Born Again in Memphis. (Pictures Unrelated)

Let me start by saying that the god damn Hampton Inn may as well be the Waldorf-Astoria as far as I'm concerned. The Best Western offers some similar comforts but for every gem there's a dud. Hampton represents across the board. Consistency is key in the hotel buiness.

So anyway, we finally sacked out in Bristol, TN, about 600 miles from NYC. It seems like an impressive bit of progress at first but Tennessess is effing long. It's another 500 miles to Memphis. We roll into at around 5. Skip and Shelly dropped Boom and I off in front of our hotel in downtown and peel out towards moms house. Next stop Beale St.

Beale St is like a miniature, more manageable Bourbon St. Wild bars, delightful restaurants, novelty shops, drunk assholes everywhere, all the usuals. It's the same drill while you're there too. Grab a drink, walk down to one end of the pedestrian only street, look at your phone for no damn reason, take a sip of said drink and walk back to the other end. They have barriors set up in case you get too silly to know when to turn back.

It's a Saturday night and the Memphis Tigers basketball squad is playing which is drawing quite a crowd. Since my last visit they built an entire stadium a block off of Beale. Taking advantage of the swarm of fans leaving the stadium were a small group of religioius dutes. Dressed in suits and ties, and carrying large signs they handed out pamphlets to the drunken fans as they passed. Having never seeen a religious recruiting effort we didn't fully enjoy and appreciate we decided to settle in to gauge the crews approach and overall effectiveness.

Standing on a 3 step ladder and utilizing a bull horn (with the walkie talkie attatchment) the leader dude mumbled a long, steady diatribe that eventually just turned into white noise. The rest of the members would be mingling with the folks spreading the good word. Their opening line without fail was to ask the disturbing question "if you were to die today, where would you go?" I'll be dammned if this isn't a stumper of a question to ask someone stumbling out of a college basketball game.

Most interesting about the effort was the kids in the group. They'd dart about the crowd handing out their material, go back to the leader dude and then work the crowd some more. One little fella approached dressed just like dear old dad.

"Ya ever bin born agin sir?" He spoke quickly and seriously. He had a mature air about him, like he had grown up entirely too fast.

"What's that?"

"Ya ever bin born agin?" It sounded exactly the same. He must have uttered that line ten thousand times in his young life. I only asked so I could hear it once more.

"No, just once. How bout yourself?"

"Yessir."

"Well it looks like you got it right the first time."

This time he asked me to repeat myself.

"I said it looks like you didn't need to be born again, that you got the whole thing down pat the firt time."

Now he was stumped. He looked at me like I was in the middle of the street with a bullhorn yelling unintelligible bible passages or something. I felt a little bad for him. "It's a compliment," I said since I didn't know what the hell else to say.

With that he handed me a little pamphlet with Jesus on the front and scurried off.

Satisfied with this little exchange we were about to head back up the street away from the chaos when I noticed one that the stream of noise had halted for the first time in 15 minutes. Head religious dude had pulled the mouthpiece away and was in what looked like a difficult discussion with a nonbeliever. (Nonbelievers don't wear shirts and ties, they wear jeans shorts and colorful visors......thats' how you can tell the difference).

They would trade off speaking into each others ears, the religious dude was finding it difficult to understand what his new pupil was trying to convey. We couldn't hear a thing but by the looks of it there was potentioal for some excitement. Finally they squared things away and the dude puts the piece back up to his mouth. He spoke in a southern slant and for whatever reason this time his words were crystal clear.

"I'm lookin for a Barry Novak, Barry your buddy here is lookin' for ya'. Come on over Barry." After a short pause religious dude continues, "You know where yer goin when you die Barry? If you died today would you be goin to heaven?"

I don't know whose ingenuity I admired more. Jeans shorts dude for turning the religious bull horn into his own personal paging system, or shirt and tie religious guy for personalizing his message on the fly like he did.

I tell ya folks, it's stories like this that make me happy that I'm the only person that reads this blog.