Inside Graceland: Elvis' Maid Remembers (7 page)

You can still see some of the missing chunks of brick and concrete that have long been painted over, as you exit the well house on the tour. Just turn around and look above the doorway as you exit the building.

Everyone ended up having a great time that day.

Animals played a big role in Elvis’ life at Graceland. He loved animals and, through the years, usually had a number of different animals around.

At one time he had a peacock which lived in the backyard, having full access to the grounds as it strutted around in all it’s majestic splendor. (I still have a few of it’s feathers.) Elvis always told everybody to be very careful not to hurt the peacock, especially as we were driving through the back parking lot and around the carport area. He was very concerned that we would accidentally hurt the peacock, which he obviously cared a lot for.

That caring attitude disappeared very quickly, as did the bird, when the peacock, seeing it’s reflection in the shiny finish of one of Elvis’ favorite cars, began pecking at the car, damaging the paint. The peacock was quickly given to someone else. It was weeks before we finally stopped hearing about how expensive it had been to have the car properly repaired.

Over the years, Elvis also had mules, myna birds, pigs, goats, chickens, turkeys, and the usual assortment of dogs.

I wouldn’t even begin to guess how many dogs there were at Graceland during the years I was there. And of course, like many dogs, they kept the place “lively.”

There was one named Muffin. He loved to chew your shoes up. One time a lady was visiting with Aunt Delta and sitting at the kitchen counter. Without thinking, she slipped her shoes off while sitting on the chair. When she went to leave, she looked down and screamed. I went running over to see what had happened, and there, at her feet, were the chewed remains of what had been a very expensive pair of alligator shoes. Elvis, of course, ended up buying her a new pair. Another dog, named Stuff, would try and take Aunt Delta’s pocketbooks away from her whenever they entered the house. Then there was Babbie, a beautiful collie. She did not like men, and would growl at any man that walked by. Not women, just men. Elvis bought two sheep dogs and we could never keep them clean. One of his two Great Danes cornered me in the basement one day, and I had to call for Aunt Delta to come and get me out of there. The dog stories went on and on.

Then there were the two roosters who used to get to fighting so heavily that they would draw blood from each other. Aunt Delta and I would have to get sticks to break up the fights and keep them apart.

Strangely, however, there were never very many cats around. The only cats I remember were occasional strays that would wander onto the property from the surrounding neighborhood, or, of course, from the barn out in the back. The staff would always end up finding a good home for them.

Aunt Delta would send me to Sears to buy cat cages, and we would then start a search to see who could take them off our hands. I personally took several of them to my mother’s house. She lived on a small farm out in the county, and had a barn on the property, and was always having problems with mice in the barn. After I had taken her about the 8th or 9th cat, however, she politely asked me if we could find someone else to take the next one.

The only cat I remember actually being welcomed at Graceland was one that Lisa had after she moved to Los Angeles with Priscilla. It was a small cat, and she would sneak it into a pocketbook and carry it on the plane with her when she would fly commercially back to Memphis to visit. I always wondered what they would have done if they had caught her with it. Those were obviously the days before baggage screeners at all the airports.

There was also a monkey named J Hug. He was kept in a cage in the back yard. We fed him apples, bananas and milk. Sometimes he would get out of his cage and would grab me around my ankles and I would have to yell for someone to come and help me get him off my ankles. I was glad when Elvis got rid of him.

And then, of course, there was Scatter, the notoriously famous chimp. To say he was a handful would be putting it mildly. We never knew what he was going to do. I honestly believe he thought he was human. He drank like a sailor and could always be counted on to do whatever he could to make our lives miserable. Elvis ended up having a small pen built in the back yard for him, complete with a heater and a window air conditioning unit. We were all afraid to be around him. He would grab for you as you walked by, or frighten you with a loud shrieking noise when you least expected it.

