The Elvis in Me

We were sitting at a stop sign at the corner of College and Line Streets, directly across from the First Methodist Church. My mother was driving. My sister sat in the backseat. Riding shotgun in the front seat with the windows down on an August afternoon, I was six years old.

It was fortunate that we were not moving, for that is the moment the crackling AM radio announced that Elvis Presley was dead. Had we been traveling at speed, we all might have had “August 16, 1977” engraved on our own gravestones just like the King of Rock and Roll, because my mother went bonkers when she heard the news.

Raised as I was in a Christian fundamentalist household, that “filthy rock music” was not allowed in the house. No Rolling Stones. No Bob Dylan. No Pink Floyd or Jimi Hendrix. None of the iconic music of the late…