Over 15 years ago, I met one of Elvis’s girlfriends at a conference. Her name is June Juanico, and they dated in the 1950s before his Army service and before Priscilla. I purchased her book and found it to be interesting. I gave the book away when I lost the ability to read regular books, and I wonder how she is doing all these years later or even if she is still alive.
A family friend who was 14 years older than I (yes, I’m using correct English there instead of colloquial English, but has that rule changed?) was a huge Elvis fan. She kept a scrapbook with all kinds of celebrity photos, but she had more Elvis clippings and photos than any. She brought parts of that scrapbook over a year before she passed away. She knew I’d appreciate them, and she didn’t want her treasures going to someone who wouldn’t care.
I’ve had those pages all this time, but because I have to use a wearable headset to look at that sort of thing, I kept putting off going through them because I knew my eyes would be very tired. But this weather forced me to find something to do in the house, so I pulled them out and spent over an hour examining them.
The cool thing about this is she had the original clippings from the Memphis newspaper, and the Memphis newspaper seemed to have constant photos and articles about Elvis. People in other parts of the country wouldn’t have had those photos. Among the photos are a clipping of the family gathered around Elvis’s mother’s grave (with the tent above the burial site) at her funeral in 1958. I had never seen that before. Another photo is the original newspaper clipping of the Million Dollar Quartet–Elvis, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Carl Perkins–at Sun Studio. Elvis’s girlfriend at the time is in the photo. If you’re unfamiliar with the story, one day Elvis stopped by Sun Studio and somehow the other three ended up being there. It was a historic moment in music, and a newspaper reporter got to the studio to take the photograph. Look it up online. It has been duplicated in posters, books, and blogs like mine. I couldn’t believe it when I picked it up. An original clipping, not a copy.
How cool.
And those two are just the beginning. As I went through them, I could imagine the 14-year-old devouring the teen magazines and newspapers as she selected which ones to keep in her special scrapbook. I had those celebrity scrapbooks. At that age, I was basically an only child because my brother was gone from home. We lived in a neighborhood with only older people, so no one to hang out with. I was skinny, awkward, wore thick glasses, and escaped my reality by reading books and teen magazines. My celebrity crushes were Kurt Russell, Bobby Sherman, David Soul, Michael Cole, and…no, not Elvis…Lee Majors. Well, the Lee Majors in “The Big Valley,” so maybe it’s more appropriate to say Heath Barkley. By the way, I love that name Heath. But I couldn’t bring myself to name my sons after a TV character. I did know a couple who named their children Rhett and Scarlett. Really.
I think I’ll hang on to those photos and clippings for quite a while. It will be fun to go down memory lane remembering those iconic figures of the past while at the same time remembering my friend. Fourteen years separated us, but she was a family friend who spent a lot of time with my mom and me. She was a part of my growing up years, as much or more than some of my relatives.
Yesterday Barry was watching a “Pawn Stars” episode, and a woman was trying to sell something that belonged to Frank Sinatra. She was disappointed the item wasn’t as valuable as she thought it it should be. But they explained that because there are no longer many Frank Sinatra fans, the memorabilia has gone down in value.
That may happen with Elvis memorabilia, but for me, the scrapbook items are worth a great deal. Maybe not financially but emotionally. I will close with a line that only those familiar with Elvis will get, and forgive the corniness. It’s true.
Memories, pressed between the pages of my mind.
Sweet memories.
Life As I know it 