It’s not easy falling so hard at seven years old. I ride my bike to my friend Gail’s house, and walk down the six concrete stairs and through her open basement door, and am relieved to find minimal disruption to our former recreation room, which is her uncle’s new home.
She sits on the floor under the high, wide window that overlooks her front yard. Her shiny strawberry hair, in a neat pageboy, covers her delicate, freckled face which is bent over a cardboard apple box, overflowing with stuff. I sit cross-legged beside her, and she smiles at me as the sun streams on her face through the window, and guides her head towards the box, inviting me to look inside.
“Far Out! There’s three records, Elvis’s ‘Hound Dog’ a 78 rpm, ‘Return to Sender’ and ‘Don’t Be Cruel’.
“Are they his?” I ask. Referring to uncle intruder.
“He gave them to me, ‘cause he never listens to them.” she said.
“So he lives in the suite, and we still get to play records and sing and dance to them like we used to?”
“Yes,” she said.
“That’s not so bad.”
“You won’t believe what I saw last night.” I said,
“Who?” said Gail,
“Well, it was what and who.”
“I saw Elvis on tv in a movie called “Viva Las Vegas!”
She got up and walked towards the large, low walnut cabinet, that sat in the hall outside of her uncle’s suite. She lifted the lid to reveal a turntable and placed ‘Hound Dog’ on top of the spindle in the centre.
“He played Lucky Jackson!!! He was so handsome dancing around, like the music powered his head and body, and his voice, and costumes, I know who my Barbie’s new boyfriend is. He even had his shirt undone! There were tons of bongos being played! And girls dancing!” I said, out of breath with excitement.
“And guess what?” “You know how my mom named me after Ann-Margret? No e, and my grandma’s name Margaret?” “She co-stars in it.”
“Come over later and we’ll play out the whole movie in actions, and relive it with our barbie dolls,” I said,
“Okay”.
And then our heads turn as a voice belts out from the turntable, so strong and loud, we shiver and shake, with the clapping, bass, electric guitar and power packed “You ‘aint ‘nuttin but a hound dog” that changed us and the way we played, and sang and danced, and listened, and it made our memories and our friendship greater for hearing it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMmljYkdr-w
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