We all had to take turns feeding him while he was locked in the pen, and we all dreaded it. I watched him pull a wig off one of the other maids as she tried to feed him one day. She began to scream and, as she ran toward the house, slipped and fell in the mud. We finally got her calmed down and cleaned up, but she would never go near the pen again.

Then Elvis decided he needed some horses. It started innocently enough with him getting one for him, then one for Priscilla, then, all of a sudden, it seemed like everyone had a horse. He even got a small pony for Lisa Marie to ride when she was younger. That pony became another memory for me, one that I’d just as soon forget.

Shortly after getting the pony, Elvis was leading it around in the back yard, with little Lisa perched on it’s back. I noticed them out the jungle room window as I was doing some housework and didn’t think too much about it.

Several minutes later I heard the back door leading into the jungle room open. The next thing I knew, there was Elvis, grinning from ear to ear, leading the pony and Lisa right into the jungle room! I heard him telling Lisa, “Let’s show Dodger your new pony.” Walking right past me (with my mouth hanging open, I’m sure), he led the pony and Lisa through the small opening under the stairs, across the hall, and right into Dodger’s bedroom.

I followed them (at a safe distance) into the room in time to see Dodger, seated in her rocking chair right inside the door, turn around and, seeing the pony standing in her room, scream out, “Lord, son, what are you doing?”

I’m not sure who was giggling more, Elvis or his daughter.

Dodger jumped up and hollered, “Son, get that animal out of here, it doesn’t belong in the house!” Elvis then began leading the pony back through the house. As it got to the large entry way between the kitchen and the jungle room, right before the two steps leading down into the den, it did what comes naturally to a pony . . . right on the carpet! And you can guess who got to clean it up!

I grabbed a newspaper from the kitchen counter and then finished the job with an entire roll of paper towels, all of which immediately went to the dumpster outside. Thank goodness that was the last time he decided to bring an animal into the house like that.

A lot has been written about Elvis’ horse, Rising Sun. He was one of the most beautiful horses I’d ever seen. For some reason, though, I was scared to death of that horse. It may have been because I’d heard several stories about how he’d bitten one or two people in the past. Also, a lot of people don’t realize how big he was. He was very large and tall.

One lady had her ear bitten pretty severely by Rising Sun, but, in all fairness to Rising Sun, she had brought it on herself. She had been putting her face in front of the horse, trying to get the horse to give her a “kiss.” She got a kiss all right.

I remember early one afternoon Elvis had sent me over to Vernon’s house on Dolan Street to pick something up and bring it back to him. I had walked through the back pasture, along the fence, and through the back gate onto Vernon’s property.

As I began the return trip, I entered the back pasture and was quickly met by Rising Sun, in full gallop, charging toward me. Terrified, I turned and ran back through the same gate onto Vernon’s property and ran up to the house.

I was so scared that Vernon called Aunt Delta, who walked over and met me, and escorted me back to Graceland. I saw Rising Sun a few hundred feet away, just standing in the middle of the pasture, looking at me. I couldn’t prove it, but I think he was smiling.

Many fans are not aware that Rising Sun, after his death, was buried in the back pasture, near the large barn back in the corner of the property. In 1993, he was joined by Lisa’s pony.

A lot of people don’t realize how many people it took to keep Graceland running. It seemed like a small army of workers was always “on duty”, just to help keep the buildings and grounds in shape. There were yard men, contractors, electricians, painters, carpenters, maids, cooks, secretaries, security guards, animal keepers, and general maintenance people on duty constantly.

Trying to find good help was always a problem. That was one reason Elvis had so many relatives working for him in various capacities. He assumed, not always correctly, that he could trust his family members. It seemed like hiring and firing was always taking place.

About the time we would get used to someone being around, they would be gone, fired or terminated for one reason or another. Groundskeepers and security guards seemed to be particularly hard to keep.

On one occasion, for example, two yard men convinced Vernon that it would be nice to have grapes growing on a grape arbor down around the pool area. The grapes looked good as landscaping, but it was soon discovered that the men were using the grapes to make wine. They were both promptly fired by Vernon.

