Apart form the locals shooting at it
the hostel was great. The district had an air of faded glory with unloved
French colonial houses, their balconies and intricate ironwork looking
out onto unkempt front yards and a dirty road flanking the cable car. Igor’s,
a bar/launderette/pool hall was around the corner.
Igor’s was a great place that hadn’t closed for
twenty-five years, day or night, even during building work. It was a cave
like establishment that had an always populated bar and grill near the
mouth, tables and gambling machines in the middle and in the bowels a few
washing machines. Above this was a landing with a pool table. The cocktails
where lethal, as were the drinking hours (every hour). The weather was
great (at least after New York), I had taken a paddle steamer ride past
a scenic oil refinery and I was enjoying myself in New Orleans.
I met Andrea and Kym while I was waiting for the
cable car to take me into the French quarter. I was going in to try Gumbo.
They were going in for a Ghost walk. They offered me a lift to Memphis,
I agreed.
The next morning we left in Andrea’s car, my backpack
and I sitting on the back seat, Andrea driving. We travelled out of New
Orleans and into the surrounding bayou. The road turned into a vast curving
low bridge with stunted trees and muddy water below, stretching as the
eye could see. The sky was a clear and lazy blue. We drove on chatting
about Kym and Andrea’s university life and their future ambitions. Whilst
we chatted the countryside evolved into a plainer, standard highway, a
vista of browned grass on half hearted hills lined with malformed trees.
We reached Memphis in the late afternoon. It is
an industrial town and we drove through suburbs of dilapidated looking
bungalows with patchy lawns and heavily barricaded liquor stores. The weather
had turned and a sulking sky brooded low overhead. We drove for a while
before reaching what appeared to be a large car park opposite a nondescript
southern style mansion. In the car park was an aeroplane and, looking carefully,
we could see modern looking complex. Turning in we parked and, after crossing
a grubby little brook, we entered the ticket and cinema complex for Graceland.
Deferring the pleasures of Elvis’s car and aeroplane collection and even
the cinema we simply bought tickets for the tour of the king’s former home.
This entitled us to a trip to and from the mansion across the road in a
golf cart train and a tour conducted by means of a cassette in a personal
stereo. We got into the toy train and were chauffeured through the gates
of Graceland to the hallowed portal.
The building is a classic white two story southern
mansion with a sweeping drive leading to a large front door flanked by
neo classical columns. The crowded four lane highway only meters away rather
spoils the effect.
The tour included such delights as Elvis’s kitchen,
in which we were told about Elvis’s fads in food. The tape unit replayed
us Priscilla Presley telling us about a phase in which the King ate only
meatloaf for six months solid and the rest of the family secretly asked
the chef to cook them something different. No mention was made of burgers.
We were also shown "The Jungle Room", decorated as the name suggests but
surprisingly tasteful. The pool room was decorated with ruffled rich fabric
fanning out from the centre of the ceiling and down the walls, giving an
opulent, decadent feel. Elvis’s music room where apparently he used to
sit around singing hymns and listening to Opera seemed a standard 50’s
American parlour with a piano and what would have been an expensive hi-fi
system 30 years ago. A highlight of the tour was Elvis’s trophy room that
contained various objects and memorabilia from his life. The commentary
in this room presented a sanitised version of Elvis’s life. The final part
of the tour was the racquet ball court that provided the final scene of
Elvis’s life and a meditation garden that acted as a shrine to Elvis.
We left sanctified by the cultural icon we had
just revered. Finding a cheap motel we booked rooms and, in reverence to
our afternoon’s activity, phoned for a pizza.