April 21, 2009 Tupelo, MS

Album Alley/Bebop Records in Tupelo had a Select-O-Hits listening booth that was on the fritz, so the company sent me down there with a new CD changer to fix it. Fortunately, it was nice weather, and fixing the listening booth proved to be simple once I got to Tupelo, so I rolled past the other record store but found it closed since it only opened on weekends, and I soon found that the FYE was gone from Barnes Crossing Mall as well. It was about 5 PM, so after browsing briefly in Books-A-Million, I drove around the 45 bypass to East Main Street, where there was a restaurant called The Grill at Fair Park, which belongs to the Harvey's corporation. They were fairly empty, but open, and I enjoyed a steak dinner there while watching the CNN news talking about President Obama and the worsening economy. After dinner I wanted coffee, but JoJo's across the street had moved over onto Gloster, so I was headed that way, west down Main Street when I spotted Cafe 212, and it appeared to be open. Not only did they have great coffee, but they had something called a peanut-butter chocolate chip pie, which was undescribably good. After that, it was all I could do to stay awake back to Memphis.

September 29, 2008 Douglasville, GA; Tupelo, MS; Memphis, TN

There was no kind of breakfast anywhere in Douglasville other than Waffle House, so I went there and ate breakfast, and then, after checking out of the hotel, I drove west into Alabama. Finding gasoline was just as much of a problem in eastern Alabama as it had been in Georgia, and at Anniston, the Exxon station was compeltely sold out, so I had to drive on to Pell City, and even there, I could only get premium gasoline. I decided not to stop and eat in Birmingham, but I grew so sleepy on Highway 78 outside of Fulton, Mississippi that I decided to stop in Tupelo for a coffee at JoJo's Java downtown. However, when I got there, a sign announced that Jojo's was moving to the old Uptown Coffee location on Gloster Street, but I soon found that it wasn't open at either location, at least not yet. My iPhone was showing a Starbucks location on East Main Street downtown, but I never could find it, so I gave up and drove on into Memphis. My mother and her husband had only been back a day from their own vacation to Branson, Missouri, and they were tired and worn out from their trip, just like I was from mine.