On Tuesday morning, it was time to leave Clarksdale and head up to Memphis, Tennessee. Built on a bluff just across the state line from Mississippi, Memphis is where the Mississippi Delta begins and has been called the capital of the Delta by some. The Blues Highway, US 61, leads through the Mississippi Delta country to Memphis and many delta blues musicians traveled north to and through this gateway city. Both rock and roll and soul music were born there. And coincidentally, my family and I first traveled to Memphis over 20 years ago at the invitation of my friend Matt to meet up with him and and his family to tour the city and spend some quality time together.
We left the Shack Up Inn and headed up Highway 61, stopping for breakfast at a Waffle House near Tunica, which is popular for its casinos. Matt and I don’t gamble, but as you may have noticed, we do eat. You already saw my standard Waffle House breakfast, so no food pic this time. Interestingly enough, though, this particular restaurant has a sizable water retention pond running beside the highway. Because of the pond’s elongated shape, at first glance, I thought it might be a creek. But upon closer examination, we determined that it was a pond and that it was inhabited by a fair number of turtles. Spoiled turtles. They were so used to being fed by well-meaning restaurant patrons, any time somebody would walk up to the pond’s edge, the turtles would all swim over expecting food. This was an amusing sight to see.
It probably took longer in the 19th century, but today one can drive from Clarksdale to Memphis in well under two hours. As we approached the metro area, we opted to skip the Interstate and stayed on US 61. This took a little longer and brought us through some vastly different areas of the city, which may be considered good or bad depending upon the eye of the beholder. Matt and I both appreciate the non-touristy side of this world and besides, we were in absolutely no hurry.
Despite having taken our time, we got into Memphis far too early to check into our hotel, so we opted to visit the Stax Museum of American Soul Music, a favorite for both of us. Even though Stax was forced into involuntary bankruptcy at the end of 1975, their legacy lives on. Booker T. & The MGs, the Staple Singers, Isaac Hayes, Sam and Dave, and Otis Redding, just to name a few, were all Stax recording artists. Thanks to the local community leaders who formed The Soulsville Foundation, the Stax Museum now stands on the former site of the Stax Records. And right next door, the Stax Music Academy and the Soulsville Charter School were also made possible by this same foundation. It’s a hell of a story.
Matt had proposed eating supper at Gus’s World Famous Hot and Spicy Fried Chicken in downtown Memphis, which was the chain’s first Memphis location and in fact only the second Gus’s location before it became a chain. Gus’s serves up southern spicy (not the same as Nashvillel hot) fried chicken, which is very flavorful but not painfully spicy. We opened with an appetizer of fried green tomatoes — my first time — which were quite tasty. Then Matt had a plate of fried chicken while I opted for their “limited time only” hot and spicy chicken sandwich, which is made with a boneless thigh, not a breast. Everything was quite good.
From there we walked to The Green Beetle, the oldest tavern in Memphis, located on the opposite side of the same block as Gus’s. This place had originally opened in 1939 as The Green Beetle Cafe and enjoyed some rather famous visitors before morphing into a dive bar and changing hands several times until rising to its current iteration, owned by the grandson of the Beetle’s original founder. It was okay, and reminded me of the college bars I used to frequent back in the day, though I think we had been expecting a bit more charm. Also, just a word to the wise, which way you walk around the block from Gus’s really matters. It’s almost upscale on one side of that block and sort of war-torn on the other.
The following day, after sleeping in a bit, we enjoyed lunch at a favorite spot that Matt had introduced me to a couple of decades ago: The Four Way Soul Food Restaurant, the oldest of its kind in Memphis. Although The Four Way was frequented by the likes of Elvis Presley and Dr. Martin Luther King, it’s not exactly a tourist destination. What it is, though, is a phenomenal soul food restaurant with a longstanding reputation as a gathering place where black and white diners can eat together — not a common thing for the place and time this restaurant was established (1946) and the years that followed.
I have never had a bad meal at this place. Matt had the chicken fried steak, black eyed peas, and pickled green tomatoes. I had a fork-tender, smothered pork chop, black eyed peas, and turnip greens. Both of us finished off with a delicious peach cobbler. Everything was wonderful, as always.
