Inside Graceland: Elvis' Maid Remembers (5 page)

She loved sitting in her rocking chair, which sat just a few steps inside the door to her bedroom, near the foot of her bed. She would fall asleep there at night and we would have to wake her and help her into bed. She didn’t like sleeping in the bed. We knew she was really sick whenever she stayed in bed in the morning, instead of getting up and getting in her chair as soon as she bathed and got her makeup on.

We had a little game we would sometimes play in the mornings. She missed the few family members she still had, and didn’t get to see them very often. She had seven brothers and sisters, and they all continued to live in Mississippi. She got lonesome on occasion, and would pretend that she was still living in Tupelo, and was just visiting in Memphis. After our coffee in the morning, I would take off into another part of the house to start my chores, and she would say, “Well, it’s been nice visiting, I’ve got to be getting home now.” And I would say, “It’s sure been nice you being here, come back and see us.” We would both laugh, but I could tell she really missed her family.

She didn’t like doctors. Shortly before Dodger died, Aunt Delta had had a doctor come out to see her because she was worried about her mother’s health. The doctor told her she needed to go to the hospital, but Dodger said, “I’m not going to any hospital! The good Lord has taken care of me this long, and I’m not going to any hospital!”

She had suffered a lot of problems with her eyes, which may be where Elvis inherited the problems he had.

I spent many hours putting eye drops in her eyes. She had to use the eye drops several times a day. She told me she really appreciated my steady hand when it came to putting them in for her. She whispered to me one day, “You do such a good job, I wish you could do it all the time. Delta feels like she needs to do it for me and I don’t want to hurt her feelings. But her hands shake so much that it spills the eye drops all over me.”

As she got older and her health started deteriorating, her daughter, Nash, an ordained minister, would call all of us into Dodger’s bedroom. We would all stand around in a semi-circle around her bed and hold hands together, as Nash prayed out loud for her mother to be healed.

As Dodger got older, she would have me fix chicken noodle soup for her, and I would cut up cantaloupe pieces for her to snack on. She said that was about the only thing she felt she could eat.

She told me on numerous occasions that it just wasn’t right that Elvis, and then her son, Vernon, should go before she did. She told me, “I should have gone before they did! It just isn’t right!” She really got distressed over it at times.

I don’t think she ever got over Elvis’ death. On several occasions, I suggested that it might do her some good to visit his grave, along with Vernon’s, down by the meditation garden. But, she said, she didn’t think she could stand seeing those two graves, side by side.

Aunt Delta and I did, on one occasion, finally talk her into letting us wheel her in her wheelchair the short distance to the graves. The sun was shining and it was a beautiful day and I felt it would make her feel better to see how beautiful the graves were. But, after several minutes, she became so distraught that we wheeled her back to the house.

It took several days for her to get over that experience. Luckily, she had her daughter to take care of her. Aunt Delta did her very best to look after her mother.

Aunt Delta could be quite spirited at times. She was quick to say what was on her mind, often saying things before she thought of what the implications might be.

I got to know her very well shortly after going to work at Graceland. Elvis had just purchased the Circle G ranch in Mississippi in 1967, and Priscilla, and all the “guys” would spend several days, and sometimes weeks, at the ranch. Delta and I would drive to the ranch in her white Cadillac and clean up after Elvis and the group left there. During those daily drives, Aunt Delta and I became good friends and she confided in me about a lot of things.

A lot of people felt she said and did things without regard for other people’s feelings. I can see where they would think that, but I also saw the kind and tender side of her, as well. She did not seem to be able to get close to a lot of people and, consequently, was considered by some to be a ‘loner’. So many times she would say something to me that would hurt my feelings, only to come back later and apologize, often giving me a small gift of some sort to try and undo the damage. She once told me, “I don’t know why I say and do the things I do, sometimes. I guess I just don’t think.”

George Coleman told me about the time he and Patsy were sitting out in the back office, talking. There was a camera back there so they could see who was coming in the front gate. George told me that there was an unusually large, rotund looking female letter carrier that often delivered mail to the mansion. On this particular day, Patsy and George had watched her unmistakable outline come up to the house and then leave again, and Patsy had made a joke about her size. They were both laughing about it at the same time Aunt Delta walked into the office area, and Aunt Delta thought they were laughing at her about something. George said she exploded in anger and cussed at both of them, before storming out of the office. Patsy went running after her and was finally able to persuade her that they had not been laughing at her. She later apologized to both of them.

