Ahh, this time four years ago, I was drunk as a skunk at my good friend Tad Pierson’s fishing camp in West Memphis, Arkansas, celebrating my stag night with copious amounts of PBR, home-made chilli, moonshine and a dozen close friends, from as far away as Wichita Falls, Texas (where The Last Picture Show was filmed), the London and Frome, Somerset.
A coupla guys who lived at the camp – which was the far side of a dirt bank levee, and inhabited by a mix of the ornery, the half-mad, and itinerant construction workers plus Tad – turned up with some pallets to burn on the fire. There was much “Oooh, this is kool” type of comment from various peeps who’d never been to Memphis before. Tad, Ross G, Joe P and myself kept schtum, as the bottle of moonshine did the rounds, and recently caught fish was displayed proudly – we were hoping for the best kind of cultural cross-pollination, but fearing the worst.
“Pay him no mind, he’s half injun, anyways,” said the guy with the pickup and yellow waders, as his compadre threw the empty ‘shine bottle on the fire, “You know it’s good ‘shine cos it burns blue.”
We held our breath, and not just due to the inflammatory effect that the liquor was having on our gullets. Sure enough, an hour or so of pleasantries gave way to our pallet’n'shine-bearing guest with the waders declaring, “The only good n***er is a dead n***ger”, and other utterly inaccurate and unpolite statements of a type already known to the world by many descriptions. Said increasingly unwanted guest pressed on further, talked of “hanging ‘em from trees” and “beating ‘em with baseball bats”.
The faces of my friends whose hitherto closest experience of this kind had been Daily Mail readers or humming Duelling Banjos in jest then went a kind of grey colour. No fun, no mo’ – the ugly truth, sat on the log next to you, gesticulating wildly.
Weirdly touched by my impending nuptials, the racist in the yellow waders (no blood visible, fish or otherwise) gave me a cheap, gold-plated ring as a “sign of Memphis hospitality” – said he was given it by a local crime kingpin, in return for services rendered as a paid-up member of the Ayran Nation.
Duty bound to reciprocate, I removed a cherished badge from my rakish, motorcycle-style cap (freshly purchased from Alvin Lansky at Mr Hats that very day) and handed it to the fella in the waders, who’d declared his undying love of his hometown, Memphis, and vowed to rid it of “all f**king n***ers”.
“That’s mighty kind of you, I shall wear it always,” he said, with a tear in his voice, embracing me fishily, before standing back and stepping into the firelight, to get a clearer view of the gift from the “Engerlish fella”.
“What’s this stand for, anyways?”, he asked, turning the enamel Stax Records badge around in the flickering light, before fixing it to the strap of his waders.
Some 12 hours later, Nadia and I became the first people to get married inside Sun Studio, 706 Union Avenue, thanks to a lot of help from our friends and family, many of whom journeyed halfway round the world for the occasion.
Happy fourth anniversary, darlin’…
