Paige and Uncle Vester 8/28/78
BONUS:
Local woman recalls Elvis encounter
January 08, 2006 6:00 pm • PAIGE NAMUTH / SPECIAL TO THE JOURNAL STAR
One beautiful May evening in 1956, I was pacing around our living room in Lincoln. It was a beautiful time of year. The screen door had been put on. The unit in Miss Gabu’s fifth grade on the state capitals was finished. Summer was coming. I could go barefoot. I should have been happy.
Instead, I was pacing the house with a spirit that was flopping around like a gasping fish in a bathtub. My agony was caused by my knowledge that Elvis Presley was singing at the University of Nebraska coliseum that evening, and I wasn’t there.
My mom and I had seen Elvis on the Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey TV show, and I knew I could never go back to listening to the controlled voice of Snooky Lanson on “Your Hit Parade,” which had formerly been my favorite show.
My mom got an idea! She had my photographer dad’s Speed Graphic and did some freelance photography. She said, “Elvis Presley would have to be staying at the Cornhusker Hotel. I’ll call Jim Rodney, the manager, and tell him I need to take a picture to sell to Black Star.”
Black Star was someplace that bought photographs. I knew when I heard Mom on the phone that she wanted to see Elvis Presley as much as I did. She was only about 30 years old at the time.
Jim Rodney had a little boy my brother’s age, and he said to come on down. We made a quick trip across the street to get a record album cover from our 16-year-old neighbor girl, Liz, who had just recently changed her name from Little Betty. That way, if I got to meet Elvis Presley, I would be prepared to get an autograph. I picked up two pieces of our little notepaper with foxes on them.
We made our way through a tremendous crowd of teenage girls who were watching the elevator numbers go up and down and screaming when the elevator came down to the first floor, terrifying the poor elevator riders who were trying to get out on the first floor and didn’t even know who Elvis Presley was.
We found Mr. Rodney and wove our way through the working insides of the hotel, the kitchen and big piles of rumpled white sheets and towels. He led us on to a big box of a freight elevator, and we went up to the eighth floor.
We entered a room called the executive suite and Mr. Rodney told us to wait there because the girls were tracking Elvis down from the presidential suite that was on the ninth floor. After a high-pressure wait, the pass key turned the lock and they walked in, Jim Rodney, Colonel Parker and Elvis Presley.
Trained to be invisible if I was on a photography assignment, I just stood there. “Oh, my God,” I thought to myself. I could barely swallow my spit. Elvis walked right over to me and said, “Hello,” and smiled and put his hand on my head. I put my upper lip in my mouth to suppress a grin and never let my eyes leave him.
He was wearing black cotton slacks and a black cotton shirt with the sleeves rolled up. I could tell right away that Elvis Presley was a prince. He swiveled around in a chair and said very politely, “This is a real nice place.” He was in the same class of person as Richie Swinscoe.
Richie was our neighbor. He drove a cement truck and took his own money and threw a party for all the neighbor kids and delivered a fresh sidewalk to Little Betty and her widowed mother with a little leftover cement at a time because they couldn’t afford one and he loved Little Betty. Some people didn’t think Richie Swinscoe was good enough for Little Betty but he was. He was a prince too.
My mother snapped one picture of Mr. Rodney, Elvis and me. I look funny in the picture because Elvis has my little piece of notepaper upside down that he is signing and I am worried because the little fox is standing on his head. Elvis kept signing my three autographs even though he was having his picture taken because that is how princes behave.
I got three autographs, the album cover for “Liz,” one for my babysitter, Elizabeth Smith and one for me.
Mr. Rodney begged Elvis to come down and sing a song and tell the girls to go home because they were wrecking the hotel but Colonel Parker intervened and said he couldn’t because it was not in his contract. Elvis sheepishly apologized. I broke out of my silence and said to the Colonel, “Really? He can’t sing if he wants to?” The Colonel answered me, “No.”
We said our goodbyes and Elvis Presley told us it was good to meet us and thanked my mother for taking the picture. My spirit screamed out for him to escape his contract and run out of there and sing in the streets like they do in the movie. Come and sit on Little Betty’s porch past midnight and jump up on her trellis and sing “Heartbreak Hotel.”
The contract seemed like something scary and dark, like a mafia thing. Giving up your freedom was the worst thing I could imagine next to being locked up in a room with Colonel Parker. It was like staying home with your great uncle when all the other kids are going to the drive-in movie.
Elvis looked at me and smiled and I knew that he loved how I loved him.
We waded our way through the girls and told them we met Elvis and that he was really nice. They screamed and jumped up and down but never asked us where he was. We walked out into the warm spring night. I realized how fun it can be to be average.
My mom cut my hair into a duck cut when we got home. I could put the hair Elvis touched into a bag so I could wash my hair again. She sold two pictures to WOW-TV and one to the Cornhusker Hotel.
Little Betty married Richie and lived happily ever after. They moved away to California and he became a highway patrolman. They’ve been married over 40 years and they’re still as cute as ever.
I couldn’t sleep that night. Meeting Elvis had made me feel worse than ever. It was the same as when the carnival left town and the State Fair was over.
Paige Namuth of Lincoln is director of the Antlers Center Inc., an alcohol and drug treatment center.
.
