Inside Graceland: Elvis' Maid Remembers (2 page)

Time slipped quickly by and I became absorbed in what I was doing, exploring each piece of the furniture and fixtures as I cleaned and dusted them. I found it interesting that what looked like a valuable piece of furniture would be sitting next to something else that looked like it could have come out of a discount store. I would later learn that Elvis had a very wide range of things that he liked. And, if he liked something, he would buy it and then find a spot for it.

Before I knew it, it was almost 3 pm. Daisy found me in the music room, and instructed me to go in and set the dining room table, in the front of the house, for Elvis’ breakfast.

“Breakfast,” I thought, “it’s now late in the afternoon!”

Seeing the look on my face, Daisy smiled and said, “Oh, don’t worry, you’ll get used to it. Mr. Elvis doesn’t live like most people. He has a schedule all his own!”

I remember thinking to myself, “This could be a VERY interesting job!”

Daisy went on to explain that Elvis’ spot was always at the far end of the dining room table.

After looking in the china closet and finding the necessary items I set up for a single service at the end of the table, as I had been told to do. The china was a beautiful blue Wedgwood Buckingham pattern. Daisy told me that Elvis would be eating alone, a rare occurrence for him.

As I was adjusting the silverware in the proper positions, I heard someone say, “Well, Nancy, welcome to Graceland.”

I looked up and there in front of me was Elvis Presley, movie star, singer, world-class entertainer and, most importantly, my boss! I remember thinking, “This is one of the most handsome faces I’ve ever seen!” (Anyone who was fortunate enough to have known him personally will appreciate this, but his handsome good looks truly radiated and his blue eyes twinkled! I immediately sensed that he was a kind, decent and caring human being.)

Stunned that he already knew my name, and probably being a little unnerved by his sudden appearance, (I had not expected that he would just walk in like that), I stuttered out, “Thank you,” and, not knowing what to call him, blurted out, “Mr. Elvis”, which is what Daisy had called him when talking about him earlier.

And that’s what I would call him from then on. I wasn’t required to call him that, or anything else, for that matter. I think he would have been comfortable with anything, but I was comfortable with “Mr. Elvis”, and he seemed to be ok with it, and that’s what it became.

I remember he was wearing a very nice, expensive looking bath robe over his pajamas, and was wearing houseshoes. From the looks of it, he had not yet shaved, and his beautiful hair, though not combed, still looked very presentable. It amazed me how nice he looked, having obviously just gotten up.

Any fears I had about being uncomfortable around him were quickly put to rest. He was so nice to me that first day and put me very much at ease right off the bat. He was so easygoing and at ease himself. Though I don’t remember what all was said during that first meeting, I do vaguely remember him joking around about something as he ate his breakfast there at the table. There was a quality about him that endeared you to him right away.

He ate by himself that day, a trait that I would soon learn was very unusual for him. The majority of the time found him eating with a full entourage of other people, with Priscilla, or, often, in his bedroom. About the only predictability about him, where his eating habits were concerned, I would soon find, was his unpredictability.

He finished his breakfast and returned back upstairs to his bedroom. My first meeting with him had actually been quite mundane. I’m not sure what I had expected, but in many ways he was no different than anyone else.

I remember being both pleased and relieved that my first encounter with him had gone so smoothly.

I don’t remember what I did the rest of the day, but before I knew it, it was time to leave. It seemed as if the day had literally flown by.

I checked with Aunt Delta to see if there was anything else they would like me to do before I left. She told me that she and Dodger had both agreed that I had done a good job and that they were very pleased with my work and looked forward to seeing me again tomorrow. She said that it looked like I had done everything the way they liked it done and that they were looking forward to me being part of the “family.”

“I think you’ll fit in here with us just fine,” she told me. “Now, go home and get some rest, I’m sure you’re tired. I know it’s been a long day for you. We’ll see you in the morning at the same time. Be careful going home.”

I collected my things and headed out the back door to my car. I was tired, but it was a ‘good tired.’ I found myself actually looking forward to coming back to work the next day.

As I was driving home that evening, it dawned on me that I had seen Elvis in his earlier days. While dusting, I had seen a picture of him when he was younger, wearing a pair of overalls, and I had thought to myself, “I’ve seen this boy somewhere before.” Then it hit me.

