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WEDNESDAY, APRIL 25, 2018

Jesse phoned this afternoon and we had a very good visit.  He is well today.  We had been away for most of the day and the phone rang just as we walked in the door.  He had already called earlier and he told me he had left a long message for us and told me to listen to the message when we hung up. 

He spoke to me today, once again, about his mission of giving Jesse 42 years which is the same number of years that Elvis had.  I told him that he cannot go thinking that he can leave when that mission is completed…he has got to stick around for me.  I know that millions of other people feel just as I do.  

Jesse said that he had started watching the HBO documentary “Elvis Presley:  The Searcher”, which I had sent to him on DVD.  He has watched some of Part 1 and is enjoying it so far.  He said that the scenes shown in Tupelo brought back a lot of memories for him.  He has read my article regarding Part 2, which I posted on here, and he did not mind what I had written.  I print out my new posts on the site and send to him and I tell him every week that, if there is anything at all which I have posted that he does not like or wants changed, to just let me know and I will fix anything at all PDQ.    

Tomorrow is Tom’s and my 48th wedding anniversary and he wished us a happy anniversary.  My best friend had mentioned it to him. 

As always, Jesse’s call made my day!  

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FRIDAY, APRIL 27, 2018

My good friend, Mike M., shared the following excerpt from a book with me.  It is so good that I felt compelled to share it here for my visitors.

This is taken from a book which I wish to fully credit and to also pass along the full ordering information for this book.

The title of the book is THE GENUINE ELVIS by Ronnie McDowell.

It is available at Amazon at the following link:

https://smile.amazon.com/Genuine-Elvis-Photos-Untold-Stories/dp/1589806956/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1524807625&sr=8-1&keywords=The+Genuine+Elvis

Genuine Elvis, The: Photos and Untold Stories about the King Hardcover – July 1, 2009

by Ronnie McDowell  (Author), Edie Hand (Author), Joe Meador (Author)

Elvis fans will love this collection of reflections about the King. Join a few of his family, friends, and fans, including Pat Boone and Ronnie McDowell, as they describe their personal experiences with Elvis Presley through anecdotes, photographs, and paintings.

by:  Louise Smith

 Widow of Elvis’s Cousin Gene Smith

My experience with Elvis began back in the early ’50s. I recall working in a clothing store that offered in-store credit and layaway. My mom also worked there part time on Saturdays. On this particular Saturday, two guys, dressed kind of different from most people of that time, walked into the clothing store. My mother asked one of the boys if he would like to buy a new pair of shoes. He said, “Good gosh, I guess these shoes that I have on would make ol’ man Crump sick!” The man he was referring to was our mayor in Memphis at the time and he was in the hospital really ill at that very moment. Everyone in the store began to laugh at this young man’s way of responding about his shoes and Mr. Crump. He went on to pick out some clothes for himself and his friend. He then had to fill out a credit application.

 I was in charge of getting the information from this young man and his name was Elvis Presley. I got really aggravated with him because every time that I tried to fill out his application, he would want to know my name and address. Finally, he quit clowning around and I got his credit application handled. I told Elvis he would have to pay on his account once a week. He said, “Fine by me. And my cuz here, Gene Smith, is going to open up an account too.”

I recall another Saturday when Elvis and Gene came in the store around lunch and they invited me to go eat at Kay’s Diner. Elvis had parked his car down on Beale Street. The street was lined with mostly pawn shops, and Elvis ran ahead of Gene and me to where three big brass balls hung out over the sidewalk. He stopped right under them and started yelling out, “Hurry up, Louise, and kiss me beneath the balls.” I could have killed him! Elvis was always up to something. That memory stands out in my mind so vividly because little did I know that the experience of working in the clothing store would end up leading me to my husband, Gene Smith. We were happily married for forty-three years until his death.

When Gene and I began dating back in the ’50s, most of the time Elvis was with us. The first time I went out with Gene, he picked me up and there sitting in the back seat of the car was Elvis. I turned to Gene and asked what Elvis was doing there, and Gene’s reply was, “I never go anywhere without Cuz,” and believe me, he was telling the truth. Whenever you saw one, you would always see the other. The two of them were very close. We never had the money to do very much when the three of us were on a date, so one of the things we did was ride down Main Street, drive slow, and wait for the light to turn red. We would stop. The guys would open the car doors, stand outside watching until the light turned green, and then they would hop back into the car and drive on down the street. We would always look back and people would be standing in the street wondering what they had just seen. Elvis and Gene would fall out laughing.

