...Man, oh man, you are not going to believe what happened next....
So, where was I? Oh, yeah, she, the security person, takes us in this little room cleverly hidden on the ground floor. She tells us that we, well actually my husband, has been chosen, as the 12,500,000 person to visit Graceland receive a “special” private tour. But, since I’m with him, I’m allowed to share in the experience. However, since this is a private “behind the scenes” tour, we will have to turn off our I-Phones, which they have noticed we were using to snap photos. I mean not only completely turn them off, but we must put them in a locked pouch, which we can carry, but will not be able to open until the tour is complete. “Will that be something you’re comfortable with?” she asks. We look at each other and my husband says, “I’m okay with that, if you are.” “Fine with me,” I say.
“Okay, then next we have a document we’ll need you to sign indicating that you will keep anything you see this day private. By private, I mean anything you see or hear is not to be shared with media, friends, family, no one. Is that something your feel you can honor?” “May I read it?” asks my husband. “Certainly.” She hands us the two page document and says, “And we’ll also need to see your driver’s license or state I.D. and make copies of them. In addition we well take photographs of both of you and take your fingerprints.” “No, DNA swab?” asks my husband, smiling. She doesn’t find his joke funny.
After reading the first page of the document, my husband hands it to me to read, as he reads the second page. I was hoping he was making sense of this. Me? My heart was pounding and I couldn’t read a word, but I pretended to be concentrating on the print. He finishes, looks up at the woman and says, “Yes. We’ll sign this and we have no objections to the photos, I.D.s and fingerprints.” But, I’m thinking that he forgot to ask me if I agreed. She took away our audio headsets. “Y’all won’t need these,” she said with a big smile.
The whole process took about a half hour, it seemed. I couldn’t see a clock anywhere in the room and my phone was now locked up in what looked like a small bank pouch, so I wasn’t sure of the time. She took us back toward the kitchen, all the while she spoke quietly into one of those CIA-type microphones near her collar. Then she looked up at us and said, “You’re tour guide will be downstairs in one minute.” I’m thinking “downstairs?” I thought the audio tour said that the upstairs was sealed off.
But, maybe that was just the main staircase because behind us, just off the kitchen is another staircase and it was here that I heard the footsteps of someone coming slowly down the stairs. I saw his feet and lower legs first. I say “his” because it just looked like a man’s feet. I realized she never told us if it was a man or woman giving us the private tour.
Just now, I need to tell you something about me. I have this incredible ear for the human voice. It’s a gift or an aptitude, nothing I’ve ever worked at, but if I hear a person speak a few times, I can usually identify the person, just from hearing their voice. My husband marvels at it. I can be in the next room, totally out of sight of the television that he’s watching and I’ll call out the voice of the person talking. “John Travolta,” I’ll call out. “Correct,” he’ll reply. Or, “Helen Hunt.” “Yup, you got it” “Dale Earnhart, Jr.” “How do you do that?”
The person coming down the stairs had those shoe slippers that my husband wears around the house, I think they’re called “Sanuk.” And he was wearing maroon velour sweat pants. As he came into view, I saw that it was a man, an older man, and by older, I mean older than my husband and me. He was tall-ish, with a mostly-full head of white hair. And he was wearing a white t-shirt under the matching zip-up maroon top to his sweatsuit. It was dark on the staircase, so we couldn’t see him well until he stepped closer, with his hand extended to shake.
My heart began to pound again as I heard his voice and knew for certain, it was 78 year old Elvis standing right in front of us saying, “Welcome to Graceland.”
He looked his age, but physically was in better shape than most people I know in their late 70s. He moved about easily with a natural grace. I was just as certain from his face as I was from his voice that it was really him.
After my husband and I recovered from our shock and after brief introductions, he directed his attention to my husband. “You know that was nonsense about you being the 12 and a half millionth visitor. You see I have a bank of viewing stations for the many security cameras here at Graceland. They’re pretty sophisticated and I can zero in on a shirt button, if I like. Every now and then I take a look at some of the visitors. And let me tell you, brother, you could be a double for an old buddy of mine, named Johnny.” He laughs out loud and says, “Well, actually a double for Johnny’s old man. But, they always said Johnny looked just like his daddy. Anyway, I saw you looking at the light switch. That’s what caught my eye initially. And man, when I saw your face it was like a step back in time for me.” He laughs again, “I said to myself, Johnny’s daddy’s here.”
A sad, faraway look comes across his face and he says, “I lost Johnny to drugs, prescription drugs, but drugs just the same. But, let’s not dwell on that now. I’ve got a tour to direct,” and the smile and accompanying wrinkles that abound his eyes and mouth return. He drapes an arm around my husband’s shoulder and looks back at me and says, “Shall we?”
We set off on a tour that, well, really what can I say? But, that we saw Graceland through Elvis’s eyes. Eyes that shone with joy and laughter at times and eyes that once or twice fought hard to hold back tears. I have to give my husband credit here. He’s just one of those guys that people immediately open up to, a sweet, non-judgmental soul.
I won’t bore you with too much of the house detail. You can visit yourself or see the rooms and descriptions online. But, let me tell you some of what Elvis told us about how all this came to be.
First he told us that he actually lives upstairs in Graceland. “I didn’t want to go anywhere else at the time. This was where my heart was, where my mama was buried.”
