Got up kinda early and went straight for the Hatch Show Print studio downtown on Music Row.

Good, good stuff. So much history in that place. We flipped through bargain poster piles, chatted with the worker bees and gazed at the vast network of shelves of woodcuts and typefaces. Like kids in candy stores. Big, big plans are in order for a DDC Hatch Print of our very own, for no reason other than, “It’s about time we did a Hatch Print for the DDC.” Too much stuff to look at it there. Too much. Thank you for being completely awesome.

153. “Hatch Show Print, no.01”
154. “Hatch Show Print, no.02”
155. “Hatch Show Print, no.03”
156. “Hatch Show Print, no.04”
157. “Hatch Show Print, no.05”

We hiked down to the Country Music Hall of Fame but found ourselves put off by the hefty admission prices. Just didn’t look all that cool. Last thing I want to see is Kenny Chesney’s hat or some fuckin’ Toby Keith beard trimmer or something. A poster of those turds…this contempo-country duo…uh…their name escapes me: One of the guys twirls a mike stand all the time. Well, that did it for us. We were outta there. Garbage.

158. “Ernest Tubb’s collection of suits.”
159. “Bocephus.”
160. “Nashville: A land of Golden Records.”

We walked up to the Ryman to poach the place a bit, grumbled over admission prices and decided to throw the towel in on Nashville. We headed due south, past large houses in the ever-compressing countryside.

Isn’t too hard to get down across Tennesee, and in no time we were crossing over into Alabama, and down to Muscle Shoals. Thought about George Wallace and Lynryrd Skynrd and the Stones recording at Muscle Shoals and Drive By Truckers lyrics and Babe Bryant and stuff. But only for a little bit, as, that Mississippi state line came up on us pretty quick.

We were headed for Oxford. I had heard of Oxford, mainly of it’s cultural exports like Blue Mountain, Larry Brown books and that whole Fat Possom records thing there.

Ole Miss!

Well, we didn’t see too much of any of that. We did see this: Lots of dolled up blondes clunking around in their “We’re going out and partying!” duds. Yawn. Lots of dudes with light blue dress shirts (tucked in) and hats turned around backwards. Yawn. More chicks stumbling around, enjoying the phenomena of “having too much to drink” and so on. Yawn.

We did find the grave of William Faulkner, only to re-realize how painfully boring his stuff is. I’ve tried to get through, “The Sounds and the Fury” about 23 times, only to fall asleep drooling and ultimately losing my place in those pages for another year or whatever.

161. “20 steps east.”
162. “The final resting place of William Faulkner. (Forever is a long-ass time.)”

Some guy in a smaller town a couple days put it pretty good, “Fuck Oxford and it’s old white money. Bunch of rich kids driving brand new cars and shit.”

We got a room on the ugly side of town, far from the manicured college dorms and frat plantations. Fell asleep pretty hard thinking about Highway 61 that wasn’t too far too the west.