When he was a young boy growing up in one of the poorer sections of Memphis he and I had apparently lived close to each other. I was living on Alabama Street, and, while walking to the store, I would stare at this tall, skinny boy with blond hair playing his guitar on the sidewalk. I remembered him wearing tennis shoes and bib overalls with one shoulder strap fastened and the other one hanging down. I realized it was that same look in the picture I had seen while going to the store.

Walking right by him, we never spoke, but by that strange quirk of fate, we had observed each other in the past. I would later learn that Elvis was born in a small, and very modest, two-room house in Mississippi. I thought to myself, “What a coincidence, so was I!”

As I drove through the Memphis traffic heading home, I thought to myself, “It’s been a good day.”

Little did I know that first day what was in store for me in the coming years. I could not possibly have dreamed what highs, and lows, awaited me. All I knew as I headed north, on Hwy. 51, was that I’d had an interesting and fun time that day, and I knew, without any question whatsoever, that I’d made the right decision by saying yes to Ms. Ghost.

I didn’t realize it then, but over the coming years I was to learn what it was like to work for Elvis Presley, and what it was like to be “Inside Graceland.”

“LEARNING MY WAY AROUND”
 

I
came to work the next day full of anticipation and
wo
ndering what the new day would bring.

I began the second day just as I had the day before, dusting, cleaning and generally keeping the house in order. I was in the kitchen later in the day, helping Daisy, when Priscilla walked in. I was struck by how petite and pretty she was. She seemed so young!

We exchanged pleasantries and I introduced myself. I noticed, even though she was polite, she was a little more reserved than the other members of the family I had met the day before. I remember she was dressed in dark slacks and a light colored blouse. Her dark hair was long and curly.

She and Elvis had only been married a few weeks and she had come into the kitchen to help fix breakfast for her new husband. I helped Daisy prepare Priscilla’s breakfast first.

She had french toast, a poached egg, bacon and a cup of hot tea. She really loved hot tea, and I learned to make it with one teaspoon of sugar and a little bit of milk. (It took me several times, and several tries, before I got the blend of milk and tea to suit her, but I finally got it right.)

Elvis had asked us to bring his meal up to his bedroom and, after finishing her own breakfast at the kitchen counter, Priscilla wanted to help us prepare his breakfast. She did some of the cooking and then carried part of the food for me on a separate tray as the two of us made our way up the back stairs to the second floor and entered his bedroom. He was pleasantly surprised when she entered the bedroom with me carrying part of his food. She was determined that she wanted to be the best wife for him that she could be, and that included learning what foods he liked for his meals.

By the second day I was beginning to feel at home in the mansion, and had no trouble getting into the routine of knowing what was expected of me. There was really no schedule, just, as Aunt Delta and Vernon had told me the first day, “doing what needed to be done.” I quickly adapted to the schedule, or lack thereof, of working for Elvis, and settled into a daily routine of housekeeping.

Within about a month of being hired, Daisy had to take some time off to go to a funeral for a distant relative. I later learned that she had been taking what Aunt Delta and Priscilla both considered too much time off for various reasons. She ended up staying out of work for several days past the funeral.

The day she returned she was doing something in the kitchen and I was helping her. I had just taken Elvis and Priscilla’s food to them in the dining room and had walked back into the kitchen and began talking with her. Priscilla came into the kitchen and, in front of me, told Daisy that her services would no longer be needed, and that she could pick up her final paycheck immediately from the office.

Daisy started crying and went into Dodger’s bedroom. I followed her into the room and heard her ask Dodger if she could do anything to help her. Dodger said she was very sorry, but she had no control over who was hired or fired.

I think that Dodger would have liked for her to be able to stay on, because she and Daisy had always gotten along very well, but apparently felt it was not her place to interfere in matters like that. And she wasn’t about to go against the obvious wishes of Elvis and Priscilla. As well as I remember, Daisy left immediately and never returned to the house after that.

After Daisy left, Priscilla took me off to the side and told me that I would be replacing Daisy as a cook, as well as keeping my duties as housekeeper, and that I would be working side by side with Mary, the other daytime cook.

