on your left is the backside of water

Being a tour guide is fun for me. It's one of the rare opportunities when my regurgitation of arcane knowledge is not as annoying as usual. I showed my friend Bean around town yesterday and today. We made it to several of the sights on the list I wrote about last week. Bean has been writing about it on his blog too (be sure to look for his day 2 update on Tuesday morning). Yesterday we saw the banjo exhibit at the Frank McClung museum, the War Dog Memorial and the Alex Haley statue (see photos below). Today we went to Ciderville Music, the WDVX Blue Plate Special (where we saw Christa DeCicco and Kyle Campbell) and Yee-Haw Industries.

Over the weekend, I happened to run into Dr. Jim Brace of the College of Veterinary Medicine. This was a day or so after Bean had implied that our local version of the War Dog Memorial was a rip off. I had this in mind when I asked Dr. Brace for driving directions to the memorial. I told him that my friend wanted to see it even though it was a replica. Dr. Brace finished my sentence by saying "of the one on Guam!" I realized that he probably thought this was a good thing and that I should stop talking before I made a bigger fool of myself.

As it started to rain Sunday, I tried to finish the day's tour by driving past the entrance to the Body Farm. I had hoped we could pose for a photo in front of the sign I had seen in the book "Death's Acre." I drove around the outskirts of the UT Medical Center for a while. At one point, we found ourselves on a one-lane road between some horse-filled stables. We must have been near the Ag Campus. That's when I had to turn the car around because we were being followed by a university police officer. We told the cop that we had made a wrong turn and headed to another parking lot where we saw razor-wire atop a privacy fence, but no gate. I knew we were close to the corpses but I couldn't find a way to prove it. I don't know if Bean noticed, but I did roll down my car window. All I could smell was the rain.