On The Road Again

Oops, I'm behind again. When there is not much going on where I am, I get complacent (lazy). Too much TV watching for one thing, which is why I have chosen not to have a television machine in my motorhome.

When last we met, back on March 2, I had left the Mardi Gras crazies behind and although I didn't report on my whereabouts on that date, I was in Houston visiting my long-lost friend, Mary Helen. I had intended to head north to Memphis to visit my family after my month in New Orleans, but after a reunion with Mary Helen in Lafayette, LA (halfway between NO and Houston) a huge cold front came through and I decided to keep to the southern environs a bit longer. I followed her back to Houston where a one-week stopover turned into two as the front dumped a steady, chilling, 3-day rain on Houston and freezing rain on Memphis.

While in Houston, where I lived 1985-1988, I visited some old haunts, including the duplex where my daughter and I lived, which as I had suspected, had been returned to its original single-family configuration. If I had not accidentally run across the address on an old piece of mail, I would not have been able to pick it out. And Houston has changed so much that it was as if I had never lived there, which was disconcerting, so I didn't go out much. Besides, Mary Helen has moved to a lovely waterfront condo in Dickinson,

an hour on the freeway from Houston and not a pleasant drive. I walked her new old dog (and drew the dog's portrait: the black & white Border Collie mix in the slide show, which is out of order and I can't seem to fix it), reorganized her kitchen, and watched too much daytime TV: Live with Regis and Kelly, The View, The Price is Right (I'm not proud)--but no soaps (okay, maybe the first five minutes of All My Children).

Then it was on to Memphis by way of a one-night stopover in Center, TX, another night in Arkadelphia, AR, an hour in Little Rock just to visit the capitol and get a postcard for my collection, and into Memphis on the third day, a distance I could easily have covered in one day in my youth. Oh well, what's the rush? I often take the secondary roads rather than the interstate and this was one of those times when I was happy to be tooling along practically by myself. The fuzzy photo at left is I-30 and the one at right is Hwy. 67. Which would you choose?

I didn't get a photo of the Houston skyline, which has long been a favorite, but I took this picture of downtown Memphis as I crossed the Mississippi River bridge.

Downtown Memphis has retained much of its "classic architecture" (old buildings) and looks about the way it did when I lived here 1974-1976, with a few notable exceptions. I suppose that says something about the city's growth and prosperity but, hey, it's also one of the few cities left where you can actually afford to buy a house. And I love that there are so many interesting 1920s homes still gracing the lawns of Midtown.

My sister Marcia lives in an area called Central Gardens and today I walked a few blocks with my camera so you could get a feel for the area. (See slideshow at right.) The Azaleas have barely begun to bud but the Redbud, Cherry and a few other trees are very pretty. I missed the Daffodils and the Bradford Pear, but there is a gorgeous Magnolia in Marcia's back yard, not the big Southern species with the wonderfully fragrant, huge white flowers, but the pink-flowered species generally referred to as a Tulip Tree.

I'll be here for a month so there will be more to report later on, including our trip to The Pink Palace Museum for the "Scoop on Poop" exhibit. You'll want to tune in for that!