The National Civil Rights Museum at the repurposed Lorraine Motel in Memphis.

-- Photo By Joe Rogers |The Ledger

As a result of a recent birthday visit there, Memphis has risen significantly in my personal estimation.

You might think that, as a Mississippian, I would already have felt a kinship with the city next door. I mean, if it was good enough for fellow Magnolia Stater Elvis.

There’s also an adage that Memphis is spiritually, if not geographically, actually part of my home state. A plaque in the Peabody Hotel proclaims the familiar adage that the Mississippi Delta begins in the hotel’s lobby. And many Mississippians would be happy to claim the city as a sort of honorary capital.

North Mississippians, that is, like Elvis. Gulf Coast natives like myself have always reckoned New Orleans as the city to claim, if we were going to annex an urban area from another state. Much closer. Cultural smorgasbord. Great food. Mardi Gras.

And since first moving to Nashville in 1990 – a residency resumed in 2018 – I’ve seamlessly embraced the local attitude toward Memphis, which is, in a nutshell: It’s no Nashville. The only things that used to take me there were newspaper work assignments, including a couple of visits timed for coverage of Elvis death anniversaries in mid-August. Believe me, August is not the month to go to Memphis.

Even late June, my birthday date, was stretching the limits for acceptable heat levels.

So why go? I had three main goals:

• A baseball game on my birthday night.

• Ribs at The Rendezvous.

• A visit to the National Civil Rights Museum.

Beyond that, if all worked well, a little exposure to the music scene on Beale Street. And witnessing the celebrated march of the Peabody ducks. (OK, maybe that one was my wife’s.) Mission accomplished.

As if providentially decreed, the temperatures plunged (into the 80s) for our visit. We roamed only walking distance from our (not the Peabody) hotel, but that was far enough to meet all those goals and more.

Among my happy discoveries, not all of them surprising:

• AutoZone Park, home of the Memphis Redbirds, is conveniently situated right downtown. And the Redbirds – affiliated with the St. Louis Cardinals – staged a comeback victory for our entertainment. They are Triple-A rivals of the Sounds, so I’m not normally pulling for them, but did so in this case. They beat the Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp, aka the Oxymorons, on an impressive three-run homer.

• Main Street is a mostly tree-lined, quiet throwback to the 1950s or earlier. It even has an old-style electric trolley, reminiscent of New Orleans streetcars. The trolley doesn’t cover much territory, and the other two lines we’d hope to use for exploring are currently out of commission, but it’s a nice touch.

• A number of architecturally interesting old buildings are scattered about the downtown area. My favorite was probably the Kress Building, an early home of what became a national five-and-dime chain, but a visitor is pretty much always in sight of something appealing. Often vacant, alas, but not demolished, as many cities have done in the name of progress.

• The Mississippi River puts the Cumberland to shame, and a sunset over the Father of Waters is a sight to behold.

• The ’Vous Brew Pilsner is an excellent pairing with a slab of Rendezvous ribs.

• If you play your cards right, the staff at the Peabody’s Corner Bar will serve you up a duck-shaped white-chocolate and mousse confection with a candle for your birthday. Gratis. (It probably helps if the birthday is appreciably advanced.)

• The blues emanating from music venues on Beale is a lot more pleasing to my ears than the country tunes blasting out of Nashville’s Lower Broad/Second Avenue environs.

• The National Civil Rights Museum in the repurposed Lorraine Motel is a sobering, thought-provoking treasure. It’s the scene of one of this nation’s single darkest events, the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Across the street, in an extension of the museum, is the spot from which the shot that killed King was fired. I felt much as I did when visiting the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas, from which Lee Harvey Oswald fired the fatal shots at President Kennedy.

And it all prompted me to read and learn more about the circumstances surrounding that national calamity. Memphis took a tragic setting and turned it into an inspirational, educational attraction.

Hat tip to the Bluff City.

Joe Rogers is a former writer for The Tennessean and editor for The New York Times. He is retired and living in Nashville. He can be reached at [email protected]