Sometimes at night we would go to Kay’s Drive-in, park, and sit on the front of the car while Elvis played his guitar. We even had to share one Coke because we didn’t have the money to buy three Cokes. Now when people talk about Elvis Presley, they only think about him being really rich. You see, I was fortunate enough to know the genuine Elvis, the guy who didn’t have much money and lived in a housing project. Today when I think about these experiences with Gene and Elvis, I realize we were the richest people in the world.

When Gene and Elvis were teenagers, before we were married, they found a grocery store (where Gene later worked delivering groceries), and in this grocery store was an ice-cream shop. They loved going there. They would always order their favorite ice cream treat, Purple Cows, which was a vanilla ice cream and grape soda mixture. People would laugh at them for always ordering Purple Cows.

One year at Christmas (late ’50s or early ’60s), believe it or not, Gene and I gave Elvis—by that time a very wealthy guy—something he did not own. It was a box filled only with wooden clothes hangers that were wide on the ends so he could hang coats on them. He was like a little kid, and he said, “Okay, this is something I need, and believe it or not, it is something I don’t have!” He was so excited about this gift that we did it again and gave him another box of wooden hangers the next Christmas. We got the same reaction. We figured out he just loved Christmas and opening presents.

Of course, after his favorite holiday, Christmas, came the time when he had the most fun, New Year’s Eve. He would try to have the biggest fireworks display. His favorite fireworks at the time were the Roman candles, and you would think that there was a war going on in Memphis there were so many colored lights and explosions over his house. I will never forget the fun we had and seeing him so excited at everyone’s reaction to the fireworks.

One Christmas, I had just gotten home from the hospital after having back surgery and I couldn’t get out of the house to go anywhere. My mom and dad had cooked dinner for us and they brought it to our house so that we could all celebrate Christmas together. As we were sitting down to eat, someone knocked on our door. It was a Special Delivery man with a thousand-dollar check from Elvis. The card read, “Get well soon, Louise, and Merry Christmas to you, Gene and the kids. Love, Elvis.” That is the kind of friend Elvis was to our family.

I am sure no one knows that my husband, Gene, and I lived in Elvis’s home, Graceland, in the early years. We didn’t realize what an honor it was and our bedroom was upstairs next to his bedroom. One funny memory of that time that comes to mind is of Elvis’s myna bird. His big cage was in the laundry room at Graceland, right off the kitchen. When the phone would ring, the bird would start yelling, “Hello, hello, Elvis is not here, Elvis is not here.” If no one answered the phone, the bird would yell, “All of you get out and go to the devil,” and he would say this two or three times. He would also say to anyone that came into the room, “I am Elvis’s bird and I am a bad bird.” He would also say this if a girl came into his room, and then he would give her a wolf whistle.

Elvis was always renting out theaters, skating rinks, and the Fairgrounds in Memphis for himself and his friends. We would go to the theater about midnight, and he and his girlfriend and Gene and I would always sit in front of the rest of his friends. He would never let anyone sit in front of us or on the row behind us. There were times when he would take a water gun with him, and every now and then, he would hold it where no one could see it and shoot water back at his friends. They would start moving around and looking up to see if the ceiling was leaking. This would go on until his water gun ran out of ammunition, and then he would look at them and laugh.

When Elvis would rent out the skating rink, the girls didn’t really get to skate very much because all Elvis wanted to do was show off for the girls. He and the guys would form a long line and “pop the whip” and see which guy they could throw off of the line.

Another one of Elvis’s favorite places was the Fairgrounds in Memphis. He loved the bumper cars, and he and the guys would just love to try to run over one another with these little cars. Another ride that he loved was called “the Pippin”; it was a roller coaster, and he and his girlfriend and Gene and I rode it one night thirty-two times without getting off. We just loved spending time with Elvis.

