Twoscore And Two

It was what is referred to as a “flashbulb moment,” and I can revisit it any time I wish.

Forty-two years ago today. My friends and I were driving to Burger Chef –ah, now there’s a memory, that taste, that ambience — when the news came on the local radio station. Elvis had died in Memphis.

Cars came to sudden stops in the middle of the road. Adults were leaning out their windows and shouting at each other. “Did you hear? Did you hear that?”

And then the long, elaborate national grieving started at summer’s end.

My sister and I talked about it at length because of what had happened the summer before. In July of 1976, my sister and I became members of an elite group. We became members of the people who got to see Elvis perform live.

I was at my grandmother’s house that summer, spending the school-less months with her as was my custom. The phone rang, and it was my sister, jabbering with excitement. I knew something big was up, because long-distance calls were rare and expensive. “Elvis is coming to town!” she yelled. “Do you wanna go? I’m gonna go get tickets if you do!”

Naturally, I told her that yes, I did want to go. So she and my mother walked down to the box office at the new convention center and stood in line under Mother’s black umbrella in the killing delta sun for hours with a vast group of other local people in order to get tickets to see the King. The tickets were $25.00 each, which was a fortune. The average in those days was about $6.00 for a concert ticket.

The concert itself was a disappointment. The crowd was older, and I got the feeling I was at some church function. A comedian warmed up the crowd, then Elvis’s backup gospel singers The Jordannaires took a turn, and then Kathy Westmoreland, the daughter of the infamous Vietnam-era general sang for us, and finally it was time for Elvis. The familiar theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey (Also Sprach Zarathustra) boomed out of the speakers, and the tension rose to tribal heights, and there he was, in a light blue jumpsuit, alarmingly fat and moving with unsteady strides around the stage. I remember that he was very tan. Popcorn flew everywhere as older ladies lost their collective minds. Elvis lumbered back and forth on the stage, in the grips of his addictions and demons. His singing was flat, his banter with his band and the audience was scripted and uninspired. I had recently become aware of the phrase “phoning in a performance” and knew that I was seeing it before my eyes.

But a year later, as the news began to sink in, back in those days when we were not force-fed celebrity news around the clock, I realized that I was grateful to have seen Mr. Presley live, and I appreciated a little of the cultural cachet it granted to my isolated life.

The interesting thing is that I never really was an Elvis fan. Like my generational siblings, I grew up watching his movies and listening to his hits on the radio, but I never once thought, “He’s amazing…he’s singular…he’s special.” He was just Elvis, and he was a part of our national lives, like the President or the Grand Canyon.

And in the twoscore-and-two years since his death, I have been immune to the mythos of Elvis. I have never seen him as a musical giant, nor have I seen him as a white-trash loser. Elvis was just like so many Southern boys. He happened to find an outlet and a market for a remarkable natural talent — his voice and presence — and enjoyed the fruits of it. Until those fruits killed him. He’s not really different than the Mountain Dew-and-Oxycontin crowd in this area who play the lottery. Every once in a while, one of them hits it, and when they do, it wrecks them. The poor Southern lottery winners never pay off their debts and then stay out of debt and manage their windfall wisely. No, they buy perishable toys for all their friends and relatives, living like sultans for a short, flashing period of their lives…and then they’re right back in the sink of despair. And I might very well do the same, because I’m cut from the same bolt of homespun cloth, and I’m really not very smart. “Don’t listen to what they say, watch what they do,” right? Well, anyone who has watched how I’ve lived my life would conclude (1) he’s right…he’s really not very smart, and (2) he’s been incredibly lucky/blessed/something. I don’t have any real, marketable talent, and I never had a Colonel Tom Parker elbow his way into my life. I think I’ve come to accept the former and I think I’m grateful for the latter.

So I have a certain tenderness for Elvis. He got above his raisin’ and he paid for it. But it’s foolish to pretend that he doesn’t matter as a cultural presence, or to pretend that one has never heard of him or knows nothing about him. There’s nothing shameful in admitting that one knows a bit about Elvis Presley. He was a child of God, just like me, just like you. And he was here for a reason. And who knows what he’s doing right now?

Elvis was a poor Southern boy who had a remarkable life, a life full of triumph and sadness and interesting moments and tragic waste. He fell under the influence of people who used him. He yearned for God and groped for Him. He did all these things. Just like I have. Just like you have. Just like your children will. We’re trying to find our own grace-land.

~ S.K. Orr