As an aside, I was sad to learn that the gentleman who had greeted me at the door so many years ago, Willie Bates, had passed away in 2017. I’ll never forget the way he greeted us and made us feel welcome, telling us the story of how he had bought The Four Way out of a desire to give back to the neighborhood. On my way out the door that first time, I walked over to tell him how much I had enjoyed eating there. I’ll swear, I thought the man was going to cry. That kind of thing sticks with me.
Next, we went over to The Blues Foundation’s Blues Hall of Fame Museum. Although the Hall of Fame has existed since 1980, this museum opened in 2015 and so, did not exist the last time I had been to Memphis. What a place! This museum was designed to provide an interactive and sensory experience. Besides all of the artwork, artifacts, displays, and recordings, for an additional charge, visitors can experience the museum’s interactive hologram exhibit featuring Taj Mahal. The Blues Hall of Fame is only the second museum in the United States to have utilized this technology. For about twenty minutes, Matt and I asked questions and this life-sized, three dimensional recording of Taj answered them. I’ll swear, he looked like he was gonna’ step out of that box any moment. But that was just the icing on the cake. The entire museum is great and well worth visiting.
For supper, Matt found us another hidden gem: Sam’s Deli of Memphis. Sam’s features a variety of Indian specialties but the menu overall can best be described as global. After opening with vegetable samosas an naan, Matt had this huge Italian salad and I enjoyed an equally huge sandwich called Mango Bonfire, made with Indo-Chinese chili chicken. The food was delicious and the portions more than generous. It’s best to come hungry to Sam’s!
We spent the final evening of our road trip on historic Beale Street, as it seemed fitting to do so. Beale Street had been a music hotspot long before it ever became a tourist attraction. Since the mid-1800’s, around the time of the Civil War, Beale was home to Black-owned businesses, clubs, restaurants, and shops. This is where the Delta musicians used to come up to play for Black audiences. Today the historic Beale Street district is considered the top tourist attraction in the state of Tennessee.
I had made only one request and that was to visit some clubs other than my favorite, the Rum Boogie Cafe. While I do love the Rum Boogie, it was the only club on Beale Street that I had been to thus far. So instead, we wandered into 152 Beale Street, which I believe was called “Club 152” once upon a time. Currently, this establishment seems to maintain absolutely no online presence. It’s a big place with two bars and seating throughout, including a row facing streetside. There was a band playing, a pretty good one, too, but not too many people were hanging out in there. I was not able to figure out the band’s name, but they deserved a bigger audience than they had. The bartender was pleasant enough, but again, not very busy. Matt and I listened to the band as we enjoyed our drinks, and then moved on.
We briefly — and I do mean briefly — ducked into another establishment, whose name I cannot recall, and quickly discovered that (a) it was open mike night and (b) the doofus at the mike was really drunk, really getting into the song he was singing, and really, really devoid of any talent whatsoever. We walked out faster than we had walked in and headed over to B.B. King’s Blues Club, a super popular place. We paid our cover, got seated, and stayed for a while. The band, who seemed to specialize in R&B and rock and roll covers, was extraordinarily polished. Although I had been hoping to hear more blues that night, I must admit they were quite good. The place was pretty full for a weeknight and the servers seemed to be working hard to keep up. On the bright side, my drinks were good and strong. It was a good way to finish the night.
Before leaving Memphis Thursday morning, we found our way to Brother Juniper’s, a delightful and truly local breakfast restaurant that is also highly supportive of its community. I gorged myself on a couple of huge blueberry pancakes with a side of thick-sliced bacon and a mug of steaming black coffee as I contemplated how I was going to lose all the extra weight I had surely put on over the course of the past week. As much as this trip had been about the music, it also proved to be a decadent excursion into southern cuisine — and I ain’t talking health food.
After we had both eaten our fill, we gassed up the car and headed north out of Memphis on Interstate 55. Within minutes, the skies opened up and let loose with a heavy thunderstorm and torrential rain. The storm eventually subsided, but that rain would follow us all the way to Illinois.
Once in Illinois, per Matt’s request, we took a planned detour to Tower Grove Cemetery in Murphysboro to pay our respects at the gravesite of Larry “Big Twist” Nolan. When we were younger, both Matt and I had been fans of Big Twist and the Mellow Fellows, a blues band that had become a top draw on the nightclub circuit in the 1970s and ’80s. The band played at Marquette University, where we had gone to college, every year that I was there, I think. It was still raining when we got out of the car and walked over to his gravestone. I had been there once before, so I knew exactly where to find it. We talked a little bit, took some photos, and then departed for home.
