Expect the unexpected in the US

By GRAHAM REID

The road from Clarksdale in the west of Mississippi to Tupelo in the northeast offers standard highway stuff. The journey is punctuated by the bodies of rotting armadillos bowled by traffic, and great swathes of tyres and skid marks where truckers have grappled with a blowout.

The countryside is pleasant enough but sole interest rests on seeing if there really is a Tallahatchie Bridge - where Billy Joe mysteriously threw something off in the Bobbie Gentry hit - as the river of that name appears.

When we hit generic America, with rows of fast-food franchises and chain motels lining the highways outside most cities and towns, I am reminded how much our view of America has been shaped, and distorted, by preconceptions and powerful images.

If Tupelo is known for anything it is because Elvis Presley was born here in 1935 in a humble two-room home his family built. There is a famous and much-reproduced black'n'white photo of this place, little more than a shack, really.

Having lived with that photo - and another of a 2--year-old Elvis with his parents looking like something from Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath - I imagined Tupelo to be a small town, perhaps half a dozen built-up streets in the middle of farmlands. More fool me, I realised as Taco Bell after Holiday Inn crowded the highway.

Tupelo is a big and busy city, and proud of its Elvis heritage. But it has a lot more to offer than a photo-op at the slightly restored Presley place, which now has a museum (with gift shop, of course) and a meditation chapel nearby.

Who, going to Tupelo for Elvis, would expect an exceptional car museum with more than 100 beautifully restored and gleaming cars which date from an 1886 Benz to customised vehicles of the 90s?

To be frank, cars don't interest me much but this chronologically displayed collection offers that most important of all responses, a high "Wow!" factor when you first clap eyes on it.

Laid out in a 120,000 sq foot room, it is the passion of local Frank Spain, who was a broadcasting exec (with impeccable taste in car-flesh) and who has declined offers to locate the collection elsewhere.

With touch-speakers giving background information on the vehicles and some of them being of pop-culture interest (Tony Curtis' car from The Great Race, a 1976 Lincoln owned by Elvis, a never-driven 1994 Dodge Viper with 12 miles on the clock), the Tupelo Automobile Museum is a sophisticated surprise.

You can't take photos inside, which is a shame - I wanted a visual memento of Liberace's custom-made 1982 Barrister Corvette, complete with candelabra. But that may be a good thing. You have to imprint such images in the memory.

Bustling and expansive Tupelo, with its historic downtown area, imprinted dozens of memorable images for me and shoved aside, or at least put in a better context, those two of Elvis.

We were recommended dinner at Vanellis and the idea of Greek/Italian was appealing. The lobby was lined with autographed photos of famous country singers and touring comedians, politicians and others.

The food was exceptional but it was the art that diverted us. A Picasso drawing, others by John Lennon and Rolling Stone Ron Wood. The place was an art gallery, and the last thing we expected in Elvistown.

America is full of such surprises.

Nashville in Tennessee is the home of country music. More of the stuff pours out of here than anywhere else, and whole streets are given over to music houses, publishers and record companies.

One night we bar-hopped and weren't disappointed. It's a pretty special city where a country-rock singer clambers on to the bar, the crowd is singing along, and people are kicking back over beers and whiskey.

All this takes place in a room little bigger than your lounge. And on a Sunday night.

This is why people come to Nashville. You don't come here to look at classic Greek architecture. But there it is. In a central park is a full-size replica of the Parthenon, although in much better condition.

Can't say I know of a Nashville country song - which are pretty heavy on specific place names and images - which mentions it, however.

This kind of thing throws you a little, in a good way. Then roll this image in your mind: Forts.

They are all reliably formulaic: an outer wall of posts (usually hewn to points at the top), a big gate which swings wide to let in the cavalry, and a flagpole in the middle of the courtyard-cum-parade-ground.

Fort Concho in San Angelo, New Mexico has the flagpole - but there ends any conforming to the cliche. Fort Concho is the best-preserved fort in the region but it stands as a series of low stone buildings which housed troopers and married officers in a square around a huge parade-ground. Not a defensive wall or hewn log in sight.

It is fascinating and another preconception is blown to hell. It's enough to make you give up watching cowboy movies.

Ten days before Tupelo - with its Picasso, Lennon and other artworks - we were in New Orleans, the birthplace of jazz, where Bourbon St was typically thronging with hooting drunks and T-shirt hawkers, and bands in bars battled for attention.

Sure we heard jazz, but not of the kind this city is known for. Late one night we stumble on famous old Donna's Club, some distance from boorish and boozy Bourbon St.

It used to be the home of voodoo queen Marie Laveau and this night it had in a group from Japan. They wore traditional costumes and played an idiosyncratic style on trumpet, accordion, banjo and traditional drums.

They performed beautifully bent jazz with traditional Japanese overtones, did some elegant trickery with what looked like a bamboo place-mat, and sang the strangest jazz I've ever heard. Best of all, you couldn't have planned seeing it.

Another surprise in a country famous for them.

Near the Kennedy Space Center in balmy Florida we are staying in a cheap place with bamboo and palm trees in the garden, a swimming pool and a Tiki Bar serving tropical cocktails. Lovely.

And its name? The Fawlty Towers Motel. This monumentally kitsch palace with a lolly-pink paintjob and faux turrets was a salute to the homeland by its British owners.

So what do we learn from all this? Nothing maybe, except that the unexpected is always more memorable than the anticipated. Preconceptions can also disappoint.

And you know what? There ain't no choo-choos in Chattanooga. Amtrak doesn't run there anymore.

* Graham Reid is a Herald feature writer currently on holiday in the United States. He is travelling courtesy of BMW.