Memphis shakedown cruise

From the novel THE COLDWATER GIRL:

He went to a shelf and picked out an old volume he said he’d been reading since childhood. He said he found it in his grandfather’s office and his grandfather gave it to him. It had a faded green cloth cover and was called “Tennessee — An American Guide Series,” a WPA effort of the Federal Writers’ Project, from 1939. He said he’d hunker in a corner of his grandfather’s office and read all about the state. He said the best parts were about old, wild Memphis, for Memphis was born old and was wild even in its sleep, and had a rambunctious streak long and winding as the Big River.

… for Memphis was born old and was wild even in its sleep, and had a rambunctious streak long and winding as the Big River.

He handed Ivy the book, turned to the Memphis section. He put on old 78s of the “Memphis Shakedown” and “Fourth Street Mess Around” and “Mr. Crump Don’t Like It.” Ivy read. She read about how the poor Irish in the Pinch District, just north of downtown, used to call South Memphis “Sodom,” because of its “alleged wickedness.” She read about the time “David Crockett, on a political tour, gave a moonlight whisky party on the river bank, one of the wildest drunken brawls ever thrown on the bluff.” She liked how that sentence suggested that wild, drunken brawls were regular occurrences on the bluff in wild Memphis. And she read about how one time the river changed course and split President’s Island, washing out a graveyard and a saloon, both: “Coffins and barrels of liquor floated downstream together.”