I never did wind up seeing Elvis in person. He came to our town twice in 1974 which would have been my opportunity. However, I had moved back home after being in Monterey for 3 years and then in Oregon for 6 months. My mother and I were so happy to be back together and had so much catching up to do that we never even heard about him being in town. He was there in April when I had just gotten home and then again in September when Mom and I were still so into hanging out together that we didn't hear about it on TV or read about it in the paper. There was nothing else really going on in our life at the time, to make us miss him, but we just didn't see people or pay attention to much except being together. It would have been great had we been able to see him together.
I think, though, that it was probably for the best. I don't know that I could have been that close to the "greatest entertainer of all time", without fainting and missing his show.
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BR>When my mom and I watched a televised concert in early 1977, Elvis looked so sad, and he had gained so much weight we cried. We both thought he might not have too long to live. He was so sweet in the concert though, and even though he couldn't remember words to some of his songs, he laughed at himself and went on and when he sang "An American Trilogy", he was absolutely marvolous. That beautiful voice came through.
In January of 1977, my dad and my fiance had bought a little beer bar for my fiance to run. On the night of August 13, 1977, we decided to drive up to Reno and get married. There was another couple at the bar that night that had lived together for quite awhile and they decided to come with us. So all four of us closed up the bar at 2:00 AM and took off.
We had a double wedding the next morning and spent the day and night there. We headed home the night of the 15th.
The next day, I went down to the bar early in the afternoon. The bartender asked me as soon as I walked in what I thought about Elvis dying. I told him to knock it off and walked over to the juke box. He told me to come and listen to the radio and when I didn't, he shut the juke box off and turned the radio up.
Oh God! It was true... I was devastated... I remembered how in 1967, I was a freshman in high school when my girlfriends and I heard at lunch that Elvis had gotten married. We cried so hard and took the rest of the day off from school because we were so heartbroken. We didn't even call in and the excuse we gave the next day was the truth. Elvis got married and we just couldn't come back.......Now, he was dead! My God, only 10 years later!
That marriage of mine didn't last very long and the only reason I even remember when we got married was because it was 2 days before the "love of my life" died.
