{"id":164454,"date":"2020-12-24T06:54:53","date_gmt":"2020-12-24T11:54:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=164454"},"modified":"2020-12-24T07:01:04","modified_gmt":"2020-12-24T12:01:04","slug":"graceland-at-christmas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=164454","title":{"rendered":"Graceland at Christmas"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nI took the first tour of the day on January 2, 2013. It was like 9:30 in the morning or something. I was the only person on the tour. Literally. <\/p>\n

And since it was the first tour … I had the whole place to myself. I lingered. I snooped. I zoomed in.<\/p>\n

And yes I lay down on his bed on the plane. Sue me. I was alone on that thing. Nobody behind me, nobody in front of me.<\/p>\n

I also walked out onto the lawn to get behind the \u201cMerry Christmas to All \u2014 Elvis\u201d sign they always hang up from the trees – just as he hung it up back in the day, with lawn ornament reindeers underneath. I wanted to see it from the other side, from the house side looking out at the street. And so I did. <\/p>\n

I was all by myself there. In general, I controlled myself. I didn’t touch anything I was supposed to touch. I didn’t run upstairs. You know. it’s a family home, not a museum. Yes, I did lie down on the bed, but it’s covered in plastic. Listen to me JUSTIFY. <\/p>\n

This was my second tour – and my first tour had also been around Christmas – so I \u201cvisited\u201d the same decorations I remembered from the first time. The salt and pepper shakers. <\/p>\n

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\nThe terrifying monkey. <\/p>\n

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\nThe poinsettias in the Jungle Room. <\/p>\n

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\nAnd since I didn\u2019t have a crowd jostling around me I took as long as I wanted. <\/p>\n

It was a cold frosty day. I stood out back looking out at the property, with all the horses – descendants of Elvis’ horses – grazing quietly, wearing blankets. You could see their breath coming out in clouds. I stood out there for half an hour, leaning on the fence, watching the horses. There wasn\u2019t a sound.<\/p>\n

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I took the first tour of the day on January 2, 2013. It was like 9:30 in the morning or something. I was the only person on the tour. Literally. And since it was the first tour … I had … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[2095,2112],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164454"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=164454"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164454\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":164477,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164454\/revisions\/164477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=164454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=164454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=164454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}