Within a month, I had graduated from being just a housekeeper to a cook, as well. I truly hated that Daisy had to leave, but as I look back on it, it gave me the opportunity to become closer to Elvis and his family.

There were always changes taking place where the household staff was concerned. Over the years Elvis employed a number of different cooks. Alberta, whom Elvis teasingly called “Alberto VO5”, after the shampoo, had been the first cook/housekeeper for the Presley family. She had been hired when the family lived on Audubon Drive, and had moved with them to Graceland. Eventually, Pauline was brought on board, along with Mary, Lottie and me.

There were some others who worked on and off through the years, as well. Keeping a 24 hour schedule going, seven days a week, required a lot of people, and also involved a lot of knowledge to keep things running smoothly. I was doing my best to learn it all as quickly as I could.

As time went on, I ended up doing a little of everything at Graceland. I learned to know what was expected of me to keep the house and surrounding area looking it’s best, and to help keep the home running smoothly. After cleaning the same areas repeatedly, you begin to get a feel for what looks good and what doesn’t, of what works and what doesn’t.

Like everything else, some aspects of the job are always going to be more enjoyable than others.

One of my most enjoyable tasks was cleaning and maintaining the trophy room. It represented so many of the accomplishments Elvis had earned. I spent numerous hours cleaning all of the trophies, awards, presentations and framed certificates, and would find myself totally immersed in the various awards as I read them, one by one, while cleaning them. His jumpsuits were also stored in the trophy room, in the late sixties, and I enjoyed taking care of them as well. It was an honor to be so closely involved with some of Elvis’ most prized possessions, and to be entrusted with their care.

Speaking of prized possessions, I was almost responsible for damaging one of Elvis’ more expensive possessions.

I was asked one day by Aunt Delta to clean and dust the chandelier over the dining room table.

Being as careful as I could be, I took my shoes off, got a towel to put on the top of the table, stood on the towel, and proceeded to begin cleaning the chandelier.

I cleaned all the lights on the first stem and then decided that the easiest way to clean the rest of them would be to rotate the chandelier one stem at a time, standing in one spot on the table as I did so. To my surprise, I found I could rotate the entire chandelier without much trouble. I did that, cleaning all the lights on one stem and then rotating the chandelier to my left to get to the next row. That way, I thought to myself, I wouldn’t have to move on the table. Everything was working smoothly and I was surprised that the entire chandelier would rotate so easily.

By the time I got to the last stem, I was feeling pretty good about my method of cleaning, when, suddenly, I felt the weight of the chandelier starting to slip down ever so slightly. Within several seconds it began slipping even more, until, finally, I had my arms under it fearing the whole unit was about to fall out of the ceiling.

I began screaming, which brought Mary running into the room. Upon seeing me, she ran outside the front door and got George Coleman, the resident electrician, who happened, luckily, to be doing some work on the front of the house. He ran in, took one look, and jumped up on the opposing side of the table and began rotating the entire chandelier in the opposite direction. As I was to find out later, the chandelier had not been properly fastened into the ceiling, and, as I was turning it to clean it, I was unknowingly unscrewing it from the ceiling.

George eventually fixed it and explained to me that that particular chandelier was the larger of the two in the house, as well as the most expensive. He also pointed out how lucky I was that it had not fallen on me. Because of the weight of it, he pointed out, I could have been seriously hurt.

Elvis, while all this had been going on, had luckily been sleeping in his upstairs bedroom and apparently never heard any of it. George assured me that, even if the entire chandelier had come crashing down, (assuming I had not been hurt), Elvis would have just laughed about the entire matter. Nonetheless, I was sure glad Elvis never found out about it. And, of course, I never cleaned the chandelier that way again.

I’ve thought many times over the years how fortunate I was to have had a job for so long that I truly enjoyed. In the ten years I worked at Graceland while Elvis was alive, (I also continued working there after he died), I only missed five weeks of work due to a thyroid operation. Just about every day was fun.

I did, just as Aunt Delta and Vernon had told me that first day, whatever needed to be done. That included everything imaginable. I helped Aunt Delta collect eggs from the henhouse in the backyard, did painting around the house, swept leaves off the sun porch, answered telephones when they rang, took clothes to the cleaners, (more than a few heads turned when they would see me carrying in one of Elvis’ jumpsuits to Mr. Acker, at Whitehaven Cleaners), baby-sat for Lisa Marie, washed and waxed Elvis’ famous cars, and even hemmed Elvis’ pants on occasion while he was still wearing them. (He would stand on the 3rd step leading up the back stairway from the kitchen while I hemmed them.)