“There came a point in my life where I, like my buddy Johnny, was taking too many prescriptions. It started out innocent enough, taking a little amphetamine to help keep the weight off and keep me alert and focussed for my performances and tours. But, I wasn’t sleeping well, so the doctor prescribed something to help me sleep. I had an injury with my karate and the doctor prescribed something for the pain. I always told myself, the doctor wouldn’t give me something if wasn’t good for me.”
“You know I had a lot of people depending on me back then, family, friends, fellow band members, charities, you name it. If fact when I first had some closed circuit cameras put upstairs for me, I used to check to make sure everyone at Graceland was happy. It was important to me that what I was doing was making a difference in their lives. To do that I had to keep working and reworking myself, you know? I worked hard and harder to keep the money coming in.”
“But, I came close to dying. Man, I mean this close,” he holds his index finger and thumb barely apart. “I knew I had to do something. It wasn’t an easy decision. But, I knew there was no other way. It was do or die. I chose ‘do.’ “
He closed his eyes for a bit and sighed, “Even now, I know there was no other way. I had some bad days getting myself straight, and some even worse nights. But, every day I would think back to my days as a boy, with my parents in Tupelo, and how I didn’t need nothing but their love, my mama’s good cooking and the clothes on my back to make me happy. We didn’t have much, but we had enough. I didn’t need the caffeine from a cup of coffee to wake up full of energy. I was energy back then, man. When I was tired I slept. I didn’t need a doctor’s prescription to enjoy life. I knew then that I had to get that back.”
He told us about how he’d read a lot about meditation and eastern philosophy and decided to give yoga a try. “You know I think it really helped me early on, so I kept at it. I was getting older and eventually I had to switch from karate to tai chi, from touch football to yoga. And then someone got the fool idea to turn my racquetball court into a shrine for my awards and such.” Elvis has an infectious laugh and my husband and I joined in.
We talked about how quickly life passes by, how we were all getting older. Then we were quiet, each of us kind of reflecting, when Elvis suddenly laughed and said, “Hey, did you guys ever hear stories after my ‘death’ that people had spotted me? Back then, I used to go out at on occasion, mostly at night.” He puts his arm on my husband’s shoulder, “Buddy, you are going to love this...” Elvis tells us that Graceland was once part of the underground railroad and so somewhere on the estate there is an underground tunnel that will take him to an area off the property with a garage where he keeps a car and a couple of motorcycles. “Buddy, I wish you could hang around tonight. We could take a ride on the ‘cycles. You know, raise a little hell.” He said he could no longer hold up the big motorcycle and had recently switched to a three-wheeler. “But, really I don’t go out anymore. My vision’s no good at night. But, I feel good just knowing if I wanted to, I could.”
We were there long enough that he had the staff serve us lunch. Can you believe Elvis is on a macrobiotic diet? Not only that, but he is “gluten-free.” The food was delicious, but definitely healthy, brown rice, squash, black beans, chopped avocado and tomato, and some kind of pickled seaweed salad. At lunch he talked about the “Colonel” Tom Parker. “You know some people said he was a crook. But he wasn’t. He was a genius at marketing, merchandising, and licensing.” He laughs aloud again, “Hey, have you ever bought your kid a ninja turtle? You can thank the Colonel for that!”
As we finished lunch, he asked how long we could stay. “Well, we really need to get going,” my husband said apologetically. Elvis said, “I know I can trust you guys to not say anything about this to anyone.” We both assured him he could count on us. Then he laughed out loud again, “Who would believe you anyway? Elvis is alive and meditates, practices yoga and eats a strict macrobiotic , gluten-free diet!”
It took at least another two hours before Elvis and my husband stopped talking and we finally said our goodbyes. “Man, I hope I didn’t bore you guys today,” he said with a weak laugh. As he turned to walk up the staircase, just off the kitchen, he had such a heartbreaking look of loneliness.
We passed through a final briefing with security and were on our way. The gift shop was open as we walked to our car. My husband requested that we walk through it. We didn’t buy anything, but my husband had a somber look on his face as he viewed the merchandise.
In the car my husband immediately searched for and found the “Elvis” channel on the XM/Sirius radio, it was channel 19. I think I’d mentioned that my husband had never been an Elvis fan before. But, it’s all he’d listen to on our trip back home.
We were driving home the next day and I said, “Hon, that was an experience of a lifetime, huh?” “What was an experience of a lifetime?” he asked.
“You know meeting Elvis.”
“Elvis? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I look over at him as he drives. He looks completely serious and has his eyes on the road. “Oh, I get it,” I say. “The whole promise thing we made, that we won’t talk about it to anyone.”
“Seriously, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Now I’m getting kind of angry. “I know we swore we wouldn’t tell anyone, but I’m sure it’s okay if we talk about it. Don’t you think?”
“We took a tour of Graceland. We saw his gravesite there. Elvis is dead.”
And that’s the thing about my husband. When he makes a promise to someone he keeps it. And no amount of alcohol or truth serum or any kind of haggling from me can make him void his promise. The only proof I have is that I am now married to a dedicated fan of Elvis. Did it really happen? I think of a line from an Elvis song:
“But, I know what I know, and I’m here to lick the guy what says ‘taint sol”
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