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While at Graceland, all shook up

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Special to The Times

The trees are bare and the parking lot deserted. It’s 30 degrees outside. Who could possibly be here on a day like this? I zip my parka as icy air licks at my cheeks and follow a burgundy awning to the lobby.

Inside, the lights are low. A young woman at the ticket counter across the movie-theater-style lobby welcomes us with friendly patter about the available tours that will begin shortly.

Ticket in hand, I face the room and realize that my son Nick and I are not alone. A dozen of the faithful — mothers and daughters and grandmothers and granddaughters — are sitting in front of one of several TV monitors watching video clips with the sort of bliss of innocence in their eyes that I haven’t seen since “Close Encounters” played in theaters.

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Two well-fed security guards open the glass doors to the outside departure hall. Nick and I follow the velvet ropes as several of the sisterhood introduce themselves to one another. “You mean you drove all the way from Carolina?”

We pause as a photographer takes our picture. We board the waiting shuttle bus.

We’re going to Graceland.

We hadn’t planned to. We were driving across the country, about to stop for lunch at another one of those cookie-cutter exits along Interstate 40 that make you think everyone in America eats at McDonald’s and the Waffle House, when I happened to look up as a sign for Graceland came floating by the window. When you’re deep in the Bible Belt, you pay attention to signs.

Forty minutes later, we’re on the shuttle bus as it crosses Elvis Presley Boulevard and approaches Graceland’s front gate, a white metal confection shaped like the wavy pages of a songbook with happy images of musical notes and Elvis rocking with a guitar. The bus rolls up a long circular drive past stands of tall trees and a white fence to a two-story Colonial faced in stone. It’s a scene from an old MGM movie, brilliantly lighted by the winter sun. All it needs is Elvis’ 1955 pink Cadillac Fleetwood with the chrome grill as busty as Marilyn Monroe in a sweater. There it is parked by the flagstone front steps where our shuttle bus leaves us.

Clutching our digital audio guides, we head for the entrance. Behind me is Angie, a mother from Louisiana with short strawberry blond hair and immaculate makeup, accompanied by her daughters, ages 10, 12 and 15.

Angie was just their age the day Elvis died, Aug. 16, 1977. “I still remember that day,” she says to her daughters, who smile sympathetically. “I just cried and cried and cried.”

I’m surprised and feeling apologetic, because my only memory of Elvis is slow dancing to his music at age 13 and feeling the electricity from holding a girl in a soft knit sweater in my arms.

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A hush falls over us as the front door swings open, and I feel a hair-raising sense of expectation, as if I were entering a haunted house.

Elvis’ private quarters are up the staircase across the foyer, but they’re off-limits to us tourists. As I look past the velvet ropes, I see a living room and a dining room that I could have sworn my mother-in-law decorated. It has white carpets, chairs and a couch, floor-to-ceiling glass panels featuring black, red, green and gold peacocks, gold drapes, royal blue place settings with formal silver and crystal glasses and chandeliers.

Echoes of Elvis

They say Elvis loved Southern home cooking, so I escape to the kitchen. Two Tiffany lamps featuring a fruit motif are illuminated. There’s a pale gold refrigerator like the one I grew up with and cinnamon brown wood cabinets with dishes inside. I imagine Elvis with a plate in each hand, carrying a late-night snack up the kitchen stairs.

A rolling pin lies on the white Formica counter, and a frying pan sits on the GE-style cooktop. It’s all so homey and familiar that I can almost smell the chicken frying and a cherry pie in the avocado green oven. I’m ready to pull up a chair and half-expect Elvis and his entourage to burst in, asking, “What’s for supper?”

Except the voice on my digital audio guide tells me my next stop is the TV room. Down narrow carpeted stairs, I reach a doorway, then freeze in mid-step. The walls are bright with Day-Glo yellow and dark blue graphics and white thunderbolts etched in yellow (from Elvis’ TCB — Taking Care of Business in a Flash! — logo).

Built into the wall across the room are three American TV sets with mono speakers, channel changer knobs and push-pull on-off switches on which Elvis could watch all three network news programs, just like President Johnson.

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Running the length of the wall below the TVs is an entertainment console fit for the King. There’s an old tube receiver and the pièce de résistance — a stackable turntable with LP covers standing on their edges. What I wouldn’t give to see that vinyl drop onto the spinning turntable as the tone arm lifts and slowly settles with a slight pop and an intro of scratches that crackle with the warmth of a luau in “Blue Hawaii.”

