Read Inside Graceland: Elvis' Maid Remembers for Free Online Page B

just smile and say, “You’re right, Grandma.”
    She often talked about how she regretted that she didn’t get to go very far in school. Parents back then, she explained, believed in children working around the house. She said, “My daddy used to leave for work early in the morning to try and earn enough money so we could have clothes to wear and food to eat. He cut our hair, to save money, and I was always getting a whipping because I didn’t like the way he would cut it, and I would try and cut it a different way, and that would make him mad. My hair started turning white when I was fairly young, and I hated that.”
    I think that was why she started coloring it a dark color in her later years, because she was so determined that she was never going to have white hair again. She once told me that she had hinted to Elvis that he needed to color his hair, which, of course, he started doing.
    Dodger would talk about Elvis and Vernon. She once told me, “Elvis said to me, ‘I want daddy to be happy, but I don’t like him being married to Dee.’ He said, ‘No one is ever going to take mamma’s place.’”
    She went on to explain that, after Dee and Vernon married, in 1960, the two of them had moved into Glady’s old downstairs bedroom, and that Elvis had had a fit. He couldn’t stand the thought of another woman sleeping in Glady’s bed.
    That’s when the decision was made for them to build the house on Dolan Street, right around the corner from Graceland. That way, Vernon was still close by but Dee wouldn’t be living in Graceland.
    She said that it was so ironic that Vernon worried so much about Elvis and Elvis worried so much about Vernon.
    Our conversations would often turn to Dodger herself. She told me about how Jessie, her husband, had had another girlfriend before they got married. The girl had even made three wedding dresses, expecting Jessie to ask her to marry him, but Jessie said that Dodger was prettier, so he married her instead. She went on to say that, as sorry as Jessie turned out to be, she wished that the other girl had gotten him instead. She said, “He stayed gone half the time, and the other half he was drunk!”
    She explained, “He never left us any food in the house, and did not help raise the kids. All five of my children got married at a young age just to get away from their father, because he treated them so mean.”
    We shared humorous stories as well. Like the time her daughter, Aunt Delta, when she was young, had been given a hen, as a present. For some reason the hen began losing all it’s feathers, and Aunt Delta had made a pair of purple pants for it. Dodger described the scene of Aunt Delta chasing after this naked hen trying to put a pair of pants on it. We all got a big laugh out of that.
    We also would get a kick out of conversations that Dodger would have, almost daily, with an elderly yard man that had been hired by Elvis. The man, though very nice and thoughtful, was very hard of hearing and, when he would ask Mrs. Minnie how she was feeling, (which was just about everyday when he would see her), she would often say, “Oh, I’m not feeling so well today.” Misunderstanding what she would be saying, he would reply, “Good, I’m glad you’re feeling better”, and would then walk off.
    Dodger got to the point where she would just smile and thank him. Then, when one of us would walk by, she’d whisper, “That old coot didn’t hear a damn thing I just said!” That provided many a good laugh over the years.
    We also discussed Dodger’s love of clothes. She once said she thought she had a dress to match each color of the rainbow. I told her my favorite dress was the pretty pink one with the white lace on the front.
    After she died, Aunt Delta remembered how much I had loved it, and gave it to me to remember her mother by. I still have it today.
    Some of my fondest memories of Dodger are of the two of us sitting together on the front porch, watching the fans