Live from Graceland

Well, our road trip has had highs and lows so far. Visiting Graceland was pretty great, though. Sarah and I were actually surprised by the very human scale of the mansion. In these days of McMansions and giant SUV's, the word we kept finding for this version of conspicuous consumption was "quaint." We had always thought of it of course as a monument to American commercialism, but it really seems more like a museum to the commercialism of a bygone, simpler time.

Anyway, we told Jamie all about Elvis and he had a lot of questions. We said we were going to visit Elvis's house and Jamie asked if Elvis was home. No, we said, he was not. "Where is Elvis?" he then logically inquired. "Well, Jamie, nobody really knows," we replied. Then as we were in the parking lot of Graceland he said, "Did Elvis go down the drain?" "In one sense, yes," I answered, "though not in the way you mean." Finally, he got to the end game and asked if Elvis was dead. I took a middle road and said probably but nobody was really sure. The best part, however, came as we entered the mansion. He took one look at the living room, to the right as you enter, and said "Where are all Elvis's toys?"

He approached the house for the rest of the tour in much the same way he does everywhere we go: he took his new matchbox car (bought at the Elvis Car Museum, which we all quite liked) and got down on the ground to watch how it rolled on various surfaces. For future reference, shag carpet is not optimal.