Her life centered around making sure things ran smoothly at Graceland. She was a stickler for details, and didn’t have a lot of patience when things didn’t get done the way she thought they needed to be done. On more than one occasion she, herself, after a few ‘nips” of bourbon, created a small amount of damage around the house by throwing certain items of furniture toward the wall. She would then desperately call George Coleman, the ever-handy electrician on staff at Graceland, sometimes in the middle of the night, and beg him to come out and “fix” the damage before Elvis got home. George always showed right up and took care of whatever problems needed to be fixed. Those things always stayed strictly between her and George.

She dressed very simply, usually wearing slacks and a blouse, even though she loved shopping for clothes and had many nice outfits. She had so many, in fact, that her clothes closet would not hold all of them. We stored a lot of them in the closet at the end of the main hallway.

She was a heavy chain-smoker, and would walk her dog around the back yard of Graceland late at night, while smoking. She would sometimes scare the night watchman as he made his rounds through the back area of Graceland. One of the guards once told me that she was lucky she had not gotten shot accidentally by the guard, because she would not make any noise as she quietly walked her dog and smoked her cigarettes, often roaming the entire back grounds of the estate.

It became a concern, for those of us when we worked the night shift, that she would often forget to reset the intrusion alarm on the door leading into the jungle room when she would come in from her walks. We had to constantly check to be sure it was set after she came in, and to diplomatically remind her that she needed to remember to set the alarm when she came in. We had to sometimes remind ourselves, especially after Dodger died, that the house now belonged to Aunt Delta, and we had to be careful in what we said to her about the alarm.

A small crisis developed when Priscilla began thinking about opening Graceland to the public in the early eighties.

Aunt Delta considered the house to belong to her, telling anyone who would listen that Elvis had told her many times, while still alive, that she could live at Graceland as long as she wished to do so. She became very upset at times, calling Priscilla names, and saying, “I can’t believe that they are going to open my house to the public. Don’t they know I won’t have any privacy anymore! My life will be miserable. I’ll have to move, maybe get me a trailer. I just don’t think I can take this!”

We spent a lot of time trying to console her, and to convince her that they were not going to kick her out of the house. Over time, she finally resolved herself to the fact that it had to be done, to keep the mansion from going into bankruptcy.

Trying to figure out a way to guide the tourists around her living quarters, however, became a logistical concern for officials at Graceland.

A number of planning meetings were held at the dining room table prior to the house being opened for tours. During one such meeting, we cooked dinner for Priscilla, Todd Morgan, and several other officials, as they discussed their options to open the mansion. Priscilla had flown in from Los Angeles the night before, and Patsy, Elvis’ cousin, had borrowed Aunt Delta’s white Cadillac to go and pick her up at the airport. When Aunt Delta found about her car being used to bring Priscilla to the house, she had a fit. She complained for five minutes straight about how she didn’t have any more rights at the house, now that Elvis was gone. It took us forever to calm her down.

She stayed in the kitchen the next day as we served them fried chicken, dressing, potato salad, and several types of dessert.

Aunt Delta, who did not want to confront them face to face, told me, “Nancy, when you take them coffee, try and listen to what they’re saying.” I would then come back into the kitchen and fill her in on the details as they unfolded. I felt like a spy, running from the dining room into the kitchen and back all evening long.

At one point, they invited her into the dining room and someone asked her if she would consider letting them buy her a new house to live in. She promptly replied, “I already HAVE a nice house, thank you!”, and promptly returned to the kitchen.

Compromises were eventually reached and the house did open to the public. Not to say that there were no problems, especially in the beginning.

The planners decided that the tourists would not go through the kitchen area, since that was an area Aunt Delta often frequented and where she ate her meals. They were trying their best to be fair to her and to not impact her living arrangements any more than they had to.

But she was a force to be reckoned with.

