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August 16th, 1977. Big sky country.
Heading west on Interstate 80. Halfway through my life.
Ahead of me clouds dyed red by the setting sun.
Then orange, pink, yellow, green and finally gray.
Perhaps an omen. Way off in the distance the Rockies
And not much else around except a whole lot of breathing room.
Behind me the amnesia of all those sad little towns
I’d just passed through. Outside of Rawlins
I switched on the radio and had its static in my ears
When a disc jockey announced that Elvis was dead.
Discovered unresponsive on his bathroom floor
And died an hour later. They’ll take his body away,
I figured, and open it up because this had to be an inside job.
Then the DJ played “Heartbreak Hotel” and that was that
Until dusk came down like a tent collapsing
After the last show is over and the circus moves on
To the next Podunk town with lots of sawdust but not much glitter.
For a while I wondered what “Love Me Tender”
Would sound like in the underworld just below this one
Or wherever he’d gone. Then I remembered
A couple of songs he sang on The Ed Sullivan Show
The night death touched his music so little
That all of us college kids knew he’d live forever.
That was years before he turned his body
Into a nail and started pounding it into the ground
With pills instead of a hammer
Stumbling and mumbling around on the stage
Like a bloated Liberace imitator,
Spending and spending himself for his fans
As if there was no such thing as a reckoning.
After thinking about that for a while I needed company
And fast because what a fever it was making do
With a few scraggly shrubs kneeling down in the wind
And a scattering of Burma Shave signs. Minutes, days,
Maybe an hour later I pulled into the first all-night truck stop I came to,
Esso, Texaco, can’t remember which
With lots of semis dozing in a parking lot the size of a football field.
Inside the café under a haze of cigarette smoke
Guys drinking coffee, eating pie and listening to Elvis
Singing “Jailhouse Rock.” It was nice they let him out of the jukebox
And good to be sharing a world with kind-hearted folks like that.
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Text in BOLD print is one of Elvis' song titles – 48 of 500
Who’s that at this time of night?
Hard Knocks too!
Do Not Disturb !
Where Do You Come From ? she asked
Do You Know Who I Am ? he replied; it’s Johnny B. Goode
Don't Ask Me Why I am here.
It’s Just Because
A Boy Like Me, A Girl Like You
Can’t be at the End of the Road
Help Me Make It Through the Night
I am Doin' the Best I Can on Such a Night
Can’t we Talk about the Good Times ?
Or is it The Impossible Dream ?
If you say You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin' ?
Where Do I Go from Here?
She replied:
Go East Young Man
The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face
I thought, You're the Devil in Disguise
But Now and Then There's A Fool Such as I
And I was All Shook Up and Almost in Love - Almost
With a Brown Eyed Handsome Man
But By and By
You wanted to be the Big Boss Man
And all my hopes went Blowin' in the Wind
I Got Stung , Big Love, Big Heartache
You left me in the Early Morning Rain
And with my Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain
You said, I'm Not the Marrying Kind
So this is The Last Farewell
It is Almost Always True that a Change of Habit
Is at the Edge of Reality
Your Cheatin' Heart will always be Steppin' Out of Line
Summertime Has Passed and Gone
Startin' Tonight , Stay Away , It's Over
Slowly But Surely You’ll be soon be Shoppin' Around for Girls! Girls! Girls! with Golden Coins
Saying, Love Me Tonight.
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