Elvis alive in Haines

By Heather Lende
Family

Published: August 22, 2002
Last Modified: August 23, 2002 at 03:07 AM

"Elvis has left the building," announced the little man with a thick accent as he bounded down the steps of an orphanage in Bulgaria. Back in the car, he popped in a bootleg tape. Singing along on "Love Me Tender," he wept. Doc helped facilitate my daughter's adoption. He is a 70-something retired ear, nose and throat specialist. Now that Bulgaria is free again, he has been able to save enough money to travel to the United States. He took his family straight to Graceland because, he says, Elvis was the American king. He can't believe I've never been there.

Over the holidays, my neighbor listens to the Elvis Christmas album as often as I listen to Handel's Messiah. He has a 3-foot tall Elvis thermometer on the side of his wood shed. It features Elvis in a white-fringed jumpsuit.

This week, Elvis was in Haines, wearing the same outfit and the same Elvis hairdo -- sideburns and all.

I feel like there's been some sort of Elvis-centered harmonic convergence in my life. I grew up thinking Elvis was like Michael Jackson, talented but odd. My puritan parents played tunes by the Tijuana Brass on the hi-fi when they got wild, never "All Shook Up." As for Las Vegas, it was high on their places-to-avoid list, along with stock car races, strip joints and Disneyland.

Which may be why I had no idea Elvis would be such a hit, with both my family and the crowd at the Southeast Alaska State Fair, where the booths range from Christian evangelicals to hemp hats and incense. The best thing about the little Haines fair is the food -- halibut kabobs, turkey legs, baked potatoes, egg rolls, barbecued pork, salmon teriyaki, burritos, pizza, cotton candy, minidonuts, fry bread, ice cream, caramel corn, hot espresso drinks, soda pop and Haines Brewery beer. Come to think of it, no wonder Elvis showed up.

Before his last show, a folk trio sang bluegrass tunes while Elvis fans found good seats. In the front row three ladies from the Catholic Church food booth saved places for their friends with Frank Murkowski posters. Some people, mainly men, looked curious, while others, mainly woman, were so excited they took pictures of each other waiting to see Elvis. When the old-timey group finished, the stage was set for Elvis. The chairs were moved against the sidewall and a microphone stand was carried forward. The backdrop was an old drum kit and faded landscape mural.

Then Elvis, or the guy who looks just like him, marched, with bodyguards, or at least a couple of hands from the fair who played the part, from the hall full of quilts, jellies and zucchinis across the wood-chip covered grounds toward us as the taped soundtrack swelled. When he jumped out onto the plywood stage singing "Blue Suede Shoes," it was easy to imagine bright lights, dancing girls and red velvet curtains.

One 80-year-old gold miner stood in the back and walked over to one side and then the other, watching the fans rather than the show. He looked amused. What, he must have been thinking, did women see in a man who wears makeup and skin-tight white pants? But he stayed for the whole show and by the end applauded as hard as the rest of us.

After the first song, Elvis explained that he really wasn't Elvis but Johnny Thompson, an impersonator from Las Vegas who does this act as a tribute to "the King." But we didn't care. He sang and danced enough like Elvis for us to forget about how he did it. In between numbers, he spoke in a pleasant Southern drawl. He had a nice, unaffected smile and a self-deprecating sense of humor.

He laughed when the guy in the sound booth missed his cue for the taped music, doing his intro arm swing again and then again until the sound came on. Once, when the music stopped right in the middle of a wild Elvis pelvic gyration, he panted "y'all aren't gonna make me do that agin, are ya?"

He sang right to the preschool teacher and bank teller, a baby sitter and a waitress. He flirted shamelessly but not aggressively. He was more Teddy Bear than Big Bad Wolf. He paid special attention to a trio of elderly Native ladies and sang softly to a mentally retarded woman before kissing her on the cheek and draping one of his sweaty scarves around her neck. He won over the men when he asked veterans to stand while he sang "American Trilogy," a patriotic anthem. It all could've been hokey and manipulative, but he was so sincere that it worked.

If the real Elvis was anything like Thompson, I can see why he is still so popular.

When the show was over, so was the fair and with it, summer. You could feel fall in the breeze and see leaves blowing across the parking lot. No one announced, like my Bulgarian friend, that "Elvis has left the building " or even the fairgrounds or, for that matter, Haines.

Later, before doing the last of the supper dishes, my husband sings "In the Ghetto" and tries doing the Elvis swinging leg move. "Elvis isn't dead," he says. "He's alive and living in Haines."

Heather Lende lives and writes in Haines.