Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
CHAPTER 7
IN THE MORNING I went to the Elvis Presley birthplace. It was early, and I expected it
to be closed, but it was open and there were already people there, taking photographs be-
side the house or waiting to file in at the front door. The house, tidy and white, stood in a
patch of shade in a city park. It was amazingly compact, shaped like a shoebox, with just
two rooms: a front room with a bed and dresser and a plain kitchen behind. But it looked
comfortable and had a nice homey feel. It was certainly superior to most of the shacks I had
seen along the highway. A pleasant lady with meaty arms sat in a chair and answered ques-
tions. She must get asked the same questions about a thousand times a day, but she didn't
seemtomind.Ofthedozenorsopeoplethere,Iwastheonlyoneundertheageofsixty.I'm
not sure if this was because Elvis was so burned out by the end of his career that his fans
were all old people or whether it is just that old people are the only ones with the time and
inclination to visit the homes of dead celebrities.
A path behind the house led to a gift shop where you could buy Elvis memorabilia-albums,
badges, plates, posters. Everywhere you looked his handsome, boyish face was beaming
down at you. I bought two postcards and six topics of matches, which I later discovered,
with a strange sense of relief, I had lost somewhere. There was a visitors' book by the door.
All the visitors carne from towns with nowhere names like Coleslaw, Indiana; Dead Squaw,
Oklahoma; Frigid, Minnesota; Dry Heaves, New Mexico; Colostomy, Montana. The topic
had a column for remarks. Reading down the list I saw, “Nice,” “Real nice,” “Very nice,”
“Nice.” Such eloquence. I turned back to an earlier page. One visitor had misunderstood
the intention of the remarks column and had written, “Visit.” Every other visitor on that
page and the facing page had written, “Visit,” “Visit,” “Re-visit,” “Visit” until someone had
turned the page and they got back on the right track.
The Elvis Presley house is in Elvis Presley Park on Elvis Presley Drive, just off the Elvis
Presley Memorial Highway. You may gather from this that Tupelo is proud of its most fam-
ous native son. But it hadn't done anything tacky to exploit his fame, and you had to admire
it for that. There weren't scores of gift shops and wax museums and souvenir emporia all
trying to make a quick killing from Presley's fading fame, just a nice little house in a shady
park. I was glad I had stopped.
From Tupelo I drove due south towards Columbus, into a hot and rising sun. I saw my
first cotton fields, dark and scrubby but with fluffs of real cotton poking out from every
plant. The fields were surprisingly small. In the Midwest you get used to seeing farms that
sweep away to the horizon; here they were the size of a couple of vegetable patches. There
