After a week at my sister’s place in Lexington, it was more interstate as I worked my way toward Bisbee via Austin. The initial run was nice, as there was some two-lane down to Bardstown (I still haven’t stopped at their distillery for a tour) and down to Abraham Lincoln’s birthplace south of Hodgenville. Once I got there I took a look and realized there isn’t anything there to see. The house and everything in it are replicas. The only thing really genuine is the spring where Lincoln and his family drew water.
So I checked in on some more recent history, the Lincoln Jamboree:
Certainly not “Nashville famous” but historic nonetheless, The Joel Ray Sprawls Lincoln Jamboree has been running non-stop since its opening in 1954. The place burned to the ground in the 60’s after a lightning strike: the bands just played in a tent for three months until it was rebuilt. COVID didn’t stop them either—they just did drive-thru theater. It’s still your general variety show vibe, with country music as the centerpiece and some family-friendly comedy in between performers.
Shows are on Saturdays though and this was a weekday, so I ate at the cafeteria-style restaurant. Turkey and stuffing, baked apples, and good ‘ol peas and cornbread with some sweet tea. I perused some of the displays and the gift shop, but I had miles to make. The leaves were changing so I was in my element, having escaped the colder daytime temperatures further north. I continued, more west than south, towards Memphis.
Casey Jones
Before Memphis though I hit a great halfway spot. Jackson, Tennessee is more or less popular because it was (and still is, to a degree) a rail junction and is now a highway junction. It gave way from cotton growing to being a strategic rail hub in the Civil War, then continued as a major rail hub. Nowadays being about halfway between Nashville and Memphis keeps it thriving, along with the Casey Jones Museum.
Unlike Lincoln’s birthplace, there’s a lot of Casey’s original items, from his family bible to the watch in his pocket when he was killed. For those that don’t know, Casey Jones is the subject of a famous ballad about a terrible train wreck. It was real, but wasn’t actually that famous until his friend and co-worker Wallace Saunders wrote the now-famous ballad. It was sung up and down the line, eventually put to music, and ended up on Vaudeville. At the time of the wreck in 1900 it barely made headlines.
He was well-liked and an aspiring engineer, and had worked his way up from freight to passenger trains when he was given an overnight run. Noting the route was 90-minutes behind schedule when he left, he attempted to make up the time by running at breakneck speed. He was only 2-minutes behind schedule when, rounding a long bend, he found two trains that had moved onto the siding but were too long to fully clear the main line. With a caboose and three freight cars still on the main track, Jones had little warning.
While the official report says the stopped train’s flagman was in the proper position and warning torpedoes had been deployed on the track, Casey’s fireman Simeon Webb said they never saw him, giving the train no time to stop. In the darkness of 3-am on a foggy night, Webb saw the lights of the caboose first and warned Casey, who reversed the engine and applied the air brakes while telling Webb to jump. Casey managed to haul Engine 382 down to about 40-mph from the 75-mph they had been running before striking the stopped train.
Although the train derailed, no one was killed except Casey. Found still at the controls according to myth, he undoubtedly saved many lives but was also accused of disregarding the weather and failing to see the flagman. With these types of accidents a somewhat frequent occurrence, only local papers covered it in detail, and it would have faded into railroad history if not for The Ballad of Casey Jones. There’s dozens of different versions of it, with the most well known today being a rendition by Johnny Cash or The Grateful Dead, depending on your musical taste.
The museum is $12 for adults and can be easily walked in an 45-minutes unless you try to read every single display. It is wheelchair accessible too, except if you want to climb aboard the replica of Engine 382, which is a smaller version of the same design. The real engine 382 was put back into service and had several more accidents, including a fatality, before being sold to Mexico and operated until sometime in the 1950’s. It managed to jump the tracks while steaming to the scrapyard for salvage, so it certainly had some spunk for a run-of-the-mill steam engine from the late-1800’s.
Jackson also has a museum of movie and TV cars, which is barely ever open, so I passed by. I was hoping to see the Carnegie Center, which is a modern art and music museum, but they were closing in 10-min when I arrived. Trawling along the downtown streets was nice though, as the area is alive but not heavily trafficked. Nothing caught my eye except the cemetery, which had a very unique tombstone.
