Safe and Sound in the City of Soul

By Alex Morris

I arrived at the Memphis bus station at 7:30am on Monday, July 10th, 2023. The Megabus left Little
Rock at 5am from what residents told me was a sketchy gas station. I was 35, about to turn 36 in the
middle of a month-long journey through the Southern United States. My mission was to travel on buses
and trains as much as possible. I barely slept the night before, dwelling on my early departure time and
tossing and turning in my bed at the historic Fire Museum and Hostel.

I felt twice my age and looked it too, as I stumbled sleepily into the large, mostly vacant Memphis bus
station. I couldn’t get to my hostel room until 3pm, and the concept of staying awake for the next seven
hours made me want to lie down and die on the steaming streets. I had previous grand plans about
getting a local bus from the station to my hostel. They seemed laughable now. The bus would take at
least an hour and the Uber would take 15 minutes. I couldn’t bear to think about navigating a new place
as the day got hotter.

My Uber dropped me at Hostel Memphis, located within a church in Cooper-Young, a progressive part of the city with rainbows as sidewalk crossings. It was way too early to get to my room, so I shared a pot of coffee in the hostel kitchen with the manager Penny Karwacz.

Here began my first real conversation in the city of soul.

When I interviewed her, Penny had been living at the hostel for the last three years. She’s an artist,
writer and a mother. For her, the best thing about living in Memphis is the people.

“There’s lots of room in Memphis to create from the ground up. And I like to talk to people and listen to
their ideas and support their visions for themselves in Memphis,” she told me.
  
I asked her what the worst thing was about living here.

“The heavy sadness, the poverty and the violence. Dr. King was shot here, and I think that Memphis is
recovering and finding itself still. The violence and poverty has gotten worse. There’s so much need here and that’s an opportunity to be better for one another and I want to see Memphis come together and make the best decisions for ourselves,” she said.

Earlier in the day I had watched the sun rise spectacularly as the Megabus chugged through eastern
Arkansas. I felt a lump in my throat. Born and raised in South Carolina, I have lived in Australia for the
last decade. During this trip I was travelling solo on a mission to find the heart of America. My Aussie
boyfriend thought I was nuts. He had been sending me crime stats about every city I visited, in his desire to make sure I take lots of care. It worked too well. I read about how violence Memphis: aggravated assaults, rapes and murders.

After chatting with Penny, I still had time to kill. I walked down Cooper Street. Similar to Little Rock,
people weren’t really on the streets, but it was an interesting part of town with cute boutique shops. I
settled in at Otherlands Café which had free wifi and nice coffee. It was a great way to chill out while
feeling delusional. The name said it all.

I don’t know if it was my boyfriend’s fear and Penny’s mention of sadness, but something about Memphis felt heavier, more bluesy. Maybe I was projecting. People were kind, but on the first day, they
seemed wary and cautious. Like myself, people seemed tired. Maybe I was just tired.   

Later that day I met up with a friend of a friend, Andrew. Originally from Chicago, he moved down here
with his wife a few years ago. I waited for him outside Soul Fish Cafe where I noticed a police car parked
and an officer hanging outside. Andrew arrived shortly thereafter and over a southwest salad and
cornbread muffin I learned he used to put on a radio show for Memphis Community Radio station
WYXR.

He told me to check out the Crosstown Concourse, which was a massive Sears Distribution building back in 1927. The National Civil Rights Museum was a must.

I asked Andrew to drive me to a nearby ATM, which he kindly did. (I was nervous to walk.)

“I don’t know, am I being too cautious?” I asked, laughing awkwardly.

“Yep, I think you are,” he said. ”You can see there are people out walking around, walking their dogs.
This neighborhood is fine.”

I felt silly for worrying. I’m from this region, but I haven’t lived in America since my mid-20s. I didn’t
know Memphis at all and needed to be aware of how little I know. But living in fear is hardly living. Had
living in my privileged Australian bubble sheltered me too much? Had I become alienated from my
homeland? So many Australians refuse to visit America because they believe it’s all guns, violence and
racism.

Andrew dropped me back and hurried up the stairs, falling deliriously into my hostel bed.

Oh the power in a good night’s sleep. The next morning, a new woman, I decided to try Memphis’ public
transit system. I was able to catch a bus after walking into a shop and asking where the bus stop was.
Wanda the friendly bus driver later explained people had been taking down bus stop signs and benches
as some homeless folks were leaving their belongings there. Now the bus drivers don’t always know
where to stop. I gave a big wave for her to pick me up. She described herself as 57-year-old “blessed
beautiful black woman, getting prettier with age.” It was mostly just me and her on the bus. I told her
about my quest to spend my southern summer getting around without a car.

