Happy 90th, Elvis

All Hail The King of Rock 'n Roll

Elvis is 90 today.

Where would we be without him?

The pond is iced, the trees and encased grass make a titanium landscape under an electric blue sky.

The Elvis clock looks down from the wall. It used to hang over the ice cream counter at Burt’s 50’s Diner from way down in Southern Maryland. They had an old 50’s car on the roof, black and white tile on the floor, and rock ‘n roll music playing from little jukeboxes at the table.

Outside, the concrete trucks would rumble, always off to somewhere else, borne on the asphalt, north.

There’s something eternal about that stretch of highway. It’s faceless, modern, flat, and endless in the Maryland humidity, a place to get through, the space between 99 and 100%. Maybe it’s a little eddy in the current of spacetime, and Burt’s a leaf caught for a moment, spinning, spinning.

That’s how I remember it. I went before I moved away, catching up with an old friend, talking about our new times of old. That’s a peculiar rite of passage.

Hey Donna, remember the days at My Brother’s Place?

We knew each other through music, and the tiny teenage punk scene that existed for an instant. My Brother’s Place was the heart of it, a delightfully strange marriage of ministry of the owners (give teenagers a safe place to congregate, with easy access to the Bible), and the roar of high-school punk bands. Three acts a night, with frozen pizza sort of warmed for sale if you’d like. Or nachos. Those were more consistent.

The place would have done with a sponsorship from Speed Stick, but maybe the sweat added to the flavor of the time. I’d emerge after a night of running the sound board for the three scheduled bands, reeking, ears ringing.

It was essential.

Donna was usually there, sometimes onstage, sometimes running the stage crew with me, sometimes hanging out with her boyfriend who’s haircut was the envy of the punks–and everyone.

Sure, the tri-hawks tried, the mohawks kept it classic, the goths sulked as they always did behind their bangs, Mike The Spike channeled Billy Idol and transcended the contest in blonde and blue tips…but Jimmy had somehow managed to turn his head into a human mace. Hair stuck out in spikes a good ten inches tall. We’d all gather ‘round to marvel when he walked through the door with his studded leather jacket.

Wow.

But that bubble in the stream whirled away. The punks grew up, but sometimes we sat and talked.

Donna remembered. Outside the diner window, another concrete truck whined a turbo northwards to Waldorf. They’re always building up there.

We sat and talked more.

Recruiting for bands and pop punk weren’t on the menu. Houses and moving and hardship and triumph and parenting were.

Donna, I’ve been listening to some lectures lately that have been making me think.

“I’ve been digging Father Mike’s talks. I’ll send you a link.”

Another piece of the puzzle, another friend with a lantern along the way.

We went outside to the endless highway, said goodbye, and I followed the trucks north. My house would be someone else’s. I never thought I’d not work on Old Washington road.

Now I’m here in a titanium landscape, with a rare frozen pond and icy trees creaking in the mountain breeze. I had a dream about guitars again last night, in pieces, where they weren’t anything, but could be. I look up at the clock, and remember something else.

The eddy broke. The one of Time, that held Burt’s 50’s diner and that stretch of the highway, and an endless summer night with katydids and that pressing humidity.

Burt’s closed, and my brothers won the Elvis clock at an auction, gifting him to me.

He looks down over my record collection, perfect hair, a velvet suit, and the hands of time perched on a fuzzy lapel.

Where would we be without rock ‘n roll, without Elvis? It’s a long way from ‘35 and Tupelo, MS, where his young mama gave birth to a shy little boy.

Some things are fleeting and eternal all at once, like a Maryland summer or a lonely bit of highway. And the clock–what about that? An echo of a time, with a picture of another echo of another time, mysterious. I don’t know.

Happy 90th, Elvis.

And thank you.