Most of my adulthood has been spent, or mis-spent, as a bumbling journalist. I don’t regret the journalism, but the bumbling was unfortunate and sometimes, when I recall the worst of my bumbles, I cringe with such force that I risk serious injury. So I’ve tried to forget as much of the past 20 years as possible.
But a couple of weeks ago, my toilet-seat cover exploded. Stay with me, please, you'll see where I'm going with this in a minute. I say it exploded, but that's just my hypothesis; all I know for sure is that I went into the bathroom and the toilet was wearing its cover in a slovenly fashion, caved in over one eye, as though it had been out on a bender the night before. I'm probably exaggerating a little bit, for effect, but this part is more-or-less true: I had to go down to the basement to get a toilet wrench.
Now, I have two good reasons to avoid going to the basement. For one thing, it's inhabited by a community of bats who despise me. About a year ago, one of them flapped his way up a heating vent and emerged in my bedroom, where I was lying around in my underpants and did not wish to be disturbed. I urged him to leave, as politely and firmly as I could, standing by the window and waving my arms battishly, demonstrating what I needed him to do. He declined to take my advice, so I retrieved a feather duster from the broom closet and chased him around the room with it, trying to drive him out an open window. But he just kept circling the walls, smacking his fangs and waving his little ears until, finally, the feather duster and I got sick of it. So I went and got a broom, slapped him silly with it, pinned him against the radiator and bashed his brains out with a ball-peen hammer. Of course, as everyone knows, bats are very loyal to their own and hold onto their grudges for many generations.
I don't know what made me carry those boxes upstairs; perhaps I was procrastinating about the toilet. But whatever the reason, I started listening to the tapes and realized that, despite the hours and hours of humiliating faux pas and reporterly boorishnesses they contain, there's a lot of really interesting and peculiar stuff in there, too. Most of it is stuff that I would not wish to have published in profit-making periodicals, because I hate 'em (how I came to feel that way is a story for another time), so my next move was obvious: Publish them in the world-famous Weakly Blow, which, whatever its unfathomable destiny, will never be described as "profit making."
And just like that, an occasional feature was born: The Weakly Blow Celebrity Vault.
Today, we open the vault for a demi-celebrity, the late Mary Jenkins, Elvis Presley's cook.
I interviewed Mary (it is impossible to call her "Ms. Jenkins" - trust me) by telephone on December 10, 1994, while preparing an Elvis-related coffee-table book for Life magazine. A few weeks earlier, in a preliminary interview, I'd asked Mary if she believed the rumors that Elvis was still alive. Pish-posh, she replied (or words to that effect), she knew that he was dead . . . because his ghost was staying in the back of her house.
The interview lasted about 40 minutes and, as you might expect, the majority of my questions were about her house-guest. She had sent me a copy of her book, Elvis: Memories Beyond Graceland Gates, which told some of the typically depressing stories about Elvis' porcine years, of which the following is but one depressing example:
"In later years, Elvis' appetite called for lots of very rich foods. Dr Nick (Elvis' pill-spewing personal physician -ed.) had him on a diet almost constantly then. [But] Elvis would call me in the kitchen. 'Mary, fix me some sausage and biscuits the way I like them.' The way he liked them was to melt two sticks of butter in a skillet, take about six or seven homemade biscuits, cut them in half, dip the halves in melted butter, put sausage in the middle and put the halves back together. . . . Elvis' colon got to bothering him real bad, so Dr Nick put him in the hospital. He had been up there several days when, one afternoon, I got a call from him. "Mary," he said, "I want you to fix me some kraut and wiener sandwiches. . . .'"
One last thing: An understandably incredulous friend has asked whether this whole thing is for real, or a joke. So, listen, no balderdash, no applesauce - it's for real.
MARY JENKINS: Uh-huh, that’s correct. After he passed away, I wanted to see him. I prayed to see him. But he didn’t come. And everyone told me, “You have to stop worrying and pray that you will see him.” So I tried to stop worrying as much as I could.
And I said: “I’m not afraid. I know what it is.” It was him - singin’.