Unbeknownst to either of us, two days after we had made that stop, the Murphysboro Historical Society was to unveil a historical marker dedicated to Big Twist, who had lived in Murphysboro and raised his family there. We have already agreed that the next time we are in that area, we must return to Murphysboro to view the marker.
The drive back to Plainfield was a long one, but save for a brief scare when we kept smelling raw gasoline (not ours), it was uneventful. I was deeply touched when at one point I asked Matt what part of our journey he had enjoyed most and he pointed to me, submitting that it had been a long, long time since we had talked “like we used to.” That much was true. Once upon a time, it would not have been unusual for us to stay up into the night, spinning yarns, painting dreams, or solving the problems of the world. As we get older and take on the burdens that typically accompany adulthood, life sometimes distracts us from that which is most important. I will strive to remember this going forward.
Our journey concluded that Thursday night. Matt continued on to his home and I basked in the glow of it all as I began to unpack. We had ventured out in search of the blues and in that regard, we were successful. I can’t wait to do something like this again!
Well, this has been a long one, four installments worth. If you have been following along the entire time, I am grateful to you and, as always, I thank you for hanging with me.
The last time I took a solo motorcycle trip of any consequence was in 2013. Things happened that caused me to stop doing solo runs. The magazine for which I wrote about my two-wheeled experiences folded. I had started riding with a pillion companion and since I’m not a particularly good “alone” person, I decided I liked two-up touring better. Sometimes time got tight, sometimes money got tight, and for whatever other reasons, I had stopped even thinking about going off on solo runs.
As the Italians say, i tempi cambiano, which literally translates to the times change. Sometime last fall, my pillion companion went away and within months, a global pandemic ensured that nobody of sound mind would be socializing much for a while. Fortunately for me, the industry in which I work was deemed essential by the state of Illinois, so I never had to stop earning my living. Others have not been so fortunate. Still, socializing, on or off my motorcycle, wasn’t gonna happen. I even took up social drinking online. That took a little getting used to but then so does everything when it comes to change. Oh, things have loosened up some but still, every organized event that I usually attend during the spring and summer months, was cancelled this year. I had taken a few day rides, with my motorcyclist son and/or with friends, but that was the extent of it… until last week.
Kansas City, MO
My son works for a Chicago-based design, fabrication, and print firm called Redbox Workshop, which produces exhibits and environments for a variety of applications across the United States and around the world. He is currently managing a build out in Kansas City and is living and working out there pretty much through the months of August and September. Before he left, we had toyed around with the idea of me riding out to visit him and once he was out there, I decided to have a go at it. After seven years, it was high time for me to get on my bike, alone, and just leave everything behind, if only for a few days.
I was looking at five days, every one of them with daytime temps reaching the upper 90’s and not a drop of rain in the forecast. What could go wrong? As long as I stayed hydrated on the inside and lathered up with sunscreen on the outside, neither of which I was known for doing, I should be fine. So on the bright and sunny morning of Friday, August 21, I set out on Miss Scarlett, my trusty American-made full dresser touring bike. From my home in Plainfield, I ran down Interstate 55, a thoroughly unremarkable (other than the fact that it replaced a portion of historic U.S. 66) stretch of four-and-six-lane divided highway adorned with potholes and deteriorated lane seams. When I got to Springfield, I hung a right onto Interstate 72 and headed toward my intended mid-point lunch break in Hannibal, MO.
Ah, Hannibal! When I was younger, I had a crazy, single aunt who used to throw my sisters and me into the back of her station wagon and take us to all sorts of interesting places across most of the contiguous 48 United States and a good number of Canadian provinces, too. She introduced me to Hannibal, the boyhood home of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known to most by his pen name Mark Twain. To be honest, my first visit to Hannibal was interesting enough but hadn’t meant much to me. As the years progressed, though, I came to recognize Sam Clemens as an influence on my own writing. I have visited Hannibal many times over the past few decades, plus Florida, Missouri, where Sam was born, Hartford, Connecticut, where Sam built quite a showplace of a home for him and his family to live, and Elmira, New York, where the Clemens family kept a summer home and where they are buried. So you see, stopping in Hannibal that Friday meant more to me than just a lunch stop.
