Me and a Guy Named Elvis

by Jerry Schilling

  The Graceland property included a run-down barn, stables, and corral fences, and Elvis decided that he wanted it fixed up so that he could keep horses on the property. But he wasn’t just going to write a check and have all that taken care of—this was going to be a hands-on project. He’d be the carpenter. He’d be the painter. And, in the case of some extra buildings on the property that needed to be taken down to create a riding area, he’d drive the bulldozer.

  So, between trips to the local tack shops to pick up harnesses, saddles, ropes, and everything else we needed for the horses, Elvis and I began spending time together hammering away at planks in the barn and mending fences. And Elvis being Elvis, almost every day we were taking another trip somewhere to buy another horse. (A quick note on the bulldozing that tells you just how “Elvis” Elvis could be: Vernon had already purchased a little bulldozer for work around Graceland, but that wasn’t big enough for Elvis’s tastes. I came back to Graceland one afternoon to find Red West riding the little bulldozer and Elvis wearing a football helmet and sitting at the controls of a monstrous D9 industrial-grade bulldozer, looking pleased as could be as he flattened everything in his path, which, at one scary moment, almost included Red.)

  I was still doing the test-riding, and when Elvis encouraged me to find a ride for myself, I found a big, friendly black horse. With all the barn renovations going on, there was room for plenty more horses, and since Elvis was in a buying mood, pretty soon the whole inner circle formed its own unofficial Graceland riding club. Billy and Jo Smith had horses, Alan and Jo Fortas were up on their mounts, and Richard Davis had his own horse, too, but always got a laugh settling his lanky frame atop one of the little ponies the Colonel had sent to Elvis as a gift. The horses pulled us together in a very happy way, and it started to feel as if some of the fun and games and good times from the Fairgrounds had been moved right to Graceland.

  Elvis proved to be the hardest rider to find the right horse for. The daredevil side of him wanted an animal that was the strongest and fastest of all. But he was still battling his nervousness about being back in the saddle and needed a very well-trained, dependable horse that wouldn’t fight him. The first horse he bought for himself was easy to handle, but was too tame. So we went out looking for another.

  I guess word of all the horse-related purchases at Graceland spread pretty quickly, because one day, when Elvis and I were out looking for horses, I was approached by a man named Robert Boyd, who said he had the perfect horse for Elvis. I was a little wary—in our short time as horse buyers we’d discovered that horse traders could be as snaky as used-car salesman. But Boyd got my attention by showing me a picture of a huge, beautiful horse, with his twelve-year-old daughter in the saddle, proudly wearing the blue-ribbon sash she and the horse had just won. He told me that his daughter had ridden this particular horse in shows and equestrian events and had never had any problems—the horse was strong, smart, and impeccably trained. Boyd said he was more interested in finding a great home for the horse than in making a big profit from a sale, and went on to say that just about anybody else who wanted to sell a horse to Elvis was going to rip him off.

  I pulled Elvis aside and showed him the picture.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  The horse was a gorgeous, golden palomino, just as powerful and well-trained as the man had said. Elvis was taken with it right away. He bought it on the spot and soon renamed it “Rising Sun.” (The barn got renamed, too—when I pointed out to him that the structure was now “the house of the rising sun,” he liked the idea enough to paint HOUSE OF RISING SUN on the side of the barn.) It took Elvis a while to get comfortable as a rider, and it was interesting to watch him push himself. The first time he climbed up on Sun he was clearly still uncomfortable, but he rode a little longer and a little harder every day until after a couple of weeks he looked as natural in the saddle as he did behind the wheel of a Lincoln.

  I’d become comfortable with the horses pretty quickly, too, so I decided to push myself toward mastering an even scarier form of transportation: I was going to become an airplane pilot. Even aside from the Paramount shouting match, something had been bothering me for a while about the mix of my professional and personal life with Elvis. I was thrilled to be his friend, but it seemed awkward to think of that as a career. What exactly was my line of work? Something had clicked for me when I’d watched all those talented, qualified movie people around the sets, each contributing to the overall process as a master of their own craft. I guess it was a mix of Catholic guilt and Protestant work ethic, but I started to feel that if I was going to be on Elvis’s payroll, I wanted to offer some clear, constructive service to him, like being his personal pilot. I’d be his friend for free.

  I began spending mornings over at the Memphis Airport, taking some flight lessons from a guy who’d done time as a fighter pilot over in Vietnam. He put me on an accelerated lesson plan, and after only nine hours of instruction, he let me take my first solo flight piloting a little Cherokee 140.

  It was an easy takeoff—it seemed like all you had to do was give the plane some speed and you couldn’t go wrong. But being alone for the first time up there, I became very aware of all the noises around me. The wind was roaring, and I started hearing all sorts of cracks and creaks from the plane—noises I wasn’t sure I’d ever heard an aircraft make before. I tried to keep my rising nervousness in check and contacted the airport’s control tower, identifying myself as a student pilot and requesting clearance for a touch-and-go landing. A voice from the tower asked me to repeat what I’d said, and I did. But when the voice answered back, what I heard was a crackle of static, and maybe every fourth word the guy was saying. The radio wasn’t working.

