Hard to believe, but in the early 1930s, a Texas businessman named B. Lee Torrance visited Memphis and told a reporter, “[Your city] has the most careful drivers I ever saw. They sure obey the speed limit, too.”
Based on that observation, I think we can safely say that: 1) Mr. Torrance was insane, or 2) Memphis drivers have sure changed a heckuva lot since the early 1930s.
At any rate, for other reasons that we may never know, Torrance decided that the Bluff City seemed to be a “good business town,” and so he decided Memphis should be the next link in his nationwide chain of Alamo Plaza Hotel Courts. After all, as he explained, “If people are speeding through town, they won’t be able to see my tourist courts.”