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Monday, June 23, 2008

Road Trip: Day Three -- Tupelo to Jackson

I woke up on Sunday in Tupelo, Mississippi, the birthplace of one Mr. Elvis Aaron Presley. I frittered away a fair amount of time on the Elvis Presley driving tour, which mostly consisted of looking at the outside of a bunch of buildings -- like Elvis's elementary school, his high school, the public library (?), and the Tupelo Hardware Store where his mom bought him his first guitar. There's also the Elvis Presley birthplace and museum, where for $4 you can see the two-room house where Elvis grew up. Small! Luckily, I got in and out before the people from the giant tour bus.

I drove over to Oxford, home of the University of Mississippi. The campus is really beautiful -- it's almost enough to make you forget the ugly history and the fact that they call themselves the Rebels. But not quite. Oxford is a really charming college town, with a lot of nice old houses, including Rowan Oak, William Faulkner's house. Unfortunately, all of the cool-looking restaurants on Courthouse Square were closed on Sunday night, so I drove out to Taylor Grocery, a little catfish restaurant about 10 miles out of town, for dinner.

Then I drove down to Jackson, home of a lot of unattractive sprawl.

3 Comments:

Blogger Red Fraggle said...

I believe that's Elvis Aron Presley, with one "a." The second "a" on his tombstone is "evidence" some fans point to in support of their theory that he didn't die on August 16, 1977.

Speaking of that date, did you know Elvis died (or faked his death, if you will) the day after I was born?

6/24/2008 7:55 PM  
Blogger Corina said...

I was in Tupelo once. On a cross-country road trip I made my travel companion drive 500 miles out of our way just because I wanted to say I'd been there. I'm not even a crazy Elvis fan, I just love the name Tupelo. We didn't actually do anything there other than drive by his house and then continue on our merry way. The house is tiny! We toured Graceland on the same road trip. Not so tiny.

6/24/2008 8:04 PM  
Blogger Isaac, your bartender said...

Quite unfortunate that the restaurants in Oxford's square were closed. City Grocery is outstanding, and the Ajax Dinner is solid as well. Great town, and where I was mistaken for Paul Giamatti.

7/01/2008 12:01 PM  

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