There was very little that I didn’t get involved with at Graceland. I think some of the most memorable tasks for me, though, involved being there for Elvis during the rare times he just wanted someone to talk to. Like everyone, he was human, and sometimes he just wanted someone to listen, and I would be fortunate enough to be the one closest to him at that time.

I would be cleaning away in his upstairs office and he would come into the room, slump down on one of the couches, and just start talking to me about something that was bothering him. Sometimes he would start ranting about how someone was taking advantage of him, or about a particular problem he was having with another of his employees. Most often, however, he would just want to talk about things in general. Another frequent topic concerned religion, and on several occasions we spent several hours discussing his thoughts about death and heaven. He truly believed in an afterlife, and shared with me one time, seated in his bedroom, what he thought it was going to be like to see his mother again after he died. He told me, on several occasions, that he wanted to die on August 14th, the same day his mother died. (I would later marvel at how close he came to that day.) We shared several such private times together, and I cherish those memories.

I also cherish the time spent in the kitchen at Graceland. Through those many years in the kitchen, I got a rare insight into what the King of Rock & Roll liked to eat.

Like anyone else, there were foods that he really liked, as well as those he didn’t care for.

A lot of people don’t know, for example, that he had an intense dislike for fish. I never learned why he disliked it so much, but I learned early on not to even suggest it as a meal to him. He told me numerous times that he didn’t like the smell of fish in the house. It became a treat for those of us who did like it to fix it while he was away on the road or while he was in Hollywood making a movie. Aunt Delta or Dodger would say, “I’m in the mood for fish tonight and I guess we can have it since Elvis is away.” The only thing we had to be careful of was that it was at least several days in advance of him returning home so the smell was out of the house completely.

One of the questions I get asked most often is what Elvis liked to eat. With a few exceptions, like fish, he was very easy to cook for. He enjoyed what I call southern style cooking, which is what I had been raised on.

A lot has been said about him being partial to this or that type of food, but I found that he enjoyed a wide variety. As long as it was fixed in a simple, southern style, meaning lots of butter, gravy, and grease. He liked simple, not formal, foods.

He loved fried chicken, meat loaf, roast beef, lasagna, and other hearty style meats, served with creamed potatoes, peas, green beans, corn, tomatoes, and other vegetables, all served in large portions.

Everyone has heard the stories of the fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches, the large cheeseburgers with fries, and the giant bacon sandwiches. And yes, these were all true stories. In short, he loved to eat, especially in the later years. And, some may say unfortunately, he had the luxury and the means to have all that he wanted.

From the first time I started cooking for him, I became concerned for his health, watching him eat the rich, fatty foods he would have us prepare for him.

He would buzz down for his breakfast, which usually consisted of lots of King Cotton bacon, sausage, eggs, toast, coffee with sweet & low & half and half, and orange juice. Being concerned that he was eating way too much greasy bacon, I once tried to take several strips of it off his plate before taking it up to his bedroom. He had been watching me on the monitor in his bedroom and, when I walked into his room, told me not to do that.

I explained that I was only trying to watch out for his health, and he said, “I need it for energy to keep up with my demanding schedule, and I have a lot of people depending on me.” At least I had tried.

He also had a very large “sweet tooth.” In fact, he probably enjoyed sweets more than anyone I have ever known. Unlike a lot of people with a sweet tooth, he wasn’t so much into eating cookies or candy (although he did have a fondness for Reese’s peanut butter cups). Instead, he would, for example, consume, in one sitting, large quantities of homemade ice box pies. Banana cream, chocolate and egg custard were his favorites. He would also eat numerous popsicles or ice cream sandwiches at one time, as well as homemade cakes of just about any description, as long as they were made, like Gladys had made them, with lots of sugar. He also loved watermelon and cantaloupe, and we would keep, especially in the summertime, large bowls of those two fruits cut up into small bite-size pieces, in a refrigerator that he had upstairs.