Down to the Wire - Worried about Memphis

Montegut
Mon, 18 May 2009 21:42:28 +0000

Husband lived in Bartlett during Katrina year, but we visited him during breaks and very often went into the city of Memphis.

Our first visit was Elvis’s birthday weekend, and my first stop was Graceland. It was snowing! For you youngsters, Elvis’s birthday is in early January. Hey, I’m not that much of a fan that I know his exact birthdate, but it was a beautiful light snow, and we were able to get by with windbreakers. Now, we’re from New Orleans, and not accustomed to the cold, and it was bearable for us.

As for safety in Memphis, we would go to AutoZone Park for the baseball game, then walk down to Beale Street, walk down to the Gibson Guitar Factory, then to the River. We were never accosted by beggars, and never felt unsafe.

Seriously, we were hoping husband would get transferred there. We loved it so much. It had the beauty of the Mississippi, the friendliness of the south, and the food was to die for. As New Orleanians, we are very hard to impress with food from other cities. The barbecue is to die for.

When we’d tell locals we wanted to settle there, they’d say, Why, there’s so much crime here? When asked what they meant, they’d say, gee, there were five murders last year. Well, we get that in one day in New Orleans.

As for Rhodes, we often drove by it, and never saw any “bad characters” around the campus. The school has a wonderful reputation here, and if it weren’t for TOPS here in Louisiana, I suspect a lot more kids would go there from here. Memphis has lots of hospitals, and I think anyone wanting to go into a health care field would do well there.

For you shoppers, Bartlett had a mall, the Wolf River Mall, that was really nice, with good anchor stores, food court, theater, carousel. We played puttputt every day during Mardi Gras. And there is also a good size Catholic community there as well. Surprisingly, there was a Catholic high school in Cordova, near Bartlett, and a very nice church in Bartlett. We were surprised at this, as it is more near the Bible Belt, which is more Baptist, and a Catholic church is hard to find. I only mention this because Trinity was your other choice, so if you’re Catholic, just assuring you that you won’t be left out in Memphis.