My Complicated Relationship With Elvis Presley

I included Elvis in a list of things I dislike for no good reason, there is a reason I'm not sure it's a good reason but there is one. So here is the reason. The short answer is anything with him in it reminds me of my mom. But as vocal has a word minimum I will explain more.

My earliest memories involve Elvis. My mom was a huge fan, think screaming and panty throwing kind of fan. I remember when I was little, before she left us her playing those records and dancing with us in the kitchen. She taught my brother and I how to do the jitterbug to those albums. In my mind when she was listening to those records it was one of the few times she was happy and dare I say it fun. It usually only lasted as long as the record did and then she was back to her normal self where you never knew what to expect. The switch could flip at any point and she would be angry about everything and your best bet was to either disapear outside or lock yourself in your room. Most often we all locked ourselves in the room I shared with my sister and wait till dad got home.

When I hear his songs or even when someone talks about him I have a physical reaction. I am right back to being the youngest child in a family that was broken years before I was born. Thinking about my mom in that period is just full of conflicting memories. But mostly I remember how disfunctional it all was. And in general I would like to avoid that particular trip down memory lane, no good ever comes of it.

As an adult I found out that my parents just about got divorced over Elvis twice.

The first time was when my sister (the oldest of us 4 kids) was a tiny baby only a few months old. Dad was in the Navy trying to earn a living to support his new wife and baby. He was at a training school in Memphis. She heard that Elvis was at Graceland. So they went to see if they could catch a glimpse of him with another young couple with a baby about the same age, maybe two or three months old. If you have never been in Memphis Tennessee in the summer let me just tell you that it is hot, really really hot and muggy and miserable. As soon as the car stopped the two girls were gone. To be fair my mom was 18 or 19 years old at the time. I'm sure I was not at my smartest at that age. But they didn't come back all day. They left their husbands and tiny babies in the heat of the day on the street. I have no idea how the other young husband felt but my dad was not happy and they nearly split over it.

The second time I remember well. We often traveled out to Washington State from where we lived in South Dakota. Two of my dad's brothers lived there and my parents had good friends there as they lived there before I was born. So we had gone to Washington and while we were there my dad bought a pickup. It was a good deal and he was getting into logging and needed a truck. But it was kinda limping home. It kept overheating. So the plan was that my Dad and my older siblings would ride with Dad in the truck and us two little kids would ride with mom in the car and when the truck overheated we would go ahead and get water for it while it cooled down and then we would be back on the road for a while. We had made it all the way across Washington, through Idaho and out of the mountains in Montana but we were still about 6 hours from home on the prairie in the heat of the day.

That is when the DJ on the radio broke in to say that Elvis had died. I think we were on one of our journeys to get water and bring it back to the truck. I know the truck was at a rest area with no place to get out of the heat. She stopped the car on the side of the road and cried, which I am sure a lot of his fans shed tears that day. But I bet very few of them left half of their family at a rest area in the heat of the day 6 hours from home and went straight home to call all her fellow fans.

Dad had no idea what was going on. He had no idea Elvis had died and had no choice but to wait until dark when it cooled off and limp home. Let's just say when he got home he did not think that Elvis dying was a legit reason to leave your husband and two of your kids stranded in Montana.

So while I can concede that he was a talented man and I can understand why so many people are such big fans I just can't be one of them.