‘You should have been here yesterday.’ Sometimes that happens. We heard that the Mississippi River Museum has some pretty good exhibits and lots of information about the Mississippi River and its effect upon the area. It even has a miniaturized river in its courtyard to see where everything is and how it is all related. Our plan was to start here but, when we got to the door, we learned that it closed yesterday. It closes on November 1 for the winter. And, today is Nov. 1. I guess we should have gone online recently to get the hours. Shucks. Time for Plan B.
SLAVE HAVEN
After our first disappointment we headed on over to the Jacob Burkle House which was reputed to be a way station on the Underground Railroad in the middle of the 19th Century and then we’ll groove on over to the Rock and Soul Museum in downtown Memphis.
Jacob Burkle was a German immigrant to America who finally landed in Memphis and built his home in 1849 mostly by hand. The legend is that he was anti-slavery and built it to house slaves on the run. We got to the Slave Haven Museum a bit late and thus joined the tour a bit late. The volunteer had a wealth of knowledge about the slave trade in America prior to the Civil War, slave auctions, the treatment of slaves and the many escapes they tried. The house itself is obviously old and, at this time, showing its age, but is filled with 19th C artifacts throughout each room. Along with a plethora of information about the slave trade, we got a complete tour of the home and many of the artifacts were explained.
Then we saw the trap door in the floor and the basement which might have been designed as a place to keep slaves on the run between stops on the Underground Railroad. We were not allowed to take pictures but were allowed into each room of the house. Was it a bona-fide stop on the Underground Railroad? No one knows for sure. However, whether it was or whether it was not, you sure can learn a lot about the lives of slaves in Memphis prior to the Civil War. I don’t think that anyone who visits the house, takes the tour and listens to the volunteers can came away untouched by the plight of these enslaved people and their desperate attempts to escape their bonds.
ROCK & SOUL MUSEUM
Finally to finish off the day we headed over to a much lighter museum: a museum devoted to the history of rock and soul in Memphis. It begins with a film about the origins of the music which came to be called rock and roll and soul with many snippets from famous and not so famous singers who helped develop both of these musical genres. Nice introductory film and room. Here’s my favorite artifact: an old juke box - but, when you put your coin in, you get the song that’s next.
Pot luck. No choice here. You just hope that your money plays a song you like. We learned a lot about the musical genres that fused in the 40’s to produce the distinctive now style called rock and roll.
There were several spots where there was a listing of songs by artists and, with your headsets, you could listen to any or all of them on the list. Neat - and did I ever listen. I listened to some I had never heard by singers I had never heard of and I listen to old favorites. There are over 100 songs available for listening. There were old movies, about 40 costumes that various artists wore (weren’t the 70’s interesting?) and over 300 minutes of information about various artists that you could access through your headset.
After the film and the introductory history, we wandered through the next two rooms, checking out the artifacts, the music and the stories. I was particularly interested in the womens’ radio station, run entirely by women. Note the call letters of the station: WHER. Cute. They made it up as they went and sometimes it got hilarious. Once, one of the women introduced another woman who was going to read the foreign news by saying’ ‘Here’s some news from a-broad.’
In the end, I thought this museum began extremely well but ended weakly, The history of the 40’s and 50’s with poor sharecroppers and the introductory film were the high point - lots of good information and context there but then it just became artists and songs without much unity.
Cape Hatteras Lighthouse in NC is OUR Grand Canyon. The first time we were there, we just missed the last tour. I made note of the time, so we tried again--however, the fall hours had just started, and we missed it again. The third try was in December, and there were no tours. However, we lucked out when we went to the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum at Whitefish Point in October. It was supposed to be closed for the winter, but it was open for the some reason. We got to see the bell and read about the history of the Edmund Fitzgerald. Check out the lyrics from the Gordon Lightfoot song.
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