On more than one occasion, especially after having a few more “nips”, Aunt Delta would walk out into the hallway, often dressed in her robe or housecoat, her hair in curlers and cigarette dangling out of her mouth, and tell the startled fans taking the tour to “Get the hell out of my house!” I often wondered what kind of thoughts went through the fans’ minds as those events took place.

She was not at all happy about having to share what she considered to be “her house” with “total strangers.” As time went on, things smoothed out somewhat, but we were always on guard to try and make sure she didn’t offend a “paying guest.” (A guest once asked one of the security guards how Aunt Delta was doing, and the guard responded, “She’s fine, now that we got the gun and bullets away from her.”)

Things changed very little after Dodger died, as far as the house being run as it always had been run.

All of the focus shifted to taking care of Aunt Delta’s needs, and those needs became more critical as she began feeling the effects of old age.

Near the end, she was totally bedridden and we had to do everything for her. It was so sad watching her go downhill so rapidly. She had been so vibrant and full of energy when I had first started working there.

When she died, in 1993, the kitchen was added to the tour.

A part of Graceland died with her, the last occupant of a grand old house that had seen more than it’s share of good and bad times. It stands today, a mansion with many memories to share.

MEMORIES
 

Th
ough the word “normal” never seemed to be a part of
El
vis’ life, there actually was a normal routine over the years at Graceland.

It was a home, not just a business. While financial and business decisions were made on a daily basis, Elvis wanted to be himself, to be able to relax and unwind at Graceland. It was his escape from the many cares of the world.

Like anyone trying to relax, he loved sitting around in his pajamas during the day, trying to be comfortable, whether he was upstairs reading in his bedroom, watching TV, or eating breakfast in the dining room.

He once told me, “I don’t want to be treated like a star in my own home.” “Ok,” I told him, “I’ll treat you like you’re my brother.”

That’s what he wanted from me. It made it much more comfortable for both of us. It also helped as we went through the daily routines at Graceland. Like anyone else at home, he spent his time doing all sorts of different things.

When I first went to work for him, he would sometimes sit for hours in the TV room in the basement and listen to records. He would occasionally play his own records, but, most often, he preferred to listen to black singers such as Fats Domino, Memphis Slim, Rufus Thomas, and BB King. Frank Sinatra and Tom Jones albums were also frequently played. I used to love to hear those records coming over the intercom as I worked. It seemed to make the day go by so much faster.

He was also a television junkie. There were TV sets all over the house. He had two separate televisions installed over his bed, flush-mounted in the ceiling, and had a third console model at the foot of the bed, sitting on a raised, carpeted stand. That way he could watch all three major networks at the same time. Using his remote control, he could pick and choose the sound from the one that most appealed to him. One of the TV’s in his bedroom was usually on, 24 hours a day, with the sound muted. He loved watching TV.

Some of his favorite shows were Kojac, Wild, Wild West, Hawaii Five-O, and several of the game shows popular at that time. He also loved football, and watched the games whenever they were on. His favorite team was the LA Rams.

There was a local gospel show that was broadcast live on Sunday mornings, called the Otis Mays Show. Otis was a local black celebrity of sorts, and Elvis always enjoyed watching his program. Elvis used to kid that one day he was going to go down to the studio and join in the program. We all knew, of course, that this would have caused pandemonium. Elvis realized this, too, and never made good on his “threat.”

He told me on numerous occasions how much he enjoyed many of the black musicians, and said he had grown up trying to imitate their musical style.

I’m often asked if I ever saw any signs of prejudice in him. I can honestly say that I never did. He never let the color of someone’s skin affect the way he treated them.

Many of his fans would probably be surprised to know, for example, that in the mid-seventies he dated a young, beautiful light-skinned black girl named Maggie. She had been hired by Vernon for $5 an hour to answer the phones at Graceland, and she and Elvis soon developed a romantic attraction. Like many of Elvis’ romances, this one was relatively short and they went their separate ways. Tragically, she later died in a night club party.

As you might imagine, life was always interesting at Graceland. Sometimes, however, it could also be quiet and rather mundane. Elvis loved to read. He would sit quietly in his pajamas and read the local newspaper. We also had subscriptions to Life, Time, and Newsweek.