Then, the next time that happened, it was around the same time. I heard him walkin’ down the steps, just like we would hear him when he was alive, walkin’ up and down the stairs.
Q: You knew what his footsteps sounded like, from -
MJ: Yes! Yes! I heard him comin’ down the stairs just as plai-ai-ai-n . . . He walked down to the bottom step and them charms started ringin’ again – just started ringin’! But he didn’t call me that night; he didn’t wake up.
Q: When did he call you?
MJ: One night, he come to me in a dream. He said, “Mary, I want to come to your house to rest. I wanna rest.” He looked just like himself, you know? Like he wasn’t dead.
I said: “Well you know you're always welcome! I’ll fix a place for you. But, ain’t but one thing about it: I don’t have a bathroom in that room." He said, “Don’t worry about that; The Boys will be with me and they will prepare for that.”
[Editor's note: “The Boys” refers to Elvis’ Memphis Mafia, an entourage of a dozen-or-so hangers-on who served Elvis with shit-eating obsequiousness. Sorry for describing them that way, but perhaps it explains how, in Mary’s mind, The Boys might have been able to compensate for the lack of a bathroom.]
MJ: So I fixed the room up for him. It’s my guest bedroom in the back of the house. I had a bedroom suit in there - well, at that time I didn’t have the same bedroom suit that I do have. But I had a king size bed and I had it fixed up real nice - and he moved on in! Then, he came to me in another dream and he was talking about how nice it was and how he liked it and how he could rest in that room.
Q: Why do you think he keeps coming back like this?
MJ: I don’t know. I believe he just come back to see about to me. And he could have wanted to tell me something.
Q: But he hasn’t told you anything yet?
MJ: No. But we was reeee-eal close. Real close. He would tell me to come up and sit and watch the church programs with him on Sunday. He would enjoy it and I would, too.
Now, the last time it happened, he come down the steps and the charms started ringin’ and he stood there, right at the bottom of them steps. I looked up at him, and I didn’t say nothing and he didn’t say nothing. And then he just vanished away.
Q: That’s . . . incredible.
MJ: It sure is.
It sure was. Sad to say, my relationship with Mary, which had started out rather warm, soon went into a deep-freeze. Shortly after my little book was published, she phoned me up and preached me an indignant sermon that was often difficult to understand. Apparently, the photographer who took her portrait was even more of a bumbler than I am, and had busted one of her chairs. For this, he had paid her $75 in cash, but she now felt that sum was insufficient on the grounds that "seventy-five dollars don't buy no chair." I replied that, in my experience, it usually did, especially if the chair was a breakable one. Unabashed, she adjusted her aim and told me that the portrait itself was damnable, and that my caption to it contained an outrageous error. I had written that she occasionally served Elvis a scrumptious dessert called 7-Up Cake, which, she averred, she did not do.
My heart sank when she told me so - truly. I hate making mistakes in print, even when they involve mere desserts. But while Mary continued screeching at me, I thumbed through her book and there it was, as plain as the nose on Elvis' face: The King, she'd written, loved Seven-Up Cake . . . so much so that she'd included it in her compendium of "30 of Elvis' Favorite Recipes." When I brought this to her attention, she paused long enough to take two large gulps of air. And then, she did what all celebrities (and demi-celebrities) do at such a time:
She threatened to sue me.
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1 lb. margarine or butter (not one stick, mind you - one pound)
3 cups sugar
3 cups flour
¾ cup 7-Up
2 Tbs lemon flavoring or vanilla extract
6 eggs
Butter and eggs should be room temperature.
Combine butter and sugar, beat 10 – 15 minutes until creamy. Add eggs, beating in one at a time. Add flour and mix. Add 7-Up and flavoring, pour into a greased and floured bundt pan. Bake at 325 degrees for one hour and 15 – 20 minutes.
Glaze
Lemon Juice
1 cup powdered sugar
Mix well and pour over hot cake in pan
Begin eating, thinking of Elvis and Mary and the special sort of love they shared.
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