with her 3rd husband by this time and he was super nice. They lived in a ramshackle place that was in process of being finished. It was cool. The best part was that my cousin Lisa was home.

Lisa is 6 months younger than me and she was a regular tomboy growing up. Her brother Chris was a year or so older than me and after their parents had divorced it always seemed like one of them was with their father when I'd visit. A couple of years before I'd had a good time hanging out with Chris so this year it was time to hang out with Lisa. We drove into Millington in her Ford Maverick with 3 on a tree and I got the latest Rolling Stone magazine at a Wal-Mart. Then we visited a girl friend of hers. She was cool and I flirted with her the whole time. Then we went back to Munford as the sun was going down. There used to be a big drive-in between Millington and Munford and I recall that 2010: The Year We Make Contact was playing. Lisa said we should rent some movies so she stopped at a tiny country store. 

The store had Risky Business which I hadn't seen so we got that and browsed some more. Then I saw it. A box featuring Emilio Estevez on it. It was Repo Man. So I insisted we had to rent that too. We watched Tom Cruise's breakout film first and I loved it. The story was great and the moody score by Tangerine Dream was incredible. The moment I heard Iggy Pop and saw Mike Nesmith's name I know Repo Man was going to be awesome. Filled with punk rock, aliens, and strangeness it was wonderful. And to think I discovered it in some tiny country store renting out videotapes to make some extra money. The Eighties were interesting times. We watched both movies twice. Once that night and once the next morning. 

Then I was off for Memphis with my Mother and Aunt Bea. I think Lisa had work or something. I was going to see my dorm room and tour Memphis State University and then I had talked my Mother into driving to Beale Street. It was going to be a fun day.

To be continued.

June 30, 1985 (Revisiting the Past)

I'm going back through what comprised my senior year of high school and first semester of college in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Come along for the ride. New posts every day or so mixed in with other things.

June 30, 1985. It was day 2 of my annual trip to Mississippi with my Mother. We had arrived at Grandma's to find her little shack was not clean and mice were everywhere so we had packed her up and gone over to my Aunt E's house. Her oldest son RC arrived about the same time with his new girlfriend. She was the same age as me, 18,  and a very pretty blonde, so I foolishly spent most of my time flirting with her. RC was in his 30's and was a black belt in karate so it's a wonder he didn't break me in two. I suppose he knew I was no real threat. He ran out and rented a VCR along with the movies Rhinestone, Revenge of the Nerds, and Purple Rain.

We watched all of these movies the next afternoon which would have been this day back in 1985. Grandma enjoyed Rhinestone, but she didn't care for Revenge of the Nerds. The infamous shower scene with Booger yelling "We've got muff!" was too much for her. She asked what channel we were watching. RC said, "It's channel 3, it's the only channel we can get right now." She then got up and said she was going home thinking her house was just next door. We eventually straightened that out and she went to bed. It made me sad to see her losing her grip on reality. It would happen to my own Mother beginning in 2014. 

I wouldn't stay sad for long in 1985 as Prince was about to rock my world. I had not seen Purple Rain on its theatrical run. I had been a Prince fan since "I Wanna Be Your Lover", but the movie just didn't seem too appealing based on the trailer. Boy, was I wrong!! I loved the film. Prince was great as the moody musical genius and the music was great as I knew it was, but Morris Day and Jerome just about stole the film. I do know that some of the scenes were filmed in Los Angeles, but most of the movie was shot in Minneapolis and 2 of my favorite bands of the moment were also from there, The Replacements, and Hüsker Dü, so seeing the city was exciting. I had even made a mixtape for the trip with The Replacements "Let It Be" on one side while "Zen Arcade" by the Hüskers was on the flip. RC's brother Sammy still lived at home and he happened to have the Purple Rain soundtrack so I would borrow it so I could play it in the car on the way to and from Memphis. This is where we headed after just a couple of days in Ripley, Mississippi. 

To be continued.

June 29, 1985 (Revisiting the Past)

I'm going back through what comprised my senior year of high school and first semester of college in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Come along for the ride. New posts every day or so mixed in with other things.

