I just came back from a trip to Memphis. It started out with me being laid low by a gigantic flu. I got a Covid test. Negative. I lay in bed all day, watching movies, and finishing Jessica Mitford’s Hons and Rebels, feeling cursed and lonely. I’m in Memphis and I can’t go outside. But I guess it was a 24-hour thing because I felt better the next day. Weird. I didn’t do much other than walk, sometimes 5 miles a day, sometimes with a destination, other times not. I haven’t been to Memphis since 2018, when I came for Indie Memphis, and gave my talk on Elvis’ movie career, and so it was good to be back. I wasn’t going to go to Graceland this time, but I did want to go visit Elvis’ cars. I love the car museum. But then I had second thoughts. The cars are right across the street from the house. I might as well just go on a tour again. So I did. First tour of the day. It was a chilly windy grey day. This is my third time visiting Graceland at Christmastime. Maybe it’ll be my new tradition. At any rate, after going through the house, I went and visited the cars. Since my last visit (2013 – !!), the visitor center has been expanded (understatement), and now it’s a whole Elvis village. I don’t really care for it. And the museum is in a different location, and at first I balked. I loved the old museum, its darkness, its glamour, its coziness. This new museum was huge, basically like a huge floor in a car showroom, which is exactly what it is. HOWEVER. After wandering through, I came around. There’s so much more space. You can actually walk around each car, seeing it from every angle, which you couldn’t do in the old smaller space. I had a blast, inspecting each of these cars. They’re amazing. So I’m going to do a little series of posts for each car.
First up, Elvis’ 1971 Stutz Blackhawk. A monster.
The 1971 Stutz Blackhawk is my favorite in the collection. I miss it as though it’s a person. I look forward to seeing it as though it’s lunch with a friend. It’s so TOUGH, so NASTY looking. The badass exhaust pipe emerging from the body of the car looks like it could come alive at any moment, like the alien coming out of the bowels of the spaceship in the last scene of Alien. It’s always good to see this BEAST.
