03/30/09 Memphis by mistake

I can’t believe it snowed this weekend!! It’s the end of March and I am set for spring, not winter!

A couple of Sundays ago we had a chicken and dumpling dinner at church. Randy suggested it as a way to collect some money for the Family Benefit Fund. They got about $800, although the church decided to split it between the Family Benefit Fund and the Marriage Retreat. 


I finally broke down and bought some new clothes – some items for work and a couple of casual clothes. And then new dress shoes and tennis shoes. Then Randy went shopping with me, so I also got a couple of dresses.  


Last weekend Randy and I took a mini-vacation. Tuesday Randy drove to Theresa’s house with all the pets because she agreed to baby-sit them while we were gone. That’s a lot of driving to get there and back in one day, but he couldn’t space it out more because of his commitments to the RV Park and Aaron. Wednesday night after I got off work we drove out of St. Louis and headed for Hot Springs, Arkansas. We didn’t go too far that night so we got a hotel, and Thursday morning drove on. Around mid-morning while Randy was driving, I started making calls to find a hotel and Hot Springs bath/massage. There are several natural hot mineral springs in that area and hotels have been built up around them, so you have to make a reservation at most of them. When I looked up from my phone and hotel books, we were at an exit I didn’t recognize. Thanks to a wrong turn, we were on our way to Memphis! Since I had learned that most of the hotels were already full, we just went on to Memphis. Got a hotel there in downtown and walked to Neeley’s for BBQ. It was pretty good, but not nearly as good as Corky’s, which is where we usually go for BBQ in Memphis. We caught the trolley back to the hotel afterwards because it was a bit too dark to be walking around. The next day we just walked around Memphis to see the sights. We went to Beale Street, which is very famous. In the day it was pretty quiet – not much going on. We went to Corky’s for a late lunch, and I am telling you that Corky’s is the best dry-rub BBQ in the world! (The best wet BBQ is Oklahoma Joe’s in Kansas City.) When it got dark we went back to Beale Street – what a difference! The street was crowded and there were blues bands playing everywhere. We enjoyed the whole scene for awhile.


In the morning we thought we would go to Graceland, since we were in Memphis and we’ve never been to Graceland. It was around 9 am and it had been raining all morning so I thought there might not be much of a line. But there was a real crowd lined up, and neither Randy or I wanted to see it enough to wait in a line like that, so we skipped it. We thought about going to Nashville, but decided to come home. I’m really glad we did because it while we were picking up the pets, Sharon called to tell us about the ATV accident, and we were close enough to go to the hospital. Sharon’s daughter Vicki has a 31-year old daughter named Kama. Kama and her 9-year old daughter Paige were on an ATV (without helmets) and it crashed. Kama got a lot of broken bones – she broke her collarbone, pelvic bones and several ribs, which also got her a punctured lung. But all that will heal normally.  Paige, unfortunately, was thrown head-first into a tree. She had severe internal bleeding in her brain and was so bad that after a couple of days there was talk of “pulling the plug”. However, by the grace of God she is actually getting better. She is still in a coma but she is breathing 50% on her own now, and the bleeding at her brain stem has stopped. 

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