12 October 2012

LMRR'12 Dispatch #27: Friday, 5 Oct: Graceland and Arkansas Post.

Copyright © 2012 Bob R Bogle

Pretty poor lighting in those darkened rooms and being pushed through, etc.  Anyway, here's Graceland.





The TV room.  Lyndon Johnson had three TVs in the White House, so Elvis wanted the same.  Hm.


The er less than dramatically arresting TCB lightning bolt logo.  Don't ask me what the gargoyle is meant to represent.



The notorious jungle room, in some ways the most interesting part of the mansion.



Possibly the sanest place in Graceland:  Elvis' backyard.


The mansion from the backyard.


Trophies.




The truth is Elvis had ceased to be artistically-interesting before the 50s were over; even the '68 comeback was only a more-or-less passionate retread of songs from a decade earlier.  The guy's a relic of a time that never really existed . . . not so different from Mitt, now that I think about it.


A paean to his own Elvisness and utterly detached from the world everyone else inhabits.  Hm.  More resonance with Mitt.






Poor pix from a dark room, but the following few shots are more interesting than the Elvis stuff.














Live Sirius XM Elvis trivia contest.  The short lady in the middle said she's been coming to Graceland from Tennessee every year for a decade cos she just loves Elvis.  The DJ asked her if she's from East, Middle, or West Tennessee, a well-known division that predates the Civil War.  She had no idea what part of Tennessee she lives in.  Probably it all looks the same out your trailer window when you've spent your entire life doing nothing but memorizing Elvis trivia.


Back on the road, across the Mississippi River in Arkansas.




Arkansas Post.  Really a pretty NPS gem.







An ancestor of mine under Sherman's command fought here, but I knew a lot less about what happened here  before this visit.






Saw a lot of deer on this trip including numerous small fawns with their does.  Few of the pix I attempted turned out very well, however.











Weird fungus.  Or the Blob.


















Battlefield where my ancestor pushed through.  Here I was pretty literally walking in his footsteps.






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