E-Day

My first experience of Elvis was watching his movies with my dad on late-night TV. My dad would wake me up to come watch "Jailhouse Rock" or "Clambake" with him, and I probably loved just sitting there with my dad more than I liked those movies. My dad thought Elvis was a great singer, so I loved Elvis, too.

The day Elvis died, we were getting ready to move from Southern California to Northern California, but our dogs Macho and Sara had gone off somewhere, and we couldn't leave without them. We had everything packed, ready to go, including my brother's crippled pony, Mandy, who would make the 10-hour trip lying down in the back of a U-Haul truck.

I had already gone to bed when my dad came to tell me Elvis had died. We sat and watched the news together. We moved the next day, and I always marked the moving date by the day Elvis died.

Ten years ago this month, I had a whole different experience with Elvis. I was working in the Chicago suburbs, and had tickets to see the Titanic exhibition in Memphis. My editor suggested I do a story, and while I was there, maybe something on Elvis, too, since it was the 20th anniversary of his death.

Me, our talented photog Brian and my friend Lea Ann met up in Memphis and scouted around to find something more interesting than a lame impersonator or a weeping fan at Elvis's graveside.

We did tour Graceland, of course. You can't talk Elvis and not see Graceland and its glorious tackiness. But then we heard about a place not far away, in Holly Springs, Miss., where we'd find the world's most fanatical fan living at "Graceland Too."

Skeptical journalists, the three of us, we figured this was going to be a complete joke. Every Elvis fan says they are the biggest fan. What could be so special about this guy?

Then we saw the house.

Once a lovely antebellum mansion, the owner had turned it into a shrine. We knew we were in the right place because there were bigger-than-lifesize Elvis posters staring down at us from the second-floor windows.

The front porch was sagging, the paint peeling. Without the Elvis posters in the windows, it might have looked like the neighborhood haunted house, the one kids would dare each other to go into and get a souvenir.

We rang the doorbell, and Elvis answered. Elvis Aaron Presley McLeod, actually. The homeowner's son. He and his dad, Paul, would give anyone a tour for $5, anytime, night or day. All you had to do was show up and ring the bell.

They slept on couch cushions on the living room floor so they could get up and give tours even at 3 a.m. Oh, and also because they couldn't use the bedrooms, which had no beds. Just Elvis stuff.

"Elvis" told us about the boxes of TV Guides he had, dating back to Elvis's first TV appearance, each page that mentioned Elvis marked with a colored paper clip; he told us about the card catalog he kept, listing every Elvis TV show, movie, song, song used in a movie, or on TV and every reference to Elvis in the media. That was just the parlor.

"Elvis" looked like he'd never actually left the house, or had a normal conversation with another person. Conversation with his dad - rational conversation - was clearly impossible.

The living room, which once might have had actual furniture, was covered, floor to ceiling - in fact, the ceilings were covered, too - with Elvis memorabilia. A bank of TVs and VCRs was on, running quietly, taping any shows that even remotely related to Elvis.

Every room was equally obsessive. There were no appliances in the kitchen, and the cupboards held cassette tapes, video tapes and records. The bedrooms were full of Elvis busts, Blue Christmas trees and even a mannequin with a gold suit like the one Elvis wore, which Paul said he'd be buried in someday.

Paul conducted most of the tour, and he spoke really fast and had dentures that didn't fit and clacked around in his mouth. Between that and the thick Mississippi accent, we probably caught one word in 10.

The whole thing was frightening, but one really bad moment: The hallway between rooms was painted a sick red, and there were piles of dried flowers that had been at Elvis's graveside at one time, and now rotted slowly, stinking in this humid old house.

I felt like I was going to faint in there, and Brian saw the look on my face. He grabbed my elbow and whispered "You pass out in here and you're going to wake up dressed as Priscilla, married to Junior there."

I straightened right up.

When the tour was over, we got back in the car and none of us said anything for about 15 minutes. Brian drove as fast as he could back toward Memphis, and suddenly, he looked over at me and said "Do you think Junior ever, you know, 'did it'?"

He had to pull over we were all laughing so hard.

I went back to Graceland Too a couple years ago, after David had moved to Nashville and Obe and I went to visit. I had to share that place with someone else, and they weren't disappointed.

Neither was I. "Elvis" was gone. He'd flown the coop. I could imagine that he woke up to the doorbell ringing one night, thinking he'd give a tour, and just suddenly realizing that he didn't have to do this anymore, packing up his leather jacket and some clean socks and underwear and leaving a note for his dad.

And I felt really thankful that my own dad had just liked Elvis.