After a quick walk around, I decided to stop at a pleasant-looking storefront diner downtown called Greater Days. I was looking for a nice place to grab a good burger and I wasn’t disappointed. Greater Days is not a fancy joint, not a bar, just a nice little diner run by two very nice people. The decor runs along the sort of thing one might find in any small town America gift shop. Okay, maybe a small town America Christian gift shop, but not overstated in any way, shape, or form. The owners are delightful, a “seasoned” couple originally from Illinois. I found this out because the chef and I compared notes when he stopped by my table to greet me. My lunch, a blue cheese bacon burger on a homemade bun with a side of seasoned, cubed potatoes, was freshly prepared and quite tasty. I was delighted and I said as much before heading out on my way back to my bike.
Right next door to Greater Days is a shop to which I have been two or three times before, Native American Trading Co. If you are into Native American arts, crafts, gifts and goods, you might enjoy stopping here. I always do. The people at this shop are very pleasant and they have an extensive selection of merchandise with something for almost every budget.
I did not linger in Hannibal, although I wanted to. Everybody I saw in town seemed to be enjoying the day and some of the street-side pub patios looked very inviting. Still, I had another 230 miles ahead of me before I could stop for the day and it wasn’t getting any cooler out. In hindsight, this would have been an awesome time to reapply sunblock.
As I rode across the state of Missouri on U.S. 36, I found myself wishing I’d had my pillion photographer with me. Between the wooded areas, ridges, bluffs, and rolling farmland, America was all around me. How I wish I had photos of all that to share with you! Every so often, the air would become filled with a new scent. Newly mown grass. Dense woods. A fresh breeze off a small lake. A naturally fertilized cow pasture. As I surveyed the countryside, mile after mile, I thought about the people I’d seen and spoken with so far that day. That’s when it really hit home for me: One cannot truly experience America by scrolling on their electronic devices.
I pulled into my hotel in Overland Park right around supper time, hot, sweaty, a bit sore, and more than a little fatigued, both mentally and physically. I wasn’t used to long runs anymore. Still, I was happy to be alive. Thanks to modern technology driven by a global pandemic, my check-in process was done completely without human contact. Using my Hilton Honors App, I was able to check in a day in advance, enable my phone as my room key, chat with the front desk and eventually, check out. The app was ultra simple and easy to use, and I understand why they developed all these contactless features, yet I have real concerns about the long-term implications for hospitality workers who make their living by interacting with travelers. In all candor, I appreciate that human touch more than I do whiz-bang technological functionality.
My son drove out to pick me up and take me into the city for supper. We went to a delightful Creole place called Jazz Kitchen, where John proceeded to ensure that I would be overfed almost to the point of being in pain. We started with hurricanes and voodoo crawfish tails, then moved on to our main dishes (I had a blackened chicken fettuccine alfredo that was so tasty, I simply could not stop eating it), and finished up with bread pudding plus a plate of beignets, compliments of Toffee, our awesome server who is also a fan of my son. I loved every minute of it.
On Saturday, my son came back and picked me up in time for lunch, along with his roommate and another co-worker. I had told him that I wanted a hamburger from someplace I couldn’t find by staying home. My son did not disappoint. Hayes Hamburgers and Chili is a small place with a big following. Open only for curbside pickup, due to the pandemic situation, they accept no credit cards. We phoned in our order ponied up cash for all the food, and then went across the street, through an apartment complex, and into a municipal park where we sat down outside of a small baseball field and ate out fill. A nice little taste of America — and it was delicious.
We spent all of Saturday afternoon at the National WWI Museum and Memorial following a recommendation from a very good friend of John and me. We were expecting a nice, little collection of exhibits and artifacts. Instead we were overwhelmed by what turned out to be the most comprehensive collection of WWI objects in the world. We viewed exhibits, spoke with volunteers, learned much, and appreciated all of it. We remained through five o’clock, closing time, and had to depart without visiting the gift shop. No worries, we were back the next morning to collect up our mementos and souvenirs. This museum and memorial is a must-see for any war history buff. It’s the sort of place one must experience in order to understand.