On another occasion, a security guard at the front gate, who had only been on the job a few weeks, allowed a couple to convince him that they were “long lost” family members. He allowed them to walk up to the front porch, where they then entered the front door and promptly went upstairs and into Elvis’ bedroom. Luckily, Elvis was in Hollywood filming a movie. Aunt Delta happened to go upstairs and found them wondering around in his bedroom. She called for security and they were quickly escorted out. Luckily, nothing was taken. The security guard was fired on the spot.

Yet another security guard was fired after he was discovered exposing himself to Lisa and several of her friends out by the barn in the back pasture. Vernon did not tell Elvis what had happened out of fear for what Elvis would have done to the man.

Another security violation occurred, this one more severe, several years after Elvis died. It was fairly late in the evening and I had gone down to the trophy room. I was busily straightening some things up when, all of a sudden, Aunt Delta and another of the maids came screaming into the room. I could see by the look on their faces that they were terrified. I also noticed that Aunt Delta was carrying the small pistol which she normally kept in her nightstand, beside her bed.

The other maid immediately locked the door behind them as they came rushing into the room, while Aunt Delta headed straight for the phone and called the front gate.

I was to learn that the two of them had been watching TV in the jungle room when, without warning, a crazed man, who we later found out was high on drugs, crashed his way into the room by breaking out one of the back windows. He had used something like a crowbar to force the bars off the outside of the window and smashed through the glass, while the two women were watching their show. They had then scrambled into Aunt Delta’s bedroom, located right off the kitchen. The man followed them into the bedroom, where Aunt Delta had grabbed the gun from her nightstand drawer, and threatened to shoot him.

The other maid later told me that Aunt Delta’s hand was shaking as she pointed the gun at the intruder. Aunt Delta was screaming, “I’ll kill you if you don’t get out of here!”, and the man, obviously not in his right mind, was pleading for her to go ahead and shoot him.

The two women had then been able to dart around the man and had gotten out of the bedroom, then run out the back door and down to the trophy room.

Security showed up at the trophy room within a minute or two, followed by more blue lights than I had ever seen in my life. I later heard that the man was eventually sent to a mental institution.

Only one other incident took place where I was physically scared while working at Graceland. It happened several years after the incident involving the man breaking into the jungle room. And it also was near the trophy room.

I had been cleaning up around the pool area early one evening and was walking around the back of the house, towards the back entrance to the jungle room, when I stopped in to use the restroom located behind the house. It’s the same restroom used by guests on the tour today right outside the trophy room. I did not notice anything out of the ordinary when I went into the restroom and closed the outside door behind me.

I was only in there for several minutes and, as I came out, I immediately spotted some large lettering which had been spray painted on the outside wall. It was just a few obscene words, but it was enough to scare me half to death. The police were called and the grounds were gone over with a fine tooth comb, but no intruders were found, and we never figured out what the motivation had been, or what it had meant. It did leave me visibly shaken for awhile, however.

After those incidents more guards were hired, especially at night, to patrol the grounds on a regular basis. It took me a long time before I felt totally comfortable after that.

The majority of my memories, however, were very good ones. I remember Elvis and his family in a warm and caring way. I was treated like family over the years, not as an employee. Elvis was never anything but the perfect gentleman with me. He always made me feel safe and comfortable around him.

On one occasion my daughter called me and told me that she had fallen and sprained her foot pretty badly. Knowing there was a foot doctor’s office located on the street right outside the Graceland property, (one that Elvis used), I called them to try and get an appointment to have her foot looked at. They told me that the doctor was too busy to see her. Elvis found out about it and called the doctor back. After a short conversation with the doctor, Elvis smiled at me and told me that the doctor was “Waiting to see your daughter right now.” Not only did she get the best treatment, but Elvis paid for it himself.