A Hunk o’ Love for Elvis
Nearly a year ago in this column we spoke with aerospace physicist-turned-stereo maker Bill Firebaugh, who put a positive spin on the cutbacks in his chosen field. He opined that, liberated from the burden of protecting our nation, this bright, creative, can-do aerospace bunch would accomplish wondrous things.
“Who knows what they can do?” he said.
Since then, we’ve featured one who carves wooden reindeer, and I just spent a while Friday with laid-off McDonnell Douglas engineer Mary Earhart and her partner Rick Padilla, weighing the hefty issue of whether it would be proper to cook up some fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches in Elvis Presley’s old skillet. I, for one, am starting to think that this “defense conversion” stuff may take a while.
After working on the MD-80 and MD-11, large winged things with many parts, Earhart woke up one morning in February without a job to go to. She assessed her career prospects, realizing, “You’re not going to get a job in California in aerospace” and started spending a lot of time listening to her two Elvis Presley albums.
She bought more, in short order sinking the entirety of her savings into Elvis goodies. Her enthusiasm spread to her hair stylist and friend Padilla, 46, who did likewise with his earnings. Among Earhart’s purchases was a cache of genuine Graceland artifacts owned by Elvis’ personal cook, Mary Jenkins, including a decanter set, a massive ashtray, serving trays, a quilt and some cookware.
Now they’ve gone into business, selling some of those pieces, other Elvis items and sundry memorabilia in a Laguna Beach shop called the ‘50s and ‘60s Nostalgic Gallery.
They have Elvis’ egg pan ($1,000) and the yellow-enameled cast-iron skillet ($1,500) in which many of the King’s jumpsuit-billowing meals were prepared, including his favorite nocturnal treat, the fried peanut butter and banana sandwich.
If I owned it, I would sure as hell cook me a greasy big PB&B.; That would seem tantamount to getting to play “All Along the Watchtower” on Jimi’s Strat. But Earhart thinks otherwise.
In a rich Georgia accent, she explained, “I wouldn’t ever cook in it. That’s out of my respect for him. I wouldn’t want to in the least. Why should I?”
Padilla is of a different frame of mind.
“I wouldn’t have any problem using it myself,” he said. “I wouldn’t hesitate at all. I’d do it just to say, ‘Hey, Elvis ate off this.’
“When we were first in the store setting up, we were opening the boxes, and everything was wrapped up in paper real meticulously. One night I was having a cigarette and couldn’t find an ashtray, and I just popped that thing (the garish ashtray) right out and started using it. I figured, ‘If it’s good enough for Elvis . . . ‘ I didn’t tell Mary about it.”
“But I found out,” she said good-naturedly, while hefting the skillet.
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The pair opened their shop--actually subleased space in the Discovery Gallery oldies shop--a few weeks ago. The collection was still ensconced in Earhart’s Orange apartment during the fire, so it was never in danger of becoming Elvis toast. Business so far has been slow. They attribute some of that to the fire, and some to Elvis fans not knowing they are open yet, which they hope to remedy by mailers recently sent out to Elvis fan club members.
Earhart said, “We’ve told all the fan clubs, ‘If you don’t want to buy anything, that’s fine. You’re welcome to come in just to see what we have that Elvis owned personally.’ ”
She and Padilla feel a duty to share their little bit of Graceland with others. They wouldn’t mind if folks did buy something, though, because then the two might be able to afford a trip to Elvis Mecca, Memphis, to see the real Graceland.
It is a distinctly American place: If Hearst Castle had been decorated not with the rich plunder of Europe but with gaudy fixtures and wares from casinos and pawnshops--the sort of stuff a giant raven might be drawn to carry off--it would be Graceland. The mere sight of the yellow and silver-foil lightning bolt wallpaper of the “TV Room” or the sick green carpeting covering the walls and ceiling of the “Jungle Room” (where Earhart’s glass decanters ($17,500) resided) is enough to make decorators pluck the eyes from their faces, not that even that could shut out the screamingly loud designs.
One of Earhart’s choicer Graceland artifacts is the massive, antiqued gold-leaf ashtray (also priced at $17,500).
She remarked, “You know, anyone else would think it’s ugly.”
“Me too,” I offered.
“Well, it is ugly. The thing was, Elvis would buy stuff that no one else would buy. He didn’t care if it was a status symbol. If he saw something he liked, he bought it. This was his personal ashtray (he smoked cigars), which sat on his bedside table.” It is one of two items she is hoping won’t sell, because she wants to keep them.
The other is a bedspread emblazoned with the logos and helmets of NFL teams. It is just a cheap, department store item, but Earhart values it for the value Elvis attached to it. She has had it mounted in plexiglass, with a plaque next to it explaining its story: “This NFL football quilt was sent to Elvis by a fan sometime in the late ‘60s as a Christmas present. Elvis, due to his love of football, kept the treasured quilt at the foot of his bed until the time of his death in 1977. Presented to Mary Jenkins by his Aunt Delta.”
Jenkins was Elvis’ cook from 1963 to 1977. Like most people near Elvis, he rained gifts of Cadillacs and house deeds on her, and unlike most of Elvis’ entourage, her post-mortem book on him, “Elvis, Memories Beyond Graceland Gates,” has nothing but warm memories in it. It was the Buena Park publishers of the book, Sonya and Peter Wojdak of West Coast Publishing, who put Earhart in touch with Jenkins to buy her collection.
“I really can’t tell you what made Rick and I get into all this,” Earhart said. “It’s really weird.”
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All she knows is that in February she suddenly had time on her hands and started listening to her Elvis albums. Back when she was growing up in the South, she was too busy attending Catholic school and then college to pay much attention to him in the first go-round. Now she was supplementing her albums with tapes because she was wearing out the vinyl, and started buying every other Elvis record she could get.
“To me, listening to Elvis is like scuba diving or flying (she does both): you lose yourself in it. And, like when you’re watching a sunset, it just makes all your problems seem small.
“I met a woman who has two shrines in her home to Elvis, so I wouldn’t say I’m a fanatic, but I am a believer in Elvis. I believe he had a God-given talent.”
She invested nearly everything she had. Padilla did likewise, and they’re trying to make a business of it. They know it’s a risky economy to be taking chances. “We may go under. Who can say in these times? If we do, we do,” she said.
Like other Elvis fans, she loves tales of Elvis’ grand gestures, how if Sammy Davis Jr. admired a diamond ring on his hand, Elvis would take it off and give it to him; how he’d give cars to nearly anyone or would fund a Memphis trauma center. Maybe she’s going for a grand gesture herself in devoting a store to Elvis.
Along with the Jungle Room decanters, they also carry the collectors’ decanters that came out after his death: gold Elvises in karate poses, or noble busts of his Grecian features, with hooch swimming around inside (at least no one ever made an Elvis pill dispenser).
There are musical watches, records and other trinkets, as well as a variety of non-Elvis items, ranging from “Star Trek” mementos to some signed George Harrison song lyrics for a tune called “Only a Harris Song,” which became “Only a Northern Song” when the Beatles released it.
Earhart doesn’t mind carrying Elvis tribute items, but says, “I won’t carry anything against him, nothing bad about Elvis, no way. For all the things I’ve read about him, I still believe his talent was a gift from God and that he was great humanitarian.
“I’m not saying he was perfect. Nobody does everything right, and I think he had the saddest life of anyone I’ve ever heard of in the world. Everyone betrayed Elvis in the end, all of ‘em. I want a little bit of Elvis to live on here.”