He would spend hours lounging around his pool during the hot Memphis days. It usually fell on me to make sure all his things were laid out for him by the pool. His routine included Hawaiian Tropic tanning lotion, two large beach towels, plenty of ice water, and cotton balls to cover his eyes. I always made sure to have sandwiches and chips out for him, as well.

Occasionally, he would have me hook up a small fan next to his lounge chair. I can still see him relaxing in his lounge chair, by the pool, with the fan keeping him cool.

At one time, in the early seventies, he had a privacy fence surrounding the pool, to keep the neighbors from being able to look through their fences and see the swimming pool area. They were always trying to catch a glimpse of him whenever he wanted to swim or lounge around the pool. For some reason, and I’m not sure why, that fence was later removed.

When he wanted to go to the swimming pool area, his normal routine would be to walk through the music room, down the trophy room hallway, and out the door at the end of the trophy room, to the pool.

He was very hot-natured and liked everything around him to be as cold as possible. He had a window air conditioning unit installed right next to his bed so he could feel the cold air blowing directly over him. It also provided a little bit of noise to help him when he slept. There used to be a second window unit at the other end of the house in his dressing room. It was taken out before the house was opened for tours. The one in his bedroom used to be visible on the tour but has since been taken out of the window. The one in his bedroom ran all the time, even in the winter.

Wintertime was always so much fun because of the Christmas festivities. Elvis always went all out at Christmastime. We would start putting up the decorations around Thanksgiving. The chill of the cooler weather would be instantly warmed by the multiple displays as they went up all over Graceland.

The yardmen would line the entire front driveway with lights, and several lighted trees would be put up around the property. A lighted manger scene would be put up in front, complete with animals and angels. Reindeer statues would be put out.

Inside the house, Christmas lights, ornaments, and wreaths were put up all over the downstairs area. A green wreath with embedded white lights was strung up the railing on the stairway. A huge decorated tree was always placed in the dining room, right behind Elvis’ chair. By the time Christmas day rolled around the room would be so full of wrapped presents that it was sometimes hard to get to the tree.

Gifts would come in from all over the world. Sometimes there would be so many that Elvis would let the staff go through them and take what they wanted. Just about all the stuffed animals, at least the ones Lisa didn’t want, would end up being sent to one of the local children’s hospitals.

Elvis would dress up like Santa Claus for Lisa. At other times Vernon would be the one to play Santa. Lisa would get so excited that she would sometimes go in and start opening presents several days before Christmas day. We tried to stop her but when Elvis found out he would laugh and tell us, “She’s only going to be a kid one time. just let her go ahead.”

Christmastime also meant tons of fireworks set up in the back yard at all hours of the day and night. Elvis one time sent one of his buddies to Arkansas with $1,000 just for fireworks. I don’t think anyone in Whitehaven got any sleep that night.

There would also be many parties at the house for friends and family alike. The punch and the alcohol would flow freely and everyone had a great time. Though he didn’t drink, he would sometimes have to tell some of the employees to be careful not to drink too much. He would laugh and say, “I need you at work tomorrow.”

Christmastime also meant gift time for the employees. Vernon would give out the usual hams. Elvis would have some of the department stores stay open just for him and he would go shopping at midnight. Over the years I received all kinds of nice presents, plus generous cash gifts.

The most special gift Elvis gave me was a gold leaf Bible. It was given to me the last Christmas he was alive, in 1976. I’ll treasure it forever. It was a very special gift from him and I knew he had personally picked it out for me. I would read it everyday, and I knew it was a gift from his heart.

Christmas decorations were kept up until after his birthday in January. It was always hard to take the decorations down because that signaled a return to the normal duties at the mansion. It was back to the mundane things.

As his housekeeper, I cleaned his room everyday. I changed his sheets and all four pillowcases on a daily basis. He had several sets of the custom made linens, most of them plain white. Contrary to what people think, he didn’t have monogrammed sheets or pillowcases. He occasionally through the years had bedspreads with his initials on them. The bed linens were kept in a small closet next to his bed, near the window air conditioning unit. He also had a number of sets of matching towels and washcloths, with red being his favorite.

His routine was to place his dirty clothes on a chair in the far corner of his bedroom. I would collect them and take them down to the laundry room in the basement, where they were washed in regular Tide detergent.

He often ate in his room sitting in his bed, watching TV or reading. We would deliver his food to him on his favorite white TV tray. He drank ice water from an orange juice style pitcher kept in one of the upstairs refrigerators. When he was through eating, he would leave the tray by the side of his bed where I would collect it and take it down to the kitchen.

There is a small hallway leading from his bedroom into the bathroom, with a closet on either side. The one on the left held his pajamas, robes, and slippers. (Elvis did not wear T-shirts, and the most famous entertainer in the world wore plain, white Fruit-of-the-Loom briefs. They were kept in a white chest of drawers in his dressing room, along with his socks). The closet to the right of the small hallway held a small, dorm-style refrigerator. That’s where we kept popsicles, Eskimo pies, cut-up fruit, and such. We also kept a bottle of ice water in it for him at all times.

Aunt Delta was the one who usually did the shopping for the house. She could be seen on a regular basis shopping at the Kroger at Whitehaven Plaza, or Walgreen’s just down the street from Graceland. There, she purchased the Colgate toothpaste that Elvis used, as well as Aqua Velva and Brut after-shave lotion. I wasn’t fond of the Brut, and would occasionally try and hide it in the back of one of the bathroom shelves, but Elvis would eventually find it and wear it again.

Although Elvis was not a heavy smoker, he did enjoy an occasional small cigar. He could often be seen with a Tiparillo in his mouth, although it would often not even be lit. And, although he would smoke a cigarette every now and then, he did not like to be seen in public doing so because he thought it did not look good for his image.

As every true fan of Elvis knows, there are many stories concerning his eating habits. As one of his cooks, I never quite knew what kind of food Elvis might be in the mood for. Although he preferred plain, southern-style food, like most of us he would sometimes get a craving for something different. Not necessarily different as in something unique that nobody else likes, but different in the fact that he may want breakfast at four o’clock in the afternoon, or dessert at three in the morning. He might ask for a hot dog with sauerkraut at midnight. This necessitated us trying to always keep the refrigerators and pantries stocked in anticipation of what he might ask for. And, of course, we were also expected to feed anyone else at any time of the day if they were hungry. (One of his “buddies” loved to come in the kitchen and ask us to fry up a pound of bacon for him, which we always did. (That same man got so large that at one time, in the back pasture area, a horse he was attempting to get on actually fell over on him.) In the late sixties Aunt Delta once told me that she was spending over $500 a week on food.

For his birthday, in January, we would always fix him a giant homemade birthday sheet cake and decorate it with a large musical note on top. It would be carried into the dining room, accompanied by singing from everyone present, and he would blow out the candles to the cheers of all those around him.

There were plenty of fun times involving Elvis and food. But, there were also a few that weren’t so fun. Most of the time, he was easy to please. As he got more heavily involved in taking what he always called his medications, however, he could at times become more demanding about things, including his food. There were times when I would deliver his meal to his room, only to be called back upstairs and be told that it was not hot enough, and that we needed to cook it over for him.

I vividly recall an incident where he thought he was buzzing down to us on the intercom to let us know he was ready for his meal. Actually, it turned out, he was buzzing the wrong intercom station by mistake, so we did not hear the intercom. After thinking for almost 20 minutes that we were ignoring him he came charging down the back stairs into the kitchen area, where several of us were lounging around, wondering among ourselves why he had not called us yet to serve his meal.

We heard him from the top of the stairs, and by the time he got down to the kitchen area most of us had scrambled for safety. I ducked into the stairway leading down into the basement, and, luckily he did not see me. I remember watching Mary go running out the back door into the yard. Charging into the kitchen, Elvis was as mad as I’d ever seen him. He was furious! He was raging mad. I heard a crash, which I later learned was where he picked up the chair sitting at the end of the counter and crashed it against the wall, knocking one of the telephones completely off the wall.

“When I ask for my meal, I want it NOW!”, he screamed.

Looking around at the frightened faces unlucky to still be in the room, he headed back upstairs, after being promised that his food would be sent up IMMEDIATELY.