But the hallway’s filling up, so I retrace my steps upstairs to the den that Elvis added to the back of the house. A stone waterfall fills the far wall, and there’s faux-fur-covered furniture, net flower baskets hanging from the ceiling, and enough Polynesian carved wood to start up a chain of Trader Vic’s restaurants.

Ceiling carpet

I brush up against a wall that feels like carpet. I take a closer look and realize it is carpet. Green shag carpet. I turn my audio guide back on and hear that the den is called the Jungle Room and that Elvis furnished it to remind him of his beloved Hawaii. A security guard stifling a late-afternoon yawn giggles and points to the ceiling. Sure enough there’s green shag carpet up there too. We share a giggle.

My audio guide interrupts our fun to lead me down a corridor to a dark, windowless room filled with cases displaying Elvis’ personal belongings: his blue velvet suit, heavy gold jewelry, a bed in the shape of an open clam with white fake-fur cover, and his gun collection, including his turquoise-handle Colt .45. I’m thinking about the tactile nature of this exhibit and doing my best to deconstruct its meaning when Angie walks over to me.

“I feel him here,” she says, trilling as if possessed by the spirit. “Can’t you just feel him?”

“Well, it is called Graceland,” I say, emphasizing the first syllable.

That’s when I see some books on the desk that RCA gave Elvis in 1961. One is open to a page with his handwritten notes, underlined for emphasis. Using the telephoto lens on my camera, I also spot copies of “Gods From Outer Space,” “The Prophet” and “The Warren Commission Report” on the desk.

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Certain objects have always given me a feeling for a person. Books are one of them. I own those books too. Suddenly, I’m certain of a laugh and a hand reaching out and tapping me on the shoulder in a playful way. I want to shout, “Who are you?” but I realize I’m in a room with other people — who, on second thought, might slap me on the back and welcome me into the club.

I head outside for some air. I see a white arbor supported by white columns, and I follow the path beneath it. I end up at a circular pool with a fountain enclosed by a low black wrought-iron railing. Nestled at my feet are the gray granite tombstones of Elvis, his mother, father and grandmother.

A long bronze plaque with gold letters and leafy vines etched along the edges rests on each like a favorite blanket. Even on a cold January afternoon, there are flowers and wreaths from fans all over the world.

I lean over and read Elvis’ bronze marker. He was born on Jan. 8, 1935, and would have been 70 on Saturday. “God saw that he needed some rest and called him home to be with Him,” the marker says. I see a cross at the top, but there’s also his TCB logo at the bottom.

Taking care of business. I can’t help but imagine Elvis and the Biggest Bopper jamming through the night. Call it a working holiday.

On our way back to the visitors’ center, a woman with straight black hair and dark round eyes says plaintively, “I listen to him every chance I get.” Leaving the bus, she looks off in the distance, trying to hide the clouds of hurt.

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As if on cue, his voice flows from the loudspeakers, “Are you lonesome tonight?” She stops to listen with her hands clasped together. The thin rays of hope dance in her eyes, bringing a smile to her lips. It’s hope by a nose. Thank you, Elvis.

For shower singers

The shuttle bus just happens to drop us off right by the gift shop. I tell myself I’m not going to buy anything — that’s it’s only an interactive display. There are mugs and T-shirts, of course, but also needlepoint, pooper scoopers, body lotion, doll clothes, dish sets and barbecue sauce with “flavor as original as the King.”

Nick puts a pair of bug-eyed sunglasses, like the ones Elvis wore when he visited President Nixon in the Oval Office, on the sales counter. I joke that they’re even selling Elvis coffee.

“We have Elvis soap,” the saleswoman whispers. I do a double take, and she nods: “Pretty depressing. Sometimes I think they go too far.”

I’m about to reach for something clever. I buy the coffee instead.

At home several nights later, I dream that Elvis and I are talking in the kitchen. It’s one of those dreams that feels real, in which the person you’re talking to says something with enormous meaning, though you can’t quite remember what.

When I wake up the next morning, I open the gold foil wrap of Elvis’ Memphis King’s Blend Gourmet Coffee. I leave an extra cup in the coffeemaker.

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Eddie Kislinger, a lyricist and L.A.-area resident, has traveled to more than 30 countries.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Elvis outing

TOURS:

Graceland Mansion audio-guided tours cost $18 for adults, $16.20 for seniors and students; $7, children ages 7-12; younger than 7, free. Tours run 10 a.m.-4 p.m. every day but Tuesdays now through February.

Graceland Reservations Office, (800) 238-2000, https://www.elvis.com , for online reservations at least 48 hours before the tour.

— Times Staff

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