A rainy day in Memphis

As I noted in my reflective Saint Louis post, with few exceptions, the weather deities have been quite accommodating. Friday morning in Memphis was one of those exceptions. The rain was steady and persistent. On this, my first visit to Memphis, my initial sightseeing stop was Graceland. It simply had to be, right? You reach Graceland by driving along a stretch of U S 51 renamed Elvis Presley Boulevard. (At one point, in another bit of 50s – 60s nostalgia, I crossed Danny Thomas Boulevard.) The road is very commercial and a bit tacky – not the sort of drive you expect to take to reach an iconic estate.

For those of you who might be thinking of visiting the Presley home, I feel obligated to prepare you for certain aspects of your experience. First, be ready to shell out some money. It begins with paying $10 to park. The parking lot, together with Elvis’ jets, the admission center, and what I would call “Gracelandtown” but the operators of the site call Graceland Plaza are across the street from the mansion and grounds. (The highly commercial elements of this area inspired my moniker for it.)

There are several tour packages but the cheapest admission in 2014 was $34 and included only the mansion and grounds and a small exhibit in Gracelandtown called “Elvis’ Tupelo.” (You can get discounts if you are a senior, have AAA, or are in the military.) There are other iterations up to and including the VIP tour costing $72. You can purchase advance tickets through the website but will pay a $5 processing fee.

If you don’t buy advance tickets, I suggest arriving early. Even at 09:30, I needed 15 minutes or so to snake through the ticket line. By the time of my exit two hours later, the line was several times as long as it had been in the morning. Next, you’ll pass through another line where you have a photo taken in front of a backdrop of Graceland’s front gate. Anyone who’s ever been on a cruise ship will recognize this aspect and, as you can on the ship, here you can purchase the photos at the end of your tour.

You’re handed a pair of headphones for your self-guided tour and board the shuttle to cross the road onto the estate. No pictures are allowed of the front of the estate until you’re ready to depart. (Gotta keep those buses moving.) Though the tour is billed as self-guided, it isn’t completely free range. The recording prompts you to proceed in a planned, orderly, and directed route. “Entering Graceland, turn to your right to see…” “When you’re ready, move down the hall to…” and so on. Since the Presleys entertained exclusively on these lower levels, no one is permitted upstairs.

As I went through the house, I was surprised by its general modesty. Certainly, some things seemed a bit over the top such as the decor or the number of televisions throughout, but compared to the excesses of some of today’s celebrities, Graceland seems almost humble.

As for the televisions, they were ubiquitous. Although I couldn’t quite get a good angle to show the tv in the dining room, even the kitchen had one. In fact, it’s hard to recall a room not specifically geared to some other form of amusement without one. Given the fact that Graceland has a dedicated television room, I found their ubiquity even more surprising.

From the kitchen, you proceed downstairs to the aforementioned television room. An attendant stood at the bottom of the stairs and here the Field of Dreams cap, yielded what was, to me, the funniest moment of the trip. The woman saw my cap and asked me if I had visited there telling me how much she loved that movie. I told her I had, indeed visited the field, and I started talking about the lengths Don Lansing had gone to keep the field as true to the film as possible. Her next statement and question nearly knocked me to the floor. The conversation went something like this:

“So, it’s a real place.”

“Yes, the Lansings had to carve out a part of their farm so they could make the movie.”

“Is it a true story?”

“Excuse me?”

“Is the story true?”

Those of you who know me can probably imagine the stream of sarcasm racing through my mind. But I somehow restrained my response and simply replied that the field was real and that people did visit it but no, the story was made up.

As for Graceland itself, the estate is part nostalgic artifact, part museum, and part Elvis tribute. Here are a few things that amazed me. Elvis received a total of 160 gold records (albums+singles+extended play singles). They are on display in the Hall of Gold.

Yet, for all of these awards, and despite being known as the King of Rock and Roll, Elvis won only three Grammys. In a demonstration of their great perception and wisdom, none of Elvis’ awards came in the genre of which he is considered the King. Instead, all of his Grammy awards came for gospel music recordings.

Though my admission included the cars and jets, I opted not to visit those places because by the time I finished at the mansion and grounds and walked through the Las Vegas and Tupelo exhibits, I’d reached my Elvis saturation point. I did make a mental note that Elvis Aron Presley shares his initials with a writer closely associated with my hometown of Baltimore, Edgar Allan Poe. I assume this is little more than an indication of the rather odd connections I’m inclined to make.

At some point in the Las Vegas exhibition, my camera battery died. This had two consequences. First, the pictures in the Graceland photo album stop abruptly. Second, because I had to return to my hotel for several hours to recharge the battery, I was unwilling to visit Sun Records or the Stax Museum of American Soul Music without it. I had one more site I considered a must visit and it wasn’t Beale Street – though I will go there before I leave. I’ll reveal this in the next post.

Note: In keeping with my 2022-2023 reformation of the blog into shorter entries, backdated to maintain their sequence, any comments on this post might pertain to its new configuration. See the full explanation in the post Conventions and Conversions.