One day Elvis came to our house and the press followed him inside. A man and woman accompanied the man from the newspaper. They presented Elvis with a trophy. Written on it was the fact that during Elvis’s movies in the theater, they had sold more popcorn than during any other movies. They took a picture of me and Elvis and the woman who presented the trophy, and it was in the newspaper in Memphis. When he left, I told him that he had forgotten his trophy, and he told me that he would get it later. He came over many times to our house, and I always tried to give him the trophy and he always said that he would get it later. Guess what! I still have the trophy that was shown in the newspaper article.

Elvis always made sure that we didn’t need for anything. One year he took us to Las Vegas so we could see his performances there. He was already in California filming the end of one of his movies, so he flew Gene and I and his girlfriend to California first. Once we got there, he drove us all around Hollywood showing us a lot of different things, and then that night, we left for Las Vegas.  He wanted to get us there before daylight because he wanted to show us all the clubs and all the lights. Of course, we were up all night and we slept all day. Breakfast was always served in our suite, which was a two-bedroom, three-bath unit. We attended his 8 p.m. shows and the other Vegas shows at 12 p.m. He always put us at a front table, and money was no object. We were there for his entire three-and-a-half-week run. We had a ball!

At another time Gene and I were leaving Memphis to drive our children to the Gulf Coast for a week. Something happened to our car before it was time to leave. Gene called Elvis and told him about our car, and Elvis told him not to worry because he was sending a car over so we could go on our trip. He sent us a limo! When we called to thank him, he said, “I want you to take your kids in style.” You had to know Elvis on a personal level to really know what a great guy he was.

In Memphis they used to have gospel singing at the Ellis Auditorium, and you know how much Elvis loved gospel music.  Elvis, Gene, and I used to go in the back door of the auditorium and go up the stairs. Because there were no lights on upstairs, no one knew that Elvis was there, and no one could see us. We just loved those nights, and sometimes after the show, we would go by Thornton’s Doughnut Shop and get milk and hot doughnuts—they tasted so good!

I will never forget the day that we found out that Elvis had died. We never thought that anything would ever happen to him because he seemed so strong and he was such a good man. Gene was a pallbearer at his funeral in Memphis.

On March 2, 1999, my husband, Gene, passed away, and I thought that my life was over after being with him for fortythree years. My life was never the same. But now, I live for our daughter, Margaret, and our two sons, Tony and Mike, and our seven grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.

On March 2, 1999, my husband, Gene, passed away, and I thought that my life was over after being with him for fortythree years. My life was never the same. But now, I live for our daughter, Margaret, and our two sons, Tony and Mike, and our seven grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.

I do hope that these stories will put a little joy and pleasure in your heart. By writing this, I have relived some precious memories in my life, just being with Gene and Elvis.

http://www.pelicanpub.com/

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Since the visitor counter display is not visible on any of my browsers except Firefox, I assume that many of my visitors are unable to view it also.  Therefore, I will try to remember to show a screen capture of it here on my Current News page from time to time.  As always, my heartfelt thanks to everyone who does visit and makes my continued growth in numbers possible.

This display is as it appeared on Friday, April 27, 2018 @ 12:45 PM

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SENT TO JESSE THROUGH THIS POINT ON FRIDAY, APRIL 27, 2018

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SATURDAY, APRIL 28, 2018

I just posted two messages on my Facebook pages which I want to share here also.  I do ask that everyone, who views the following two videos along with my posted comments, PLEASE do share this with everyone you know who has been hoodwinked into believing that Pastor Bob Joyce is Elvis.  

As you can see in the second video below (which I have shared before), Pastor Bob Joyce has become quite distressed and disturbed by the crazy rumors which have become very widespread.

Back when I wrote to Pastor Joyce asking for him to help me stop this rumor by giving me a statement which I could post on my website and on my Facebook pages, I did send Jesse a copy of my Email to Pastor Joyce and also Pastor Joyce’s Email back to me.  Jesse thought that his response to me was very nice. 

You will see Pastor Joyce’s Email to me featured in the video below.  I am so glad that someone used the Email which I posted on the Internet to help diffuse this insane rumor.

THIS IS A DANGEROUS RUMOR AND MUST BE SQUELCHED!!!!

 

 Below is my second post to Facebook today: