DATE: Sunday, August 17, 1997               TAG: 9708170088

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA 

SOURCE: PAUL SOUTH

                                            LENGTH:   78 lines

ELVIS IS UNDISPUTABLY DEAD, BUT MEMORIES STAY ALIVE

I miss Elvis.

Yes, it's true. I really wish the King was here. But contrary to what the supermarket tabloids might tell you, Elvis has done far more than leave the building. As of yesterday, he's been gone for 20 years.

A lot of folks still hold on to the myth that Elvis Aaron Presley is still alive. And in a sense, he is. A few examples:

Several years back, at the newspaper where I used to work, one of my colleagues had lined up an interview with an Elvis impersonator. He drove a potato chip truck by day, and played the munchie-stuffed musical legend by night.

He looked like a cross between Katie Couric and Ernie Douglas from ``My Three Sons.'' As for his Presley persona? Not even close.

``I'm here to see Miss Hewett,'' he said in his best Memphis mumble.

``She's stepped away for a minute,'' I replied. ``But she'll be right back if you'd like to have a seat.''

``Thank you very much,'' he said.

It was scary stuff.

Once, on a visit to Nashville's Country Music Hall of Fame, the crowd around Elvis's solid gold Cadillac went into a panic when a large woman, dressed in a school-bus yellow dress with black horizontal stripes, and with a jet-black beehive hairdo, screamed, ``Oh my Lord, it's Elvis' car.'' The crowd parted, as she wavered for a bit, but thank goodness, she didn't faint. But she moved as close as she could to the car, and began to cry. Black mascara rolled down her face.

I didn't understand what the Elvis business was all about until that moment.

In 10 years of writing a weekly column, I've learned there are three things you don't write about: Religion, Kathie Lee Gifford and Elvis. In fact the most nasty phone calls and letters I've ever received came after a suggestion that Graceland, Elvis's Memphis mansion, should go high-tech. Imagine the Jungle Room wired up with cyber-pistols. Visitors could sit on the leopard skin sofa, munch on a jelly doughnut, and ``shoot'' the similarly wired television, just as the King used to do in real life.

A lady from Townley, Ala., came to see me, madder than a Kennedy cousin's spouse. She told me she was Elvis's distant cousin, and then asked me to step outside.

She didn't call me out to deck me. Instead, she showed me her Coupe DeVille, decorated in all manner of Elvis paraphernalia. Elvis stickers. A bobbing-head Elvis in the back window. Elvis pillows on the seat, and in beautifully scripted airbrush, the hood bore the inscription ``Elvis.''

``Lots of people loved him,'' she said. ``You ought not make fun of someone folks love like that.''

She was right. Elvis was a marvelous talent; when all was said and done, he was a pretty good person. He had his frailties, as we all do. ``No one sings gospel music like that boy,'' my grandmother used to say. And when she heard his recording of ``How Great Thou Art,'' she cried.

I wish he could come back, not to cut more records, or make more movies, or play more concerts. The not-so-serious side of me wants him to come back so that he could've done something about Lisa Marie and Michael Jackson. And to put a stop to all the people making a fast buck off black velvet background Presley portraits.

But seriously, maybe it's best that Elvis isn't here anymore. I'd only want him here if he could come and go through life as he pleased, without fans stalking his every move. I'd want him to be able to be just a country boy from Mississippi, and not ``The King of Rock and Roll.'' And I'd want him to be able to spend time, not with a screaming mob, but with good, well-intentioned folks, like the lady with the Bumblebee dress, and his cousin from Townley.

But the sad fact is, the King is gone. He's not coming back.

We have his records. We have his movies. Let's let the man rest in peace. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Stamps depicting Elvis Presley from high school through adulthood

were commissioned for use by the Federated States of Micronesia's

postal service. Saturday was the 20th anniversary of Presley's

death.

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