  I started to break a nervous sweat. I radioed in again and tried to make it clear that I was requesting a runway with no crosswinds—I hadn’t yet been instructed on the tricky art of crosswind landings. Apparently, the guy in the tower was hearing only every fourth word I was saying, and thought I was asking for a place to practice my crosswind landings. I was directed to the runway with the strongest crosswinds on the field.

  I started to come in for my landing, but the powerful winds kept pushing the plane sideways, off line with the runway. The only way I could get the plane lined up again was to increase my speed, and when another gust blew me sideways I had to go even faster. This during the time I was supposed to be slowing down to land the plane. But speeding up and slowing down became a moot point—my palms got so sweaty that I couldn’t even keep my hands on the throttle.

  I hit the runway way too hard, and the little plane bounced up into the air with a terrible groan. The wind hit me and blew the plane off the runway. When I hit the ground again I was out on the grass of the air-field. I tried to steer the plane back to the runway, but as it dipped into the turn the left wing caught the turf and the plane slammed propeller-first into the ground.

  Suddenly things were a whole lot quieter, and I found I was upside down, strapped into my seat, listening to just two sounds—my heart pounding in my chest, and the fuel pump clicking away. I guess the thought of imminent explosion focused my mind, because I got myself unbuckled and out of the plane before the fire trucks and the airport police showed up.

  I don’t remember leaving or driving back to Graceland—all I remember is getting to the barn, walking past Elvis, hopping on my horse, and going for a full-gallop ride around the property. I needed an outlet for all that nervous energy, and I think I also needed to prove to myself that I could pilot something without crashing it.

  When I got back to the barn, Elvis looked at me hard and said, “What happened?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Jerry, when you got on that horse, you had the wildest eyes I’ve ever seen on a man. What happened?”

  I told him.

  “Jerry, forget about the airplanes. You’re too young.”

  “There are pilots younger than me, E.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t want a young pilot
. Anything we run into up in the air, I don’t want a pilot who hasn’t dealt with it before. I’ll stick with an old-timer. You know what I mean?”

  I did. I gave up the plane lessons for a while and stuck with the horses.

  As more horses joined the Graceland herd, more work needed to be done on the barn and on the fences. And when I think about favorite times with Elvis, this period always jumps to mind. Here was Elvis Presley, finding satisfaction in wiping cobwebs out of an old barn, in nailing up planks and painting fence posts. We’d spend hours together in the afternoon, just going through all the basic chores of horse care: checking their water, forking over their hay, brushing out their coats.

  Sometimes, walking through the Graceland kitchen, I’d find a yellow legal pad on the counter with personal notes from Elvis making me aware of what job needed to be handled next: “We need to get three bridles,” “We need more horse blankets,” “We need stirrups to match the bridles” would be written out in red. Elvis wasn’t a guy who usually left notes for anybody—but the last thing he’d do each night was write these out, so that every detail he thought of would get taken care of.

  After working all day, we’d often go back out to the freezing cold of the barn bundled up in our jackets and cowboy hats. We’d sit around a little bucket of fire out there, with our feet up, passing the time away. Sometimes Priscilla and Sandy—whose gift horses had started all this—were down there with us. One of them would make coffee and we’d huddle together and sip from our mugs. Sometimes a few of the guys would hang out together down there, having a laugh. And sometimes it was just Elvis and me next to the fire, talking away like we had on that very first cross-country trip. Sure, I loved the limos, and the mansions, and the movie life, and the VIP treatment everywhere we went. But this simple cowboy life was just as satisfying, and everything I loved about our friendship was right there in that freezing, freshly painted barn.

  I felt Elvis had created something great with the barn and the horses—he’d given himself a perfect way to escape the pressures and burdens that built up on him outside of those stables. But it was just impossible for him to say “This is just right.” Instead, he must have felt that if having ten horses was a good thing, having twenty would be even better, and having thirty would be even better than that. We kept going out and buying more animals and more gear, and our trips started happening during typical Elvis hours—we’d often be down in Mississippi somewhere riding potential purchases at three in the morning.

  On one of those trips, Elvis and Priscilla, Sandy and I, and Alan Fortas went out, driving down to the renowned Lennox Farms in Mississippi to find a Tennessee Walker for Vernon. It was just about daybreak as we headed back toward Graceland piled together in that big old double-cab pickup truck. Alan was driving, and all of a sudden Elvis told him to pull off the road. When Alan did so, Elvis pointed out the passenger window. Right away we all saw what he saw—a huge white cross towering over some rolling green hills as pristine as a golf course. The first rays of sunlight were glinting off a rippling lake in the center of the property, and there was one perfectly quaint little farmhouse close to the road. There was also a FOR SALE sign up. Elvis got that look in his eye—the one that meant he’d just put a plan together.

