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When I acquired a ticket to Burning Man I knew I was going to drive there, and if I was going to drive from Ottawa to Nevada I figured it would be a great opportunity to see the sights in the southern chunk of this continent.
I did the trip alone so I had free reign on what to see and what to skip. A successful bout of preplanning had me arrive in Memphis on August 15th, 2001, the eve of Elvis Day. I booked myself into a KOA Kampground* directly across the street from Graceland and pitched my tiny little tent.
For those that don’t have the date permanently etched into their brain, Elvis Presley died on August 16th, 1977**. The anniversary of his passing has become known as Elvis Day, which (in Memphis at least) is the culmination of seven days of honour and celebration known as Elvis Week. The short stroll from my urban tent site to the front doors of Graceland took me past several parking lots full of classic cars and hot rods with Elvis’ beautiful face painted on them.
There is fandom and then there is Elvis fandom. I hesitate to say it’s similar to a religion because to many it actually is a religion. When they say “Elvis Lives” no one seems to be explicitly stating whether The King never died or if He has Risen. Sure, I appreciate the man’s voice and delivery, and I’m certainly well aware of his gigantic place in music history for which he deserves much honour and respect, but I also concede that he was a bit of a redneck that let fame pull him towards a tragically early and undignified end.
I spent the afternoon touring Graceland and enjoyed every lingering moment. Though the place was much smaller than I expected I managed to stretch my visit to three hours or so, and that was without any of the extra museums (which were out of my very limited budget).
I spent much of my time at his tombstone, silently watching people come and go. I couldn’t help but to think of the hilarious scene from (This Is) Spinal Tap that was filmed here, but I kept my chuckles inside and remained respectful.
Speaking of respectful, about 11pm that evening I returned to Graceland along with about 30,000 people for a candlelight vigil, which basically meant I was handed a candle as I arrived at the end of an impossibly long line and I let that melt all over my hand as I waited silently for about three hours to file past Elvis’s grave. (Which – you will recall – I spent endless time at just a few hours earlier in the day.)
I remember a group of perhaps six or eight people behind me in line who had come from Japan for the candlelight vigil. They had come every year for nearly the previous decade.
I know many people would consider me at least partially crazy for enduring such a long, late wait and for what, just to pass by a guy’s grave that I had just seen hours before?!? I don’t know, but for some reason I tend to have a fair amount of patience when it comes to this sort of thing. For example I waited four hours to walk by Pierre E. Trudeau’s sealed casket when he was laying in state (in province?) in Parliament’s centre block. I once drove out of my way for five hours on a very bad road to see the world’s biggest meteorite. On the same trip I endured another major detour hoping to spot ancient dinosaur prints in a farmer’s field. I’ve gone to Roswell for no good reason, drove through Labrador just because I was tired of taking the ferry and when I was fourteen years old the greatest day (and then some) of my life was when I waited twenty-eight hours in a lineup for tickets to The Who’s final ever concert (1.0) in 1982, a concert I did not end up attending.
Sure it takes a lot of time and tedious patience but every experience I mentioned (and the countless ones I didn’t) were pretty much all worth it. I hope I never tire of waiting around endlessly hoping to experience something mildly interesting.
Isn’t that what life is all about?
*It hurts to type “campground” with a K. I just don’t get the whole ‘whimsical’ spelling thing. If a company can’t properly spell their main product I generally try to go somewhere else. But in this case it was a matter of lokation, lokation, lokation.
**I’ll never forget it. I was nine years old, sitting in a big blue chair in the living room of our house on the Ammon Road with my little radio/tape deck on my lap. The DJ on CKCW said Elvis had died and was playing his music steadily. I was pretty excited for my mom to get home; she was a really big Elvis fan and this was big news!
Well, she finally got home and came in from the car with my brother in tow (yep, nine year-olds could self-babysit back then, even way out in the country without cellphones) and as she walked through the door I yelled, “Hey mom guess what?!? Elvis Presley died!!!” In my mind she put her hands to her face and ran straight to her bedroom crying. She didn’t come out all night; my brother and I made ourselves peanut butter sandwiches for dinner that night.
Recalling this story to my mom years later gave her the chance to straighten me out: of course she had already heard the news in the car and had been bawling her eyes out the whole drive home. When she came through the door she was already a wreck, and likely as not she didn’t even notice that I was there, let alone get the news from me. (She has since changed her story; now she claims that she was in the backyard gardening and heard it on the radio.)
Todd Man Out 