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<p>It is Friday, Dec. 24, and my wife and I are driving on I-40 just west of Knoxville, Tenn. It’s Christmas Eve, and we’re doing the last leg of a meandering, opportunistic, “let’s pull over and buy some of those antique hub caps” kind of road trip.</p>
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<p>A trip that has taken us to Selma, Ala., and to Gulf Port, Miss., and yesterday to Tupelo, Miss. We were in Tupelo because I wanted to see Elvis Presley’s boyhood home.</p>
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<p>For reasons I can’t explain I’ve never been interested in Graceland — the columned, caricatured mansion where Elvis hung out and partied between concerts. But, if the truth be told, I was mostly interested in seeing the gift shop in Tupelo.</p>
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<p>Some of you who read this column know that I have cut my transactional teeth at gift shops from South of the Border to Myrtle Beach to Gatlinburg. I have spent hours dawdling over snow globes in the Gay Dolphin; acquired inspirational (refrigerator) magnets at Pedro’s Mexico Shop East; and assembled an impressive collection of alligator-themed ashtrays at The Alligator Farm just outside St. Augustine, Fla.</p>
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<p>We arrived a little early and so we looked over the Presley house which is considerably smaller than a Brigadier brand mobile home. Actually its about one third the size of a single-wide. The house is surrounding by a ring of marble stones that bear witness to a difficult childhood.</p>
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<p>“Elvis born but his twin brother dies.”</p>
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<p>“Vernon Presley goes to Prison.”</p>
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<p>“Family reports annual income of $1,200.”</p>
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<p>“Elvis gets his first guitar — $7.75,” and so on.</p>
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<p>There is also a 1929 Plymouth that the family (probably) used when it finally departed Tupelo for a (hopefully) better life in Memphis.</p>
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<p>There is also a small church — it’s the actual church where Elvis worshipped and first sang “Ol Shep.” Finally, after a half hour of wandering the grounds, an attendant unlocked the doors to the gift shop itself.</p>
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<p>The shop does not disappoint — offering baseball caps, T-shirts, magnets, key-chains, bottle-openers and bumper stickers. But I will admit that I had a goal — I wanted a lamp, but not just any lamp.</p>
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<p>My dream was to get of a miniature Elvis (done up in his famous Aloha Concert costume) that would be worked-into into a functioning table lamp that could be used in my law office library. I hoped this lamp might also have some of his music — “Are You Lonely Tonight” — built into the base.</p>
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<p>Let me explain.</p>
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<p>I’ve known for some time now that the decor in my office offends certain people. I have, for example, several sober-looking busts of dead white men — FDR and Voltaire. I also have two (baby) monkey skulls and a full-sized spinal column. I also have a half dozen Mayan heads and a couple of autopsy jars filled-up with political buttons. On more than one occasion clients have said, “Scott could you put those monkey skulls in the other room.”</p>
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<p>I don’t want to suggest that my office projects the look (and smell) of a taxidermist’s work shop. That said, I have seen visiting attorneys look around the room and then shake their balding heads in disbelief.</p>
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<p>So as we cruised the back roads of lower Alabama and made our way up the Natchez Trace I thought what I needed was a little whimsey. And what about a dollop of much-needed humor? And what about filling-up the dark, uninspired room with “I’ll Have a Blue Christmas?” God knows I do need some of Presley’s stylings in the late afternoon.</p>
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<p>I didn’t spot any lamps on my first pass through the shop. In fact, there were no labor-saving appliances — toasters, blenders or coffee makers — of any kind. I did find some figurines of Elvis that could be used to trim one’s Christmas tree. But when I looked closely, the faces on these figurines looked more like Tex Ritter or Conway Twitty. Eventually I realized that no figurine was going to convey the man’s musical magic.</p>
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<p>Although his voice has been diminished over the years, there will never be another, “I’ll have a Blue, Blue, Blue Christmas Without You” sung in the manner that only Elvis could deliver.</p>
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<p>And so Susan and I left the gift shop and went back to our Honda Fit, where we dialed-up YouTube and listened to his famous Christmas Collection as we drove up the remainder of the Trace en route to Nashville.</p>
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<p><em>Scott Graber is a lawyer, novelist, veteran columnist and longtime resident of Port Royal. He can be reached at cscottgraber@gmail.com.</em></p>
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