After dropping off John’s coworkers Saturday evening, he and I decided that we weren’t hungry enough to eat another full meal. So instead, we went to a place not far from my hotel called Louie’s Wine Dive and Kitchen, where we enjoyed a couple of “small plate” appetizers, drank a fair amount of red wine, and philosophized into the night. Louie’s is a nice enough place but the tab we ran up for one wine flight, one bottle of Zinfandel, and two appetizers was more than I have paid for some good dinners and drinks elsewhere. Still, we enjoyed ourselves immensely.
Sunday was my last day in the Kansas City area and my last day visiting with my son John. That morning, after John scooped me up in Overland Park and then joined up with three of his coworkers, we descended upon the WWI Museum store, as planned, before going over to the original Q39 Kansas City BBQ Restaurant in midtown. The food was extraordinarily good, with a very pleasant beer selection to pair with it. On a more personal note, I really enjoyed hanging with these young gentlemen for a while. By including me in their conversations about food, drink, work, people, music, and more, they made me feel younger again. You know, like one of them. That was very cool.
This may sound a little nuts but my wife Karen had urged John and me to go find Kansas City’s Central Library Parking Garage. Why? Because of the Community Bookshelf that adorns the south wall of said parking structure. It’s a thing to behold that looks like a giant bookshelf of popular titles. My photos don’t really do the place justice.
As we were looking for a place to park John’s truck in the Library District, we spotted a bronze likeness of Mark Twain sitting on a park bench. My son immediately suggested that given my affinity for the author, we should go capture a quick meetup between Sam Clemens and myself after first shooting the community bookshelf. And so we did.
Alas, by suppertime, we were still so full of barbecue, we opted to skip supper altogether. John dropped me off at my hotel and thus ended our weekend visit. He had to go to work in the morning and I needed to head on to my next stop. Still, I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t felt the familiar pangs of loneliness creeping in that Sunday evening.
By now you might be wondering why I chose to stay in Overland Park when my son and his compadres were being housed on the Missouri side of Kansas City proper and nearly all that we saw and did were on that side. Well, I’ll tell you. While I have ridden my motorcycle in the state of Missouri a number of times now, I had not previously ridden in the state of Kansas. Now I have. Besides, I knew Overland Park to be one of the nicer suburbs of the KC metro and on top of all that, I found an excellent value in the hotel in which I stayed.
I awoke on Monday morning as I often do, with a sense of purpose. The day had promised to be as hot and humid as ever and I was about to cross Missouri again, but not to go home, not just yet. I had a personal mission to fulfill, one that I had put off long enough. But first, I had to get out of the Kansas City metro. And before doing that, I had to have breakfast.
It was not lost on me that Missouri has something wonderful that Illinois utterly lacks: Waffle House locations. Don’t judge. I love Waffle House, at least in part because it’s something I don’t have at home. In fact, I hope they never come to (northern) Illinois because then they wouldn’t be special to me. Like so many others that have come to town from elsewhere, they might then become just another chain.
But there I was, in Waffle House country. There are fifteen Waffle House locations in and around Kansas City and I hit the jackpot at their Lee’s Summit location. Friendliest staff I could ask for, they all seemed to be having a grand old time greeting people, serving up breakfast after breakfast, and otherwise just working their butts off. I sat down at the counter, which had been marked off so that only every other stool was available, and ordered my usual — a pecan waffle, large bacon, and black coffee — along with a big old orange juice to help soothe my sinuses, which had been a little quirky lately. Through a minor mishap on the grill, the crew had ended up with one too many orders of sausage patties and after first offering them to an elderly farmer-type gentleman two stools to my left, my waitress called out to me from up the counter, “How about you, sir, would you like an order of sausage for free?” Now I ask you, what else could I say to such generosity?
“Sure!” And so there I was, chowing down on my usual, plus OJ, plus two nicely prepared sausage patties. But wait, there’s more! Upon finishing, I remasked myself and stepped over to the register to pay my tab. A young, equally masked lady stepped up to the register to assist me and motioning out the window with her head as she worked the register, she asked me, “Is that your motorcycle?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Wanna’ come back after work and give me a ride on it?” Who knows, maybe it was be kind to old guys day. I had to smile, even if nobody could see it through my respiratory barrier.
