A Bond Over Memphis ‘Cue and Memories of the City We Love to Hate

Last week, I had the pleasure of meeting a new friend for coffee.  Now, we’ve been friends for a couple of years on Facebook after bonding over a local post where people were talking about who has the best BBQ around our area here in Southern Virginia.  As a native Memphian, I responded that there is no such thing as good BBQ around here.  Carolina BBQ has no real flavor, and the sauce is runny.  It is NASTY!  Sorry to my Carolina readers, but this is an age-old debate that finds us all pitted against each other; if you are a fan of Memphis BBQ, you won’t like Carolina BBQ.  I would say vice versa, but when you come from the home of the World BBQ Championship and the #1 BBQ restaurant in the country (and no, I am not referring to Rendezvous – blehhhcccccchhhh!!!), you get some bragging rights.  And we are not even going to consider Kansas City BBQ… my first husband was from KC, and even his family agreed that Memphis ‘Cue was the best!  Anyway, we connected on Facebook over this post, and we’ve been friends ever since, but we’d never actually met in person.

Finally, we changed that.  It was so nice to sit down with someone who gets that part of me, that part of me that remembers when the Nine Oh One won awards for being the most beautiful and clean city in the nation, the part that remembers the Memphis that was safe for families to live in and kids to ride bikes in, to take buses to the malls!  That was the Memphis I grew up in… the Memphis that loved Tom Lee Park just for being the large grassy area on the bank of the Mississippi where families could play frisbee – home to the Sunset Symphony – instead of some hyped-up cookie cutter expanse of concrete and strategically placed trees designed by some landscape designer from Chicago!  That Memphis – the one where Overton Park was closed to vehicles on Sunday afternoons for roller skating, walking, and biking; the one where the Mid-America Mall in downtown had the old Goldsmith’s where you could explore the Enchanted Forest before Breakfast with Santa at the south end, water fountains up and down the mall, and Obleo’s Dog House where you could stop and grab a bite to eat. 

When we were younger, my friends and I played outside from dawn til dusk!  We knew we had to go home for dinner, but on summer evenings, we often came out to play after dinner, even when the streetlights were on!  We knew everything that went on in our neighborhoods, every car that belonged there, every person on the street, and we knew when something wasn’t right.  As we got older, we started going further afield, meeting new friends from different schools and neighborhoods. 

The Mall of Memphis, where I spent nearly every Saturday afternoon as a teenager, is long gone now, replaced by some kind of truck service place, but talking about the Memphis we grew up in gave me a stroll down memory lane… back then, we roamed the mall in packs: nerds, preps, jocks, popular kids, metal heads, and the outcasts, the weird kids who always seemed to find each other sharing a common bond of being just enough “off” that we were always on the fringe of society.  My parents called it “antisocial”, but we weren’t antisocial, just antisocial with what we saw as mainstream society. 

We smoked as we watched the skaters on the ice rink as we stood around waiting for friends to finish playing video games in the Gold Mine, the arcade in the mall.  We walked up and down the two levels of what we thought was a teenager’s paradise, going in and out of different stores like US Male, Gadzooks, Spencers, Victoria’s Secret, and Frederick’s of Hollywood.  We’d hang out in different spots waiting for one or another of our friends to show up, usually grab a slice of pizza from Sbarro, go look at the puppies in the pet store, and occasionally catch a movie.  It honestly didn’t matter what we did, as long as we were with our friends, and there were no parents supervising us.  It was always mortifying when I would hear the familiar and distinctive chirp of my dad’s whistle (he could sound like a cricket, and we always knew when he was calling us!), but at least I could probably get some cash from him. 

In essence, we were pretty safe hanging out at the mall, even though we had to use a pay phone if we needed to call home because none of us had cell phones back then.  We never got into any trouble, never got run out of a store, never stole anything.  Sure, we smoked, but it was the 80s, so a lot of teens did back then.  We cussed when we talked (some things never change!), but we never got in fights with other groups.  We were safe.  We had fun in a place where we could just hang out and be together.  Kids today will never know the fun of hanging out at the mall, and that’s really too bad. 

Raising a teenager today is different.  Abby can contact me from anywhere, anytime, when she has her cell phone, but I can’t reach her because she never turns her ringer on, so she doesn’t even know if I’m trying to reach her!  She wouldn’t respond to a text message anyway.  She can’t tell me how to get to the grocery store because she has always spent car rides looking down at her phone or a book, and there is really nowhere for her to go hang out with a group of friends.  Now, they hang out at home, I guess. 

Like most indoor shopping malls around the country, our local mall here is nearly empty – not even an arcade – and there was a shooting inside in October!  More and more stores are leaving.  Kids can’t wear hoodies, and they can’t be without an adult after six in the evening.  That’s unfortunate.  The mall was the place I could be on my own and spend time with my friends, but I knew that my dad could (and often did!) pop up at any minute.  Whether he was checking up on me, I don’t know, but I certainly wasn’t going to do anything too stupid just in case he caught me!

As we talked, we both agreed that we love Memphis for what it is, but we also hate Memphis for what it is. One thing is certain though, you can take the girl out of the Nine Oh One, but you can’t take the Nine Oh One out of the girl! After writing this, I am now Jonesing for some Memphis ‘Cue and the Cure.  I’ve got the Cure, but I’ll have to wait on the ‘Cue!