Elvis Is in The Building

If I wasn’t on edge during the car ride to the venue, I was certainly full of anticipation when I finally arrived. With my wife by my side, we entered what was a quaint auditorium at a small casino. There were folding chairs numbered throughout the room. It just didn’t “feel” like the right place for “The King” to hold court. I had my doubts. Many gray-haired eighty-somethings filled the room. All were there to see Elvis Presley. Well, not exactly, it was an Elvis impersonator whose name is Dean Z. But the excitement was feverishly palpable. About thirty elderly people were already seated in the very last row, the cheap seats. Their eyes fixated on the stage, filled with hope of seeing the Elvis, not Dean Z. They sat quietly waiting for something special with still 20 minutes to go before show time. Perhaps this Dean Z will help them find a way to restore their youth.

The band members finally took the stage. They started tuning their instruments. The elderly in the back row began to perk up, straining and waiting patiently for a long-awaited miracle. The lights slowly dimmed, and then it happened! There on stage was the man we all came to see decked out in one of Elvis’s signature black jump suits. The crowd roared as the band began to play, and he sang “Blue Suede Shoes”. He looked like Elvis, he dressed like Elvis, and his voice was as good as Elvis. His moves were impeccably Elvis’s too. Suddenly we were all transported back to a simpler life, a more innocent time of the late fifties. I could see a couple of silver-haired women with growing smiles on their faces as their minds wandered to a happier place. My mind did as well.

I remembered that I had white Buck shoes for my confirmation. I wore the same shoes for my eighth-grade graduation. But soon after, as the summer of 1959 gave way to fall, I had my mom dye my white Bucks blue. Oh, how bitchin’ was that?! I was one of only a handful of boys with blue suede shoes entering high school.

I am sure the ladies in the audience had similar feelings, reminiscing about their once-young lives filled with hopes and desires. The man on stage helped us to remember it all with “Don’t Be Cruel”, followed by “Love Me Tender”. At that moment, he invited any woman to come to the edge of the stage for a kiss. Within 15 seconds there was a line of maybe thirty women and not a young one among them. The evening now became more like a revival. These women were going to be cleansed with a peck on the cheek from Elvis, dare I say Jesus, himself. Each lady seemed to be in a trance as they slowly sauntered to the stage. A frail woman with a walker lead the way. If Dean Z had said let’s go jump in Lake Samish right now, I believe half of the 400 people in attendance would have done it!

The songs continued with “It’s Now or Never”, “Memories”, and “Jailhouse Rock. As I closed my eyes and leaned back into the chair, I could see my older sister heading down the hall of our house and closing the swinging door to the kitchen behind her. She would turn on the radio that sat above the cupboard. And the rock and roll songs would blast away, including “Jail House Rock”. On occasion I would watch her through the slit of the door as she held the handle of our Westinghouse refrigerator door and danced to the songs. I was twelve at the time not interested in any of that rock and roll. But she was fifteen, ripe for the times, including falling in love with Elvis.

A few times my sister caught me peeping through the slit of the door. “Come on, Ronnie, dance with me!”

“Nah, I’m no spaz.” was my intelligent reply. As I continued to watch her gyrating with that refrigerator door, I realized how much fun she was having, just her and Elvis.

The man on stage made us feel at home because he also had Elvis’s charisma. You could tell he himself loved Elvis. He said the kindest things about the “The King of Rock and Roll” that one man can say of another man.

There were twenty-one more songs yet to hear. As the evening wore on, most of us were truly transfixed by Dean Z, his singing, and his moves. When he began to sing “If I Can Dream”, the harsh realities of that period also materialized once again—the Vietnam War, civil unrest, prejudices, and inequality. I admit, we needed to be reminded of those issues as we continued to venture through our fantasy world. A touch of reality sometimes hurts, but no one ever escapes from its clutches, as hard as some people try.

The crowd jumped up in unison as Dean Z and the band treated us to “Proud Mary”. The same eighty-something women flowed into the middle aisle providing the rest of us with their renditions of how to dance to this lively tune. It seemed within the first thirty seconds of the song, the revival morphed into a celebration, honoring the greatest pop entertainer of all time, Elvis Presley. The bright lights, the gyrations of the man on stage, the glitter of his outfit, and words he sang all added up to the fact that Elvis is alive and is truly in the building.

The program concluded with Dean singing “You Were Always on My Mind”. I felt his words pierce my heart as I drew my wife closer to me. And for a moment, I relished the beauty of the gift the man had just given us all. Only one thing was missing—my sister by my side. She died just over two years ago. I am sorry to say I never did dance with her.