June 29, 1985. It was a Saturday in 1985 and my Mother's summer 2 week vacation from the Greer-Nut Smyrna factory had begun which meant we got up at 3AM to drive to Ripley, Mississippi. This annual event had been going on ever since we had moved back to middle Tennessee after living in Ripley for a year and a half back in the early 70's. I don't recall the exact year my Mother decided that getting up in the middle of the night was the way to go, but it had been the way for many years by 1985. I wasn't too thrilled about it. Plus, even though I was now driving my own car, she wouldn't let me drive her car at all. She wouldn't let me drive until she was in her late 70's. I guess that's one reason I always like to be the driver now. One thing to note is my mother was an excellent driver who liked to go fast. 

We'd get to Jackson, Tennessee from Murfreesboro via I-40, jump off the interstate and stop at the same gas station convenience store to stretch our legs, fill up her Buick Electra, and use the restroom. We wouldn't buy any snacks because we had packed drinks in a cooler along with some food the night before. Jackson impressed me when I was a child as it was larger than Murfreesboro, but by this point in time I think it was smaller. Then we'd get through Jackson to find the road that would take us in a straight shot to Mississippi. It was my job on these trips to make sure my Mother was going the right way. 

The turn for 18 from a recent Google map

The turn to Highway 18 is unforgettable for me as I loved the right hand turn on to it. Maybe it was because I was done with my navigation duties and I could just enjoy the view of the homes that lined this road out of Jackson. I always thought they were very nice. Highway 18 aka Bolivar Highway would take us through Medon on to Bolivar where I'd always try and figure which old house had the ghost swing as mentioned in the Thirteen Tennessee Ghosts and Jeffrey book. Highway 125 merges with 18 and it was 125 that we stayed on. This highway is very straight with big hills going up and down through tall pine tree forests. 

This is a great book!

It doesn't matter, even to this day, how many times I visit Mississippi, I get super hyped as the state line gets closer. Middleton, Tennessee is the last small town we'd race through and soon we'd be seeing the Mississippi sign. There used to be a really nice one with magnolia blossoms on it, but there wasn't anything the last time I came through. You quickly go through Walnut and then Falkner. Several of my Aunts and Uncles went to Falkner School during the Forties and Fifties. 

My Mother and I would arrive around 7AM at my Grandma's little 4 room house. There'd be hugs and maybe some breakfast. My Mother would go back to bed and I would wonder if any of my Cousins were around. My Grandma didn't have a television and there was no air conditioning. This had never stood in the way of us having a good time there, but this year was different. The house was not clean this time around and Grandma was quite forgetful. We could hear mice running through the walls with abandon. Alzheimers was making itself known. We decided to take Grandma over to my Mother's sister's house and stay there until we went to Memphis. 

To be continued tomorrow.

Mississippi Seventies song

I've written about my days in Ripley, Mississippi often here at the blog. I suppose anyplace you live at during your early youth creates strong memories and impressions. Which is exactly what happened during the year or so my family lived in Ripley running a cafe named Rainey's. Even though we moved away I would then go back once or twice a year with my mother since Ripley was where Grandma lived along with many other relatives. 

I wish I knew more about what was going on during the year we lived in Ripley, but both my parents have been deceased for some now. I vaguely know that my mother left my father due to his hell raising ways which included him beating the hell out of me once for knocking over a display at the local IGA store. He would come home from work and drink Pabst Blue Ribbon, work on cars, and then go racing around in them. He would also spend lots of time fishing with his friend Andrew B. instead of doing whatever it was my mother wanted. So, my father quit drinking and never beat me again. So off to Mississippi we went. 

It's always slightly weird when I dream of my parents. They eventually got divorced not long after I graduated from high school. So there was plenty of time with them not together and then, both of them, remarried others. I sometimes dream of my parents separately, but more often they are still together. I am still young and they are still doing the same old things they used to do. So I started thinking about writing a tune about my parents visiting my dreams. Which, naturally, drove me to the time when they were the most together in my mind. So enjoy this demo tune. Thumbnail is from the front of Grandma's yard on Cooper Street. 

