August 16

There are certain days in your life when you can remember exactly what you were doing, who you were with and where you were---there are a few in my life—today is one of them. I am not one of those died-in-the-wool Elvis fans like some people but I do remember the day he died. I think that Elvis did a lot for the music world—he was very talented but he was also the first rock-n-roll star and he carried all the baggage that lifestyle entails. I think that one of the reasons that he died so young is that he was made a god by so many people and he couldn’t live up to it—just my opinion.

Anyway, on that day back in 1977—I know some of my friends were not even born then—I was getting ready to start my senior year of high school. We had lived in North Carolina that summer so that we could be with my daddy—he was in construction and always had to work out of town. My sister, Kim, and I befriended a young woman whose husband worked for my daddy—I will call her Sally. Sally was from that part North Carolina and had a sister that lived a couple of hours away. She had the idea that we should go on a girl’s trip to see her sister for the weekend before school started back for us (we would be moving back to SC for school). The three of us piled into Sally’s husband’s pick-up truck and hit the road. We were traveling on Interstate 95 when we ran out of gas! We had to get out and walk to the next exit to get some gas—we could see the exit ramp but I thought we would never get there. I was so humiliated—I couldn’t believe that we were actually walking down the side of the interstate—Sally was maybe 24, Kim was 16 and I was 17. Of course, there was no such thing as cell phones back then! After we got the gas situation taken care of, we finally arrived at the home of Sally’s sister—and she wasn’t home! So what did we do? Well, we climbed in through the laundry room window—well ‘we’ didn’t but Sally did. I just knew that the police were going to come and arrest us for breaking and entering! So—now we are inside and ready to start our fun girls weekend so we turn on the TV—what else is there to do? There were special reports all over the TV telling us that the ‘King of Rock’n’Roll’ was dead!

When I think back on that day 31 years ago, I am struck by this thought—I wonder if the ‘king’ met ‘The King’ that day?