“I would love to, but I’ll be back in Illinois by then,” I replied.
“You riding that all the way?” She seemed incredulous but I had neither the heart nor the time to tell this sweet child just how far Miss Scarlett and I have roamed together, so I just nodded and laughed as I paid my tab. We were all wishing each other well as I left, quite happy and well-fed.
Man, it was hot out there! I spent most of that Monday running Interstate 70 toward St. Louis and no matter how hard I tried to stay sunblocked and hydrated, it felt like a losing battle. I drank water at every stop, but released most of it through my pores out on the open road. Reapplying sunblock actually stung my skin every time. But wait, there’s more! About halfway across the state, I became aware of an intense burning sensation on my calves, mainly the right one, which was closest to the engine’s exhaust. After a while, this escalated from annoying discomfort to searing pain.What could I do? I still had many miles to go. Repositioning my legs helped a little but a prior experience piloting Miss Scarlett across Wyoming in a severe crosswind told me that the damage had already been done. I rode on.
I circumvented St. Louis and once on the Illinois side, left the interstates behind for Illinois 3, a nice ribbon of mainly two-lane blacktop that took me farther and farther south. Eventually I came to Illinois 149, which would take me east to Murphysboro, where via highway 13, I continued on to Carbondale, where I would spend my final night on this road trip. These state roads were beautiful motorcycle roads, with easy sweeping curves and pleasant elevation changes, but I was too fatigued to fully appreciate them. Perhaps someday I will return.
I’ll spare you the graphic details but once settled in for the night, I confirmed that I had incurred a substantial second-degree burn to my right calf, a burn from which I am still slowly and painfully recovering as I write this, more than a week later. But let’s talk about Tuesday morning and the reason I’d taken this odd detour to southern Illinois from Kansas City.
Big Twist and The Mellow Fellows performing The Sweet Sounds of Rhythm and Blues
I was eighteen year old when I first saw Big Twist and The Mellow Fellows perform. I was a college freshman and the band had been scheduled to play a Friday afternoon “Grill Concert” at Marquette University’s Brooks Memorial Union, which has long since been torn down. I was a regular at those free Friday afternoon concerts but had never heard of this band before. That quickly changed.
At the appointed time, the band came out on the stage and began to play. There was a guitarist, a bassist, drummer, keyboardist, and a two-or-three-piece horns section (I would later discover that some parts of the band evolved over time). Their sound was decidedly R&B with a touch of jazz and this band was tight, very precise in their playing.
After the band’s instrumental opening set, the front man walked out. Big Twist had a certain presence that filled the room — and I’m not just talking about his physical stature. Admittedly, they didn’t call him big for nothing. This guy was tall and… large. He wore a light-colored fedora hat and a silky suit. When he began to sing, his baritone voice complemented that band in ways I will not even attempt to describe. That was Big Twist.
After the concert, deep into my cups but so taken with the music I’d heard, I walked a dozen or so blocks to Radio Doctors, the premier record store of the day in downtown Milwaukee. Sure enough, they had an LP record album by Big Twist and The Mellow Fellows, their first ever, on the independent Flying Fish label. I took the record back to my dorm and played it over and over.
A year later, Big Twist and The Mellow Fellows came to my school to perform again. This time I was expressly there to see them play. I got there early and while the crew was still setting up, Big Twist walked out onto the floor and stood near one corner in front of the stage. People began going up and talking to him. I asked a friend to watch my beer as I did likewise. When my turn came, I extended my hand up and out, saying, “I saw you here last year and I just wanna’ say, I really enjoy your music.”
Twist looked down at me and gave me a warm, sincere smile. Then reaching down and closing a big, meaty fist over my hand (which isn’t small), he said just one word: “Alright!” That made my entire afternoon.
Over the years that followed, I saw the band perform numerous times, up in Milwaukee and at clubs down by my Chicagoland home. I introduced a number of friends, both from school and back home, to the music of Big Twist and The Mellow Fellows by dragging them to the concerts. In my own small way, I had become an evangelist for the band and made a few converts in the process.