Mississippi Seventies by Wally

Mississippi Pics

I visited some familiar ground a few weeks ago. I went to Ripley, Mississippi to attend my Aunt Ermie's funeral. She had run a sandwich shop for 42 years selling the most delicious slugburgers in all of North Mississippi. It seemed like she was closed during each of my infrequent visits over the last 20 years or so and I had planned on a visit this month, but she died a week before. Maybe her grandson Bruce will keep the place going.

I took some snapshots of the courthous and of the public library. The Ripley Public Library has a special place in my heart. It's the first library I can remember. It's where I got my first library card. I don't recall the title of the book, but I vaguely remember a yellow race car was on the cover. I never had any business in the courthouse, but I visited the square often as a child. There doesn't seem to be much there now.

It was strange being in Ripley. I know the town as if I had lived there my whole life, yet I only lived there a year and then visited once a year until I was around 20. When I visit I feel like such an outsider, yet I'm filled with a flood wash of memories and love for the place. I want to tell everyone I see, "I'm not an intruder, I'm as much a North Mississippi resident as ya'll." Yet, when it's time to leave I know that I am truly a Tennessean to my core. Some things can't ever be recaptured.

Like 6-10 cousins and 5-6 adults all sleeping in Grandma Bridges's tiny 4 room house. It's still there on Cooper Street with its tin roof and front porch. When I was a child I thought this porch was massive. Time has shrunk its dimensions, but not my memories.


I'll visit Ripley again. I'd like to come check out the First Monday flea market again. There will undoubtedly be more funerals - a sad, but mortal fact. And I will likely go through the same emotions - excitement at traversing familiar terrain as I barrell down through Bolivar, TN heading toward the Mississippi state line (oh how tremendous it was every July when my mother and I would drive down) and then through Walnut and Falkner on Highway 15. And then the natural regret of leaving when I come back to Tennessee. Here's one last pic taken through the car window since I didn't want to disturb or freak anybody out. It's the house I lived in when my parents ran Raney's Cafe on 15. It was right down the street from the Cafe next door to a smoke belching shoe factory (it's now the Ashley plant).

Phantom Homesickness

Faulkner calls to me periodically and I go to his books in a hypnotic trance. This week I'm wading through the cleansing prose of The Sound And The Fury letting the immensity of Faulkner's achievement in chronicling the Compson's dissolution just sift through my mind like red clay. I find myself caught up in the storytelling every time. It's a combination of artistry and phantom homesickness for me. I can hear the North Mississippi pine trees whispering to me through Faulkner's words so vivid and real.

I lived in Mississippi for only a year right before I began school. That's why we moved back to Tennessee. Because the schools were better. And perhaps because my father didn't get along too well with all of the alcoholic uncle's on my mother's Mississippi side of the family. That year spent in Ripley, Mississippi is impressed into my memories like no other with events piled upon events. Many of them are actually miserable having to do with feelings of abandonment and helplessness as my parents fought, separated, and reunited while I was shuffled off to relatives and babysitters nameless and faceless to me now. Once we moved back to Tennessee I would still go to Mississippi at least once a year for several weeks in the summer until I was grown.

Each year back reminded of the one I had spent there as a small child. They built upon the legends of that year until the events are as mythic to me as Greek legends. Did I really get up in front of all of the customers in Raney's Cafe and dance to "Dueling Banjos", and did I throw rocks from a railroad overpass onto cars streaming below. Did I sit in a car with one of those faceless babysitters under that overpass as a violent thunder storm blew threw; worried that my father would come to get me and I wouldn't be there. Did I hear my first electric guitar in that babysitter's trailer.

There are no question marks on those rhetorical questions since I know they're true. It's just a small sampling of thoughts crowding my head hoping to get acknowledged and maybe some day I'll get it all down. There's a kind of phantom homesickness that nags and inspires me. It's all so interior it's sometimes frustrating. Maybe I need to get back down to Ripley for a spell. When I get some time maybe I’ll do just that. Until then, I’ll be reading Faulkner.