The House of Elvis

Graceland Postcard

Note: I have looked everywhere, except where ever they are, to find the last series of pictures from this trip. With just a few exceptions, they have disappeared. I have to make due illustrating the rest of this trip with the various handouts, guides, maps, and other memoribilia we picked up.

Even though they are in the same state, it is still over 3 hours from Nashville to Memphis.  I allotted four hours, plus 1 ¼ hours for lunch. I did not have to account for a time zone change, as we crossed into Central time somewhere in Kentucky, yesterday. With an 8 AM departure time, that would mean we would be starting our first Memphis activity at about 1:30 PM.

Our Visitor's Guide

What would be our first Memphis activity you ask? Well, Memphis is famous for many things. They have so many things to see and do. There is Beale Street, famous for it’s blues music. Except we had no blues fans in our group. There was Mud Island, a park based on the Mississippi River. I couldn’t find a lot of info on it, so I wasn’t sure if we would enjoy it.  Ride The Ducks? Doing that in Branson. The Parthenom or The Pyramid? The Pyramid is really a sports arena. Drive past and take a picture. The Parthenon would be worth some time, but there was one thing that we just had to do; Graceland.

Boarding Pass to see the "Lisa Marie"

Mom was a fan of Elvis back from the days when he first go started. Margo, Jayme, and I all enjoyed his music. But, it boiled down to how could someone from our generations not visit Graceland when we had the opportunity?

We already had reservations. I had prepurchased The Platinum Tour package tickets for all of us. That included the Manison tour, Elvis’ Car Museum, and his jets. We parked across the street in the Graceland complex. The mansion is on east side of Elvis Presley Blvd. On the west side is a little tourist complex, with parking, restaurants, gift shops, the jets, and a few exhibits.

We decided to tour the museum first, and then find something to eat at the Complex.  The Complex  stuff was open an hour later, to give us a little more flexibility. We were all looking forward to the tour. It was hard not to get caught up in the enthusiasm for all things Elvis, on the complex side. There was music playing, clips of his movies were screened, and everywhere you looked there was Elvis. It was amazing that one may could inspire all of this.

Once we started the tour two things stuck me at once. Elvis was tacky. Elvis was an entertainer and on the road he had to be somewhat over the top. I expected more understatement at home. Some rooms of the house, like the Dining Room, where decorated very well. The you would see stained glass peacocks in another room. The Jungle Room was an African themed room complete with animal skins. It was interesting, but over the top.

The second thing was the technology. You would see televisions (I loved his Television Room. He had several TV mounted in a wall, so he could watch different channels at the same time) and such, and they looked, well, old. Then I recalled, the man had been dead nearly 20 years. Having a 20  year old TV was to be expected. The last thing we did was walk outside, on the grounds to see his, and other family members’ graves. Lots of flowers everywhere.

It didn’t really take that long to go through the mansion. It was somewhere around an hour. Then we went back across the street and decided on the Rockabilly Diner for lunch. It was standard hamburger and milkshake fare, which was more or less what we were in the mood for. We still had the Auto Museum and the two jets to tour. So that’s what we did, once we had finished eating.

Truth be told neither one was terribly impressive. I’m not a big “Car Guy”, so once you’ve seen one car collection, you know. I do remember he had a big pink Caddy. Elvis had or has, if you prefer, two jets that he used to get around, once he made his big money. The first was a Convair 880. He bought it for a quarter of million. Then he spent another ¾ plus million in renovations. He named it the “Lisa Marie” after his daughter. The other is a Lockheed Jetstar. He bought that for $900,000. It was nicknamed Hound Dog Two. He bought both planes in 1975, just months apart. He only got two years worth of use out of them before he died.

After that, we wandered the rest of The Complex. We saw the various exhibits and gift shops. Everywhere you went, Elvis was singing. It was a kind of subliminal push to get you into an Elvis kind of mood. I know, to varying degrees it worked on all of us. We ended up with a souvineer or two before we left.