DAY 38 Memphis

(photos: Michael was actually awake for this American tourist attraction; Elvis stuff; the famous pink Cadillac)
We had great weather today. We had breakfast here, then strapped on the children and walked the few blocks to Graceland. It is not really set up for pedestrians to walk there, as we found out when we realized the place to purchase tour tickets was across the street at the parking area. It is a Friday morning of no particular consequence as far as I can tell, and yet there was already a large line at the ticket counter and waiting to get on the bus. It was pretty expensive. It was $22 for just the tour of the house and grounds. It was $30 for that, plus admission to five other museums and exhibits, such as Elvis’ airplane and Elvis’ cars. We went ahead and ponied up for the more expensive one, and we did get 10 percent off with our AAA card. The shuttle took us across the street to Graceland, and we all got acquainted with our audio guides, little plastic digital players with headphones. I knew that would be a challenge, because there is no way to pay attention to a recorded voice and to Nora at the same time. Even though she was being ignored some of the time, she was well behaved in the backpack. Sometimes one of us would let her listen to the headphones, and she would say, “Man talking in there,” or “Everyone is in there!” when there was music playing. The audio guides made things a little strange, since there were dozens of people milling about silently in close quarters, completely not paying any attention to each other. But it was neat to see an American cultural icon, and the house itself was pretty cool. It is not really all that grand by today’s standards, but it certainly was uniquely furnished. The outbuildings were interesting, too, including the racquetball courts, the pool, the horse stables and of course the meditation garden where Elvis and his parents are buried. The guide and exhibits really made Elvis out to be a saint, emphasizing his gifts to charity, his award from a service organization, his military service and his religion. The audio guide attributed his death to “chronic health problems and his increasing dependence on prescription drugs.”
I guess the audio guides worked out pretty well in the end. If we had had a live tour guide, we would have worried about Nora talking over him or her, as has happened on other programs we’ve tried to do. Plus we could pause the guide to attend to the kids, and then start it up again. I can’t help but think about all the real tour guides out of a job. The audio guides allow them to pack more people into the house at one time. Sometimes it felt like cattle herding. And we could see the shuttle buses loading and unloading constantly. They obviously rake in the money doing this. All the smaller museums conveniently placed their exits at the opposite side of their gift shops. We avoided the overpriced hamburger joint where the shuttle drops off passengers and walked a couple blocks to a fast food place. The only seating they had was outside, but it was actually quite a nice day to have lunch outside. We were all wearing jackets, but the sun was shining and it was in the 60s.
After that, we went to see something called “Elvis After Dark.” The point of the exhibit was that between Elvis’ fame and his insomnia, most of the time he sought his amusement at night. In Memphis, he would rent the movie theater after it closed, or the fairgrounds when the fair was on, inviting his friends to ride the roller coasters and play bumper cars at 1 in the morning. There were also some interesting artifacts there, including a TV with a bullet hole in it. In the gift shop, there was a pool table from Elvis’ Bel Air home. Apparently Elvis and the Beatles had played pool on it. For a mere $100, we could have played, too. For 30 minutes. Yeah, right. During this exhibit, Michael had just eaten and was wide awake. He was actually pushing back from my body in the front back and tilting back his head to look at me and smile and make faces. Between his cute face and Nora asleep in the backpack, the kids were charming all the other tourists and all the employees.
Then we toured Elvis’ airplane, the Lisa Marie, which was pretty impressive. If you ignored the ugly ‘70s décor, you had to admire the gold-plated sinks in the bathrooms and the nice conference table. A video playing inside the plane informed visitors that one winter he realized Lisa Marie had never seen snow, so they flew to Colorado to play in the snow for a minutes, then flew back home.
Then we went on to some other forgettable exhibit explaining his rise to fame and his relationship with his agent. After that was the car museum, which was really cool. There were several motorcycles and a lot of custom cars, including the pink Cadillac, and BMW roadster Priscilla liked to drive, and several other customized luxury cars.
We walked back to the RV park after that, and David held down the fort while I took a nap. (Nora had already taken her nap, beginning at the airplane tour and ending in the car exhibit.) We had dinner, and then David went out and duct-taped on the aluminum covering on our rear bumper, which fell off in Little Rock. (We were driving for the first time in quite awhile without the bicycle on the back, and the wind got under it on the freeway and tore it loose. We had been keeping in here in the aisle on the floor, which was pretty annoying. Now both kids are (mostly) asleep and we’re having a quiet evening.
After dinner, Nora was jabbering away and recited the most difficult page from a story of hers I have heard so far: “It came back on just in time for our favorite TV show, but the weatherman kept interrupting it. Then it started thundering loud.” (This is from “Just a Thunderstorm” by Gina and Mercer Mayer. Earlier today she asked me to read from a magazine we have laying around. I read the title of an ad she pointed to, and she said, “By Gina and Mercer Mayer.” She’s hysterically funny.)