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Show RTVER "Yeah," I said. He laughed some more and then said in a broad Texas accent, "He just took the biggest shit I've ever seen right back in the middle of Main Street." He bent over and scratched Thor's ears. "Thaf s a good dog," he said. On a side street I found a cheap diner that sold good hamburgers and I ate about three of them. I bought another and fed it to Thor. Then we wandered down Main Street again looking for Beale. I didn't recognize it when I got there, mostly because it was gone. The whole west end of Beale Street had been torn down and now the empty blocks were surrounded by plywood walls and wooden sidewalks. Red, white, and blue signs with Richard Nixon's name at the bottom proclaimed that this was urban renewal. I started back to my boat. I was coming down the hill from the post office when I met a young couple, not more than sixteen or seventeen, sitting on the hood of a beat-up Ford. They had come down from some Illinois backwater to get married. Now their car was broken down, and they were a strange mixture of joy and despair. I saw them again the next day, still sitting on the hood of the Ford. They were living in it, waiting for somebody to send them money through Western Union so they could drive back to Illinois. It must have been a pretty bittersweet honeymoon, but they were both happy in a child-like sort of way. My own financial situation was looking bleak. I had some change left, and not a lot of it. I had food in the boat and the owner of the marina was letting me sleep on the dock, so I wasn't desperate, and my brother had promised to forward my tax refund check to Memphis from California. It was a suspenseful trip to the post office the next morning, but I was in luck. I got the check along with letters from friends. I sat out on the stone steps and read my mail and -188- |