Bob Thomas Writes

I Remember the Coronation of the “King”!

In 1956… or maybe it was 1957. . . I was in the seventh grade at Harding High School in Charlotte, N.C. That was the “Old Harding High” downtown! The one that had Coach Dave Harris cranking out the meanest “gang” that ever took the field in a football game! The team spirit was so great that after the team beat the snot out of the opposing team, the students took the field and beat ’em up again before they could get to their buses! Then we took on the fans and faculty!
Anyway, back the point.

One afternoon the Principal came on the public address system and announced that anyone who wanted to go to the Carolina Theater that afternoon to see that ‘new’ musical entertainer called “Elvis Presley”, would be excused at 1:30!

It was about a 2 or 3 mile walk to the theater, and as I recall, the entire school and the faculty all hiked it like an army of Lemmings! Head down, arms pumping, long strides, no talking. Just hoping to be first in line! Of course Elvis wasn’t “ELVIS” yet, he was part of a country and western show that included him as one of the performers. . . . I think it was the ‘Louisiana Hay Ride”, but his name was the biggest one on the posters!.

As we entered the theater the boys suddenly acted like a switch had been flipped! We realized that we could not, and “would not” sit down front with a bunch of silly girls! The boys all of a sudden started making noises about how we didn’t want to get too close to some skinny hick wiggling his butt! We just wanted to get out of school for the afternoon! So we all gravitated to the back of the theater. . . only to realize we were still in the middle of hundreds of girls! So we made our way upstairs to the balcony. . . the very back of the balcony! The theater must have held about 12 ga-zillion people! All of the downstairs was teenage girls and the balcony was half ‘old women’ in their 20’s and even older in front, and a few hundred guys jammed into the back rows! We filled up the seats and steps and then leaned up against the walls.

At the stroke of 3 p.m. the show started with a band of country “pickers & singers” wailing about their pickup trucks, dogs, guns and women who left them in the lurch. . . whatever a lurch is.

While they were lamenting the hazards of life as a country boy, the girls were screaming for “ELVIS, ELVIS, ELVIS”!

It was downright embarrassing to see my girlfriend down front making a complete idiot of herself! Of course, she wasn’t officially my girlfriend yet, but I had big plans for her once I worked up enough nerve to tell her my name and ask her if she wanted to “go somewhere and do something” one afternoon! (In the 7th grade, all of my ‘dating’ had to be done before 7 p.m.)

Finally “ELVIS, ELVIS, ELVIS” came out from behind the curtain and walked to the microphone. He leaned over and said. . .”Thank ya, thank ya vury much”. Now, I’ve never been to the Vatican, nor heard the Pope speak to the crowds. . . but, I doubt that he got the response that ELVIS got! The building began to shake. The walls were vibrating. The floors were humming. The chandeliers were swaying. And, I’m pretty sure, bricks were falling off the walls outside! The girls were screaming like their hair was on fire! They were jumping up and down. They were holding each other up, or pushing each other down! They were crying like their pet dog had just been run over! It was embarrassing.

The guys just stood with our arms crossed and shook our heads. A few of us had silly grins on our faces. But most of us just stood there with our mouths hanging open like we were trying to vacuum up flies! Never, in all my born days, had I seen any guy, girl, person or movie star have an effect like this! I could not, for the life of me, see what was so “Cool” about this Mississippi Hillbilly! First of all, he had on white buck shoes… nobody in his right mind wore those! His sport coat was pink, and his pants legs were ‘pegged’ so tight that he must have ‘greased’ his feet just to get them on! He was NOT Cool! He looked like an idiot who had gotten dressed in the dark!

Then he did something that affected everyone in the theater like jumper cables had been applied to our ears!

He sang.

Not some silly song about “Moon River” or “High School Rings”… no, not at all. He hit his guitar a lick and as it reverberated through our skulls and down to our feet, he leaned into the microphone and uttered these immortal words. . . .”YOU AIN’T NOTHING BUT A HOUND DOG! JUST ROCKING ALL THE TIME”! Something in me snapped … or broke… or dissolved… or turned to pure Lucky Tiger Hair Tonic!

I don’t know what happened, but suddenly all I wanted was to get out of that theater and buy some white bucks, pegged pants and grow some sideburns! I wanted girls to scream over me, at me, for me! I slowly loosened my Levis and slid them down a notch or two. I turned my collar up. And I don’t remember doing it, but apparently I rolled down my Levi cuffs, folded them over and rolled them back up until they were so tight my feet turned blue! And all of this happened on the first verse of “Hound dog”! By the third song, I don’t remember what it was, I was pushing old women out of the way so I could get closer to the future KING! I was hanging over the balcony rail and screaming like a girl! It was great! I, me personally, was present at the discovery of Rock n’ Roll, cool clothes and some great moves. . . and I was going to be the bearer of this earth shaking information to the rest of the world! I couldn’t wait until the show was over so I could begin my mission!

The show finished at 5 p.m. As the house lights came on I turned and looked around at the faces of the people there. All of them were semi-catatonic! Boys, girls, “old” 20-ish and 30-ish women, everybody just stared at the stage as if something else was going to happen. Actually, we all wanted something else to happen! The announcer came on the loud speaker and told us to be sure and watch “The Ed Sullivan Show” on Sunday night to see ELVIS’S first TV appearance! Then he made the announcement that “THEY’S ALL GONE NOW. SO Y’ALL CAN LEAVE”! A few years later I believe the announcement became….
“Ladies and Gentlemen, ELVIS HAS LEFT THE BUILDING”!

By the time we made our way to the street, the boys had reverted to their ‘regular’ selves. We all said things like , “He wuzn’t so hot”, or ” Phesht! What a waste of a dollar”! But, secretly, we were all trying to figure out where to buy a pair of white bucks. Also, I noticed that most of the boys had made a trip to the bathroom, soaked their heads under the tap, and combed their hair into ‘Duck Tails” that dripped on their turned up collars!

A few weeks later the smell of Vitalis, Lucky Tiger & Hoppalong Cassidy hair tonic floated in the air of every high school in the nation, and pocket comb sales must have been in the billions! Half the boys in the country had zippers in their pants leg so they could get them on, and Levis had transformed into “tailor mades” with pink thread in the “butterfly” leg seams! White bucks were holding their own against “Wejuns” loafers, and sock hops were a sea of teenage boys in Pink Sport coats, black & pink shirts, pegged pants and white socks! They really looked stupid, and cool, at the same time! But not as stupid as a bunch of girls in “Poodle Skirts”!

Oh, one other thing. Until this very moment, I’ve never told anyone that one of the ‘older’ ladies clapping her hands, waving her arms and dancing to the music in the balcony, was my very own Mother! Now that 50+ years have passed, it’s not too humiliating to admit! But, don’t tell anyone else, Please!
Just imagine. . . I was one of the people who crowned the “King”