Tennessee – Shadow Cruisin'

Graceland

marcus — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 16:39:50 +0000

Always wanted to see Graceland. It’s a mere four hours west of my hometown but I never quite got it together to make the trip. I had to wait until I started dating Ms. America, Margo Crable, who was even more excited about the prospect of this pitstop than I was.

Elvis bought this house at a mere 22 years of age for about $100,000 but he was already an international pop star. His parents lived with him and he continued to call it homebase until his death.

There’s a strange contradictory effect in place as you walk around inside his surprisingly small but lavishly decorated house. The estate exists to venerate the myth but an unavoidable effect of preserving his personal effects as frozen in a moment in time where he was overweight, strung out on pills, and prone to riding around his lawn in a golf cart with a pistol in his hand is to provide visitors a kind of sick spectacle of American excess. But after climbing around the inside of a certain corner of his mind for an hour or two, and on his planes and trophy room, I discovered that I basically kind of liked the guy.

RIP, Elvis.

(Definitely check the photos.)

CVS No-show

marcus — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 07:02:39 +0000

Amanda sounded very nice on the phone and she had a comparable model Ford Ranger for sale just 30 minutes north of my first candidate. As I approached the address I found myself deep in southern commercial suburban diasporic sprawl and I wondered how we’d possibly find a residence wedged between a KFC and a title loan shanty. Turns out that 903 Memorial Blvd is in fact a CVS.

I parked and rang Amanda’s phone. No answer. Tried again, left a message, and waited for 20 minutes. Nothing doing. Even went inside and asked if an Amanda worked there. Nope.

Total mystery. I pushed on home.

Mysteriously-Belted 2001 Ford Ranger

marcus — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 06:01:20 +0000

Believe me, I’ve been looking for trucks. You can believe that. I tend to love fake Internet shopping for all things, especially on Craigslist. But I got to give it to my early-ass rising stepfather, he totally scooped me this morning on a 2001 Ford Ranger with brand new tires and brakes, an extended cab, and only 140k miles selling for $4,500. It’s not a firesale price but it deserves attention.

This one actually made the cut after a deeper morning’s research and prompted a drive to Nashville with my dearest mamma. I couldn’t understand a word the seller said on the phone but I love that the address was very close to benchmark 404, which is a badly formed nerd joke that I can’t be bothered to explain while typing laboriously on this iPad.

The guy had a southern accent but mixed in a very rare combo with the Indian accent of his birthplace. Skinny, smoked the whole time. Also very chill with my very winding test drive, which we did by ourselves. My mom fished a bunch of receipts out of the glove compartment. Turns out he dropped $5,500 on this truck only last September, and that was before the new brakes and tires. So I know he’s not going to be on the mood to haggle. And he couldn’t tell me anything about the timing belt. On these models the engines are “interrupting” and a thrown belt can damage a valve (and uh-huh, those are all words I learned to string together in that order less than 24 hours ago).

We rolled on to the next CL date. Who knows, maybe we’ll be back? The engine sounded good. I said I’d call him.