A WW1 veteran, Jesse Lemmons was a Private in the US Marines — the lowest rank you can be. Why his family chose to remember him by his military service is lost to history, but a near full-size stone “doughboy” statue marks his resting place, complete with rifle, puttees, and pack. Having died in 1927, aged 27, it might be that the community chipped in for the elaborate display. Monuments to The Great War (as it was known then) were very scarce and America was trying to figure out how to feel its loss, at the same time that the last veterans of the Civil War were disappearing.
In any event, it’s a beautiful marker and stands proud among hundreds of others. Just walking around randomly I found family plots with four generations buried there, gravestones to Confederate soldiers, and a separate Jewish section, which shows how far back the cemetery dates to. Several of the trees looked as if they had been there longer than the place was used as a cemetery, and the autumn colors mixed with the setting sun to provide dramatic shadows from the many gravestones.
The hard miles…
That was about the end of sight-seeing though, as I linked with I-40 in Nashville and carried on westward to Little Rock, where I-30 steers down toward Dallas-Ft. Worth. I overnighted in Texarkana and droned along increasingly boring landscapes. The only interesting thing was a bad tank of gas. Under the slightest acceleration while at highway speeds the engine would ping. As a mechanic I know the sound is quiet but also deadly.
Octane measures a fuel’s ability to resist igniting by compression or heat, and when you get crappy gas (below ots stated octane) that means the fuel in your engine’s combustion chamber can auto-ignite before the spark plug lights it off. This usually means the flame starts somewhere off-center (usually near the piston’s edge) and that causes the piston to rattle unevenly as it moves down the cylinder. That damages the near-zero clearance between the piston and cylinder, among other problems.
In short, it can destroy an engine in a minute. Modern engines run extremely lean (more air, less fuel) to meet emissions, but that makes them run hot. More heat means more chance for detonation, and engines get away with it by having a knock-sensor that attempts to change the time the spark plug fires if it detects detonation (aka ping aka knock). But the computer can only change things so much.
All that to say I stopped at the next gas stop and pulled my spark plugs to “read” them. Sure enough, the back one was running hot. It’s normal for the back cylinder to run hotter though: the front cylinder is blocking air from hitting it. But the computer is supposed to compensate. Needless to say I was worried, and forked over $10 for some octane booster.
When I arrived in Austin I went to the Motorcycle Missions shop and installed new plugs, even though the old ones weren’t worn out. At $6.50 each it’s good insurance. I also used a boroscope to check things out. Think of it like the camera they use for colonoscopy or endoscopy, just not made for medical use. I used them a bunch on turbine engines, usually when one ingested a bird and you had to look for internal damage.
While it did show evidence of detonation happening, it didn’t show any actual damage. I also changed the oil and did a bunch of inspections since the bike was up on a lift and easier to work on. The only thing I really noticed is how filthy the damn thing is. Lots of rain, red clay from the dirt roads of Prince Edward Island, and just life out on the back roads and campground of Canada had covered every crevice underneath the bike. But the Chieftain isn’t a show pony…it’s a plough horse.
Nearly wrapped
That’s about it for 2027. I’ll do a little work on things and visit friends in Austin, then it’s back to Bisbee for the winter. I had planned to stay in Mexico again, but my buddy is having shoulder surgery and he is going to need help around the house until he recovers, so I’ll rent from him again. I’ve got to save some money though: this year I overspent by a significant amount, and if I plan to do something genuinely exciting (as opposed to just randomly wandering) I’ll need to find some money to have in reserve.
I do have big plans, and 2027 was supposed to be the year, but if I can’t built up the budget to do it, I’m sunk. That’s a story best told in spreadsheets and distance charts though, so I’ll leave out the details. But I do think it’s time to sell the Chieftain. Despite it being almost entirely maintenance free, when it does need something, I often have to pay someone else to do it. When I think of the hassle of changing a tire on my DR650 at a campsite, I also think about paying $475 to have someone change the tire on the Chieftain. Pick your poison.
With the DR it’s a $95 tire and zero dollars in labor, just my time, which I have plenty of when I’m on the road. That, and 40mpg vs. 27mpg (34 when not hauling a trailer) and 87 vs. 91-octane fuel, and I get to thinking of how less really is more. Ah, but to adjust the windscreen height by two inches with the push of a button, instead of scrunching your neck two inches and ending the day with a stiff neck and back…how do you put a price on that?
Well, just set up your banking app to text you a low-balance alert…that makes a lot of decisions turn into one-option-only stories. If you can’t afford it, you can’t afford it. Winter will give me time to look, though it’s a bad season to try and sell a motorcycle, even when you have a year-round riding season.