“You gotta real nice personality, I think you gonna make it,” she said.

I got off at Overton Square where I ate tacos at Babalu and interviewed a young server named Natalia. Originally from Guatemala City, she was happy to talk to me about safety between the two places. (For her, Memphis feels so much safer.)

After that I walked to another bus stop, but I wasn’t quite sure if I was in the right place. An older man
with a mask around his chin also waited. I asked him if he took the bus often.

“Just every two weeks or so when I need to go to the liquor store,” he told me, laughing.

We got on the next bus together but once I got off to try to make the transfer to Crosstown Concourse, I
got confused. I waited at least 30 minutes with various interesting characters and then watched the bus I wanted drive past me across the road to my right. I had read the map wrong. It was once again time to
call on Uber, and then I was at my destination in less than 15 minutes.

Crosstown Concourse was vast with multiple stories and all kinds of shops within including the Memphis
Listening Lab where everyone is invited to listen to records for free. I sat down and enjoyed Memphis’
Ann Peebles for a little while at a staff member’s recommendation.

I met a lovely woman who worked (and lived) in the building; she took me up to see an exclusive view of
the Memphis skyline. I told her I was contemplating walking back to my hostel and she told me wouldn’t
walk more than five minutes away from Crosstown Concourse. Disappointed in my own caution, I took
an Uber home. The driver, Koko, was an African immigrant, this time from Sudan. He talked to me about
good places to eat in Memphis, pointing them out as we drove past. He liked living in Memphis.

“There is trouble here, but only if you go looking for it,” he said.

That evening I ate at the highly recommended Young Avenue Deli. I had enormous cheese sticks like a
good American. I thought about how I had done so little with my day. Why had so many of my
conversations just been about safety?

That night, I got a phone call from a woman named Queen Keskessa.

Queen had seen my post in a Memphis Facebook group and thought what I was doing was entertaining
and crazy. She worked for the local government and offered to pick me up from the Civil Rights Museum
the next day and show me the city. It felt so special; I wanted to cry.

The next day an Uber driver named Reggie took me to the Civil Rights Museum. “Don’t believe the
hype,” he said when I asked him about Memphis and crime. Then I spent nearly three hours at the
National Civil Rights Museum. Queen called me to say she’d arrived and I hurried through the final
exhibitions (room 306 where Dr. King was assassinated).

Queen picked me up, and the vibe shifted! She was full of stories. She pointed out protestor Jacqueline
Smith, who, prior to Dr King’s assassination lived and worked at the Lorraine hotel as a housekeeper.
Now every day she stands with signs outside the museum. Her sign said she had protested the museum
for 35,168 days. She sees it as a death-glorifying tourist trap. I read about her more after I left Memphis
and regretted I didn’t interview her when I had the chance.

In the car Queen told me about her journey from Ethiopia to Memphis and how she ended up working
in local government. She wrote a kid’s book during the pandemic, she told me. She drove me around,
showing me how Memphis was developing a greenways trial! Later we rode the historic Memphis
streetcar up and down Main Street, it was just a dollar!

Queen kindly shared her lunch with me. After we had seen Memphis and walked around City Hall, I got a
great behind-the-scenes view of the bridge over Wolf River where singer songwriter Jeff Buckley
famously drowned. Then she generously drove me 30 minutes to the very same Memphis bus station
where I arrived two days before. She gave me a City Hall bag and a pin.

Her positive attitude was infectious. She joked that now Memphis should be on the top of my list of places in the South. I arrived in Memphis afraid and exhausted. I boarded the Greyhound to Nashville
energized and full of love for the home of the blues.

Alex Morris is a writer, poet, emcee and events organizer originally from South Carolina currently residing in Australia. In the summer of 2023, she took a soul-searching voyage through the South, traveling by Greyhound, Amtrak and Ubers when she had to. “I’m a public transport advocate, but this six-week trip was inspired predominantly to learn more about people, place, culture and my roots,” she says. “After living in Australia for as long as I have, I worry I’m forgetting where I come from.” Since returning, she has continued to write about her trip, and last year Country Roads magazine published her story 24 hours in Meridian Mississippi, and her local paper published Little Rock, Arkansas, Raleigh, North Carolina and New Orleans. She has also written about it in her Substack.