It was my mother who broke the news to me of Larry “Big Twist” Nolan’s passing on March 14, 1990. I was not quite 29 years old at the time; he was 52. Bear in mind, this was still a largely analog world. I had no internet access, no smart phone to provide the latest news in near-real time. My dear mother spent a good deal of time in the kitchen, preparing delicious meals and listening to talk radio as she did. That’s why she was the first in our family to know. She told me and the Chicago Tribune confirmed it on March 15. As I understood it, Larry Nolan had died of heart failure, having endured kidney dialysis for over two years. And like many musicians of the day, obtaining health insurance coverage was difficult, even for the number one draw on the nightclub circuit. All I remember is that I felt empty inside. How foolish are we to be repeatedly duped into believing that there will always be a next time?
Once the information age had come around, sooner or later I began looking for more information about Big Twist and where he had been buried. There was none to be found but every so many years, I would try again. The gravesite super site, findagrave.com, had nothing, at least not at the time. I contacted his last recording label, Alligator Records. Somebody there thought he’d been buried where he’d been born, in Terre Haute, Indiana. At some point, I tried emailing Pete Special, the band’s co-founder, director, and guitarist. No reply. Only recently, I discovered that Pete had died in 2014 and it’s entirely possible that I sent the email after that. I even asked my eldest sister Maria, a career librarian, to see what she could find. She conducted a right and proper search but still found no information about where Twist might be buried.
I let the matter go for a while but never forgot. Then a few years ago, perhaps with the sharing of some resurfaced video on social media, I lamented my failed attempts to find that burial place. Lo and behold, a Facebook friend named Lori, who has sewn many patches onto my motorcycle vest, responded with a link to the information I had been seeking for years. As it turns out, she had dated the band’s trumpet player at one time. I was elated, to say the least, and vowed to visit that grave, located in the southern Illinois town of Murphysboro. Perhaps during a future run to Memphis.
More years passed and still I hadn’t made that trip. Then last month, while planning my solo run to Kansas City, it occurred to me that if on my way back, I veered southeast instead of east, I wouldn’t be that far from Murphysboro. And so I planned my detour.
I used Google Maps to survey the Tower Grove Cemetery. It was bigger than I’d hoped it would be, with no apparent directory or contact information available. How would I find this grave? I reached out to a total stranger named Paul Hoyt, who had put Larry Nolan’s grave on FindAGrave back in 2013. Perhaps he would recall the location.
Well, he did more than that. On a Sunday evening, this total stranger and his wife returned to Tower Grove, located the grave, took additional photos, and made them available to me, along with the latitude and longitude coordinates. Then, as an additional gesture of kindness, Paul transferred the FindAGrave record over to me because he sensed I had a stronger connection to Larry Nolan than did he as a cemetery photographer hobbyist. I will forever remember this act of kindness.
When I left Carbondale on Tuesday morning, the day promised to be as hot and humid as ever. I took the twenty-minute ride to the cemetery and had to smile as I passed the sign that reads, “Murphysboro, Ripe With Possibilties!” My personal mantra for decades was been, “Imagine the possibilities,” and I took that colorful sign as an indication that this one possibility, which I had envisioned for three decades, was about to come to fruition.
The Tower Grove Cemetery can be found on Murphysboro Lake Road, just north of Illinois Highway 149, one of the roads I had taken to get to Carbondale the night before. I was a little concerned about riding Miss Scarlett down into the cemetery, the drives of which appeared to consist of narrow two-track (it turned out to be badly deteriorated asphalt), so I parked around the corner at Mi Patio, a local Mexican restaurant, and walked into the cemetery.
I found the marker easily, thanks to the information Paul had provided. I sat by the grave for a short while, contemplating all that had transpired in order for me to be there. Sweat was pouring from my face as I shot a quick video for my Facebook friends. Then, after turning and thanking Larry “Big Twist” Nolan for all the joy he’d brought me, I walked back to my motorcycle, mounted up, and headed for home.
Seven or so hours later, I arrived at home, once again hot, sore, burnt, and spent yet in my mind, I was was already reviewing and preparing all that I would share with you here. In all, I’d run just over 1,200 miles and even though I’d been gone for five days, Miss Scarlett and I had covered those miles in three of them (I did no riding while visiting in Kansas City), so roughly 400 miles per day.
If you are still reading this, I am grateful to you for having come along all this way. You are the reason I wrote this. Thanks for hanging with me.
This Is MGD Time 