Alarm Clock Ticks, Time Bomb Drops

Econolodge
Southeast Nashville, Tennessee

Tearing through Graceland, Casey Jones's house, and Route 40... humming the black angel's death song... discovering the true meaning of folklore in the narrow stretch of road between Waffle House and the Econolodge...

It may or may not be possible to reconstruct the day from the items spread out around the room. A picture of the two of us at Graceland is tucked in the corner by my backpack. A postcard of a colourized daguerreotype of the real Casey Jones is leaned up against my computer. Wet clothing is draped on the air conditioner, drying off. Empty containers of non-dairy creamer are littered on the floor. A potted plant sits on the table behind my computer.

When we go to places - Graceland, Casey Jones's house in Jackson - we see fragments and are left to reconstruct for ourselves or trust the museums' interpretations. The fact is, there was a moment - or moments - when something happened: when Elvis and the boys started picking out That's Alright, Mama in Sun Studios; when Casey Jones's engine made contact with the train. At these places, we try to get back to that precise moment, like reconstructing an airplane downed by a bomb.

What's the point of reconstructing a plane so that it doesn't look a thing like the original? Graceland was a finely oiled machine, on par with the Richard Nixon Presidential Library, that systematically stripped Elvis of life. On the audio-guided tour, there were vague allusions to addictions to prescription drugs and the wear of the rock and roll life. It's not just a morbid fascination with his downfall, but simply an interest in what makes the man compelling.

Elvis's success story is nice, sure, but it's what happened afterwards that really makes the story worth noting -- how he devolved into a strange inner weirdness, constructed a jungle room in his pleasure palace, took target practice on televisions, and instructed his personal chef to cook nothing but meatloafs for six months. The most resonant thing we saw was the racquetball court that Elvis played on just before he went upstairs and died -- which had been, for the most part, covered over with gold and platinum records.

By contrast, the Casey Jones house was much less well done than Graceland. Still, there was a more overt sense of the darkness that permeates the legend; not afraid to delve into the theories surrounding Casey's death. The house was an utter tourist trap. Almost none of them items in the house belonged to Casey, all of them were pieces leftover from the period. For someone who didn't anything notable besides die in a fiery train wreck (and get lucky enough to be memorialized in a dozen folk songs), there were an awful lot of fragments.

It was somehow the vagueness of the Casey Jones legend that made the visit worthwhile. It may have been shittily done, but there wasn't much it could do to reconstruct a life - or death - that no one really knows anything about. It's weird. It's dark. How it made it onto the permanent record is heartily interesting, though totally ungraspable. Why do some things get remembered and immortalized and others don't? There were - and always will be - disasters. Why did this one get remembered in such a manner?

As we waited in the Nashville bus station to pick up my friend from a 14 hour ordeal on a Greyhound, I pondered the fate of news. What would become history? What would become lore? Yesterday, I saw a newspaper headline that read "Gas Prices Fuel Anger". It seemed like a prop that a filmmaker would drop into a movie to let the viewer know of some historical or social context. What kind of events are earmarked for murkiness? Either in the world at large or in someone's personal life?

I'm not sure how much documentation has to do with it, but I can wager a guess. Folklore happens in a flash. The only pictures exist in the seconds before or the seconds after, or only catch part of the scene -- it's impossible to absolutely capture the whole thing. There's a photograph of Abraham Lincoln, distant and fuzzy in a crowd, just before he made the Gettysburg Address. The Address itself has entered history, its circumstances are folklorish.

All of Elvis's costumes and jewelry and guns and televisions and couches and indoor waterfalls and gold records and pianos and guitars are part of a defined history. When Elvis went off alone to die -- that's not. When we climbed over the fence at the hotel swimming pool tonight and dove in, when we got into a fight with non-dairy creamer containers during the walk from Waffle House back to the hotel... those are things of folklore. It's not the history of it that's important, or even interesting, it's what's in between -- the glue, I guess. Or, if you'd like, what shuffles in between the lines.

History itself is only worth studying for what we don't know, what's not on record, the genetic bond that connects the things we do know together. I know jack about atomic theory, but I'd guess that there's probably some kind of isomorphic equivalent to that in that world -- the thing that draws matter together. It's something more instinctive, more basic. It's the feel of time stretching like an elastic around you.

Jesse Jarnow is so excited he can hardly sleep. Though he probably will. He can be reached at jesse.jarnow@oberlin.edu or, by way of his homepage.