December 21, 2011

December 21, 2011

We are in day three of our annual drive back to the Midwest for Christmas. A snowstorm blew through Amarillo so we opted for the warmer, but longer, southern route through the heart of Texas. That means we drove past Memphis this morning. Aimee and I haven’t been to Memphis for many years so we combined our need for a break with my desire for a little exploration. We first stopped at the National Civil Rights Museum. It is housed in a new building built adjoining the old Lorraine Motel. This oft-photographed motel was where Martin Luther King was assassinated. Aimee instantly recognized the small two-story facade when we pulled in the parking lot.

The museum is kind of a two-fer. The main building houses a museum chronicling the black struggle for civil equality. It is well done and interesting. Martin Luther King’s name is mentioned in almost every panel because he was the primary organizer of the series of boycotts, sit-ins and demonstrations throughout the Jim Crow South during the first half of the 20th century. King modeled his strategy on the non-violent actions of Mohandas Gandhi that helped win independence for India. It was sad to see how violent the reaction of the White South was. The history lesson ends on April 4, 1968 in the motel’s Room 306, and its now infamous balcony.

The second part of the museum is across the street in the old boarding house from where James Earl Ray made the fatal rifle shot. This building is devoted to the crime scene and is eerily reminiscent of the School Book Depository Museum on Dealey Plaza in Dallas, TX. There is even a significant section on the possible conspiracy theories with this assassination also.

At noontime we drove over to Mud Island to have lunch. This city park on an island in the river has a half-mile long model of the lower Mississippi. We saw it on our first trip to Memphis fourteen years ago and I thought it was very cool. Unfortunately it is closed for the season. So we punt and head for my hometown of Godfrey, IL. On the way I realize we are going to pass by Mastodon State Park in Kimmswick, MO. We reach it shortly before dusk and make a quick hike around its bone bed trail. Although scenic it is uninspiring. Plus the museum is closed and only open on weekends in winter. We learned about this historic site when we visited Clovis, NM this summer. Like Clovis, archeologists found Indian arrowheads here embedded inside extinct Megafauna fossils proving man migrated to North America at least 12,000 years ago. "Clovis point" arrowheads would be known instead as “Kimmswick” points if the local archeologist who made the discovery around 1900 had documented the discovery better.