Big Mosey in Big M, Chapter 2

Here we go again, folks, with another chapter of the Big Mosey in the Big M. Seems a buncha more stories came back out of the memory bank, and wanted to be told. Some others came from a public TV program, and other places. So here we go!

I left you on Third Street, I believe, near the old Chisca Hotel, original location of the first station to air an Elvis Presley song, WHBQ. We'll go south a mile or so, and stop at the site of the old Holiday Inn. When Kemmons Wilson first built the inns, he put one on every highway coming into town. Well, it wasn't long after Sam Philips sold Elvis's contract to RCA, that he approached Kemmons with the idea of starting a radio station of, by and for women. The call letters were WHER, naturally, and it's studios were located in the lobby of the Holiday Inn on Third Street. There is a very good set of radio documentaries on National Public Radio by a couple of ladies called the Kitchen Sisters. To get the best history of WHER, you should go to the NPR website and look them up there. Those girls did a first-class job telling that story.

Kemmons Wilson got a lot of things going, but this one of his earliest and probably least well-known ones until NPR put out that series. He was not doing too badly, actually, when he started the inns in the Mid-50's. His plans designer gave the chain that name, because he'd seen the movie by that name with Bing Crosby, the night before. This was the 50's and name stealing was not the crime it is now. The studio probably felt honored to have a hotel chain named after one of their movies back then.

Lets cross Crump Boulevard, headed northward and tell a story from Civil War days. Seems the confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest was told of the presence of a yankee general named Washburn in the area. Forrest rode his horse into the lobby of a hotel looking for this guy. Washburn got tipped off that Forrest was on his trail, and he got in such a hurry that he didn't even put on his uniform to flee. He took off thru the night in his pajamas, it is told. Forrest got word of this, and wanted the man to at least be able to preserve his dignity. So, he had a soldier obtain the uniform, and, under a truce flag, deliver Washburn's uniform to him. On Union Avenue, in front of the ball park, there is a marker telling of some of this story. Between Main Street and the alley to the east, just north of Union Avenue, is an alley known as Washburn's Escape Alley.

Back during the days before the Civil War, Memphis was actually Memphis and South Memphis. Union Avenue was the common border of the two, so it was named Union because it joined the two cities. Memphis fell early in the war, in a naval battle, and was Union territory during most of it. Some folks make the incorrect assumption that it was named that because of being in Yankee held territory. Memphis and South Memphis were joined as one before the war broke out, and the mayor of South Memphis was only in office for a very short time between when South Memphis incorporated and Memphis swallowed it up. Seems there is a stream called Gayoso Bayou, which is still there, just underground. Gayoso went into the River on the north side, but meandered down the eastern side of the original town, forcing the development south, until they built bridges across it. Since the city fathers saw this happening, they didn't want another city blocking their growth as a city, so they took South Memphis in and made it part of the city. Later on, as more bridges got built across the bayou, settlement started moving east, as well as south. The two cemeteries that existed were just out of the southeast border of town. During the 6 Yellow Fever plagues, they saw a lot of action.

In the historical hall of Second Presbyterian Church, now in East Memphis, there is a copy of a letter to the then Union Army commanding officer from Abraham Lincoln. In it, Abe told the general, in no uncertain terms, to "get out of the churches, unless a military reason exists for your presence there". The letter is dated in 1864, so Lincoln was not addressing his war horse, US Grant. Grant had left town towards Vicksburg MS. Actually, according to Shelby County historian Ed Williams, a military reason could have existed. Seems there were rebel snipers shooting at the occupying Union soldiers from inside buildings, in the days after Memphis fell in the Civil War. Second Church was founded in 1844, in a building that no longer exists, on the northeast corner of Main and Beale Streets.

The city was founded a bit north of its present downtown. Two local guys got together with Andrew Jackson and founded the city of Memphis, named after the Egyptian city that gets mentioned in the Old Testament. The locals were James Winchester, and John Overton. It is a descendant of Overton's, Virginia Overton McLean, who is mentioned in the first mosey article, as heading up the group that is dedicated to keeping the city riverfront as a public space, not built by private developers.

The area the city was originally founded in, is known as The Pinch. Back in the depression era it was a neighborhood inhabited by people said to be "pinchgut poor", whatever that means. So, it became the Pinch. In the 1990's, when the city basketball arena was a pyramid-shaped building nearby, the Pinch was a thriving commercial district. NBA greed changed all that, and now the local basketball powerhouse plays ball somewhere else.

In 1962, an entertainer down on his luck, made a vow to a statue of St. Jude Thaddeus, that if he could pull his career back together, he would build a hospital and name it St. Jude Hospital. Along the way, the local medical government bigwig told him not just to build a hospital, but to make it a research institute, to find cures for the diseases it was encountering. Founder Danny Thomas and his wife are buried in a tomb located on hospital grounds. Daughter Marlo is now carrying the torch for St Jude Children's Research Hospital, and has enlisted the aid of entertainers such as Robin Williams, in its behalf. Every year there are more than a few charitable events worldwide, some athletic contests, that carry the St. Jude name and raise funds in its behalf.

Bet you never knew it, but the Grand Ole Opry was pitched to Memphis before it landed in Nashville. Seems the guy who owned it at the time, was from Mississippi, originally, and he first came here where he was at a TV station, pitching the idea, but the manager didn't bite. The guy later took it to Chicago, and they didn't go for it either. Sooo, he next tried Nashville, and WSM-TV jumped on it. Personally, this was a good thing, I thought. Wherever it ended up, was going to be a drawing card for country music, and Memphis and country music are not a good fit. We had the blues already, and some country stuff called rockabilly, but Elvis, Jerrry Lee, Johnny, and Carl all turned that into rock n roll, for which Memphis was a perfect fit. Turns out that between Gospel and Country, Nashville became the #1 recording center in the country.

Technology has a way of changing landscapes, sometimes. In the back of the businesses on Beale Street, as well as a few other places, there was a rail line set up to bring in coal for heating. There's nothing left of all that now, but sometimes you can see where tracks used to be. Also, until a parking garage/apartment structure began construction, there was a hole on the east side of Main St. , just a block south of Union Ave. You could go to the east side of this hole, look back west and see where there had been doorways in the west wall, a level lower than street level. So, Main Street got built up to its present level sometime in the last 100 years or so, for reasons unknown to this writer. It may have been that there was a network of tracks for the coal cars delivering coal all over town, dunno. That's how Atlanta got Underground Atlanta. There were so many tracks all over the place, a new level of streets was needed just to get around. The tracks in Atlanta had a lot more to do than deliver coal, though, but that's another article.

This'll about do it for Memphis. Being the hometown, it deserved more than the rest, but I am out of stories, so its on to the next mosey, which I have not decided on yet. Look for either Atlanta or Knoxville. As always its been fun sharing this stuff with you. See you next mosey!