Goin' to Memphis.

Memphis, Tennessee.

The dogs will present some challenges early in the morning, but it'll be worth it. I don't mind going to Memphis every couple of months.

Memphis sure has changed since the first time I was in Memphis with Mr. Big Food quite some time ago.

Two visits stand out. The first was the weekend of the Mike Tyson fight at that pyramid thing. By that time, it had become our habit to treat ourselves and go to the lobby bar at the Peabody-- which Mr. Big Food's Dad pronounces, "Pibbidy." And by that time, we'd learned that you need to be in the lobby after the ducks leave and preferably after the Graceland tourists and light-weight conference attendees leave.  And so we were.

(It's a great lobby. I really enjoy it, and the history room, even though they've changed. We'll be there, again in a month or so.)

What we had really never seen in real life was a truly ostentatious display of money and bad taste. It was the bad taste that got me. Bad Taste in an admittedly changing but still Good Taste Old Southern Hotel in an Old Southern City is in bad taste. In my opinion.

This was an isolated incident. Pretty random as things go. It did make an impression, though.

The second time was our first time after Katrina. The city had changed.  

I haphazardly looked at the demographics of Memphis when I was looking for information about a mall that had just opened at or around the time Mr. Big Food knew Memphis. It is now a church complex. There's a giant statue of Jesus holding the Statue of Liberty or something. DeadMalls.com is a fun place to look around. I think I also looked at the South Haven census.

Memphis has changed.

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Still, I'm not sad that we live so much closer to Memphis than we did. I like goin' to Memphis. Memphis, Tennessee.