  “Alan,” he said. “Go knock on the door of that house. Tell them you want to buy this place. But don’t tell them it’s for me.”

  The place was called Twinkletown Farm, and was owned by Jack Adams, a retired TWA pilot who’d made a fortune as a used-aircraft salesman. Within days, it belonged to Elvis, and was promptly rechristened the Circle G Ranch. Elvis’s plan of having Alan pose as the buyer didn’t save much money, as Elvis agreed to Adams’s asking price without even a pretense of negotiation. What had started as a humble, hands-on pleasure in back of Graceland had now become a massive, money-gobbling endeavor. And what had begun with such a sweet impulse—to give a wonderful gift to Priscilla and Sandy—turned into an almost unquenchable desire to accumulate. Within weeks the 160-acre Circle G was home to forty horses, along with trucks, tractors, trailers, and all sorts of expensive ranch gear. In addition, there were a hundred head of Santa Gertrudis cattle that came with the price of the ranch.

  Elvis loved to take on a challenging project, he loved to spend money, and he loved to have the people he loved around him. The ranch gave him a chance to have all of that at once, and as things settled down a bit, there were some good times. Elvis was active and having fun, and Priscilla, Sandy, and I, along with Alan, Marty, Red, Larry Geller, Mike Keaton, Richard Davis, Joe and Joanie Esposito, and Billy and Jo Smith got into the spirit, too, spending a lot of time on horseback. The horses were trained and looked after by Mike McGregor, a professional horseman and saddler who became a well-liked and much-appreciated member of the group—the Circle G’s answer to the Marlboro Man. There were picnics, barbecues, target shooting, snake hunts—a lot of nice, easygoing, outdoorsy moments.

  I even got back up in a small plane—Jack Adams turned out to be a real friendly guy, a dignified gentleman with a warm, open manner. When he heard about my training—and my crash—he took me out to Twinkletown Airport, about five minutes away from the ranch, and got me to agree to copilot a plane with him. He felt it was important that I get up in a plane again soon and get over the fear of what had happened. We had a nice, smooth flight, and I had no fear at all as long as Jack was piloting. When we landed, I was about to get out when Jack said, “You can do it solo now. You won’t feel satisfied if you don’t.”

  I took the plane up, feeling a little nervous at first, but Jack had gone over things with me enough that my confidence started to come back. I made it back down, and this time, managed to avoid any crosswinds. And, with some further encouragement from Jack, went on to log another forty hours of solo flight time.

  For all the activity at the ranch, something about it didn’t feel right to me. It just seemed like too much, too fast, with Elvis spending way too much money. I was perfectly content with those late-night talks in the old Graceland barn, but that wasn’t enough to satisfy Elvis. He liked to do things big, but it seemed to me that things at the ranch had gotten so big that they weren’t special anymore. I know Elvis’s impulse to buy came from a heartfelt generosity—he wanted to buy so that he could share with the rest of us. But I could also see something desperate in all that buying.

  Part of Elvis’s plan was to deed over an acre of ranch land to each of the guys—I think he wanted to create a sort of cowboy commune for all of us. At first Vernon was very supportive of the idea, but I’m almost sure the Colonel got to him and soured him on the deal—the Colonel was not at all excited about the prospect of having Elvis regularly sequestered away on a Mississippi ranch surrounded by his guys and well out of reach of the Colonel’s influence. When Vernon steered his son away from handing out the land parcels, Elvis instead decided to buy a few house trailers so that there would always be accommodations for a few members of the inner circle to stay at the ranch with him and Priscilla. Elvis approached a few of us about buying these trailers—he’d arrange everything and put up the down payment, and then we’d take on the rest of the payments. He thought it was a great way for us to own a piece of his ranch.

  I’d agonized over taking on payments for my own motorcycle, and I really didn’t want to be putting money into a Mississippi house trailer. Elvis and I had some frank discussions over this, and he just couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t jump at the opportunity. Resistance didn’t accomplish much—Elvis had already arranged for trailers to be leased and delivered. I put up the money, and started making the payments—some of the other guys did, too. But, as usual, Elvis ended up paying off everything.

  I put up some stronger resistance over the issue of a brand-new truck. We had the horses, we had golf carts, we had some old trucks—there were plenty of ways to get around the ranch property. But Elvis, still in full spending spree, decided that everybody needed a brand-new Ford Ranchero pickup truck. I think I was out doing som
e work on the house trailer I hadn’t wanted when Elvis came by and tossed me some keys.

  “That’s for your truck.”

  The bigger the gift, the more casual he liked to act about it. So it took me a moment to understand what he was giving me.

  “Elvis, I don’t want a truck. I don’t need a truck.”

  That was a reaction he hadn’t expected, and it stopped him in his tracks. He looked a little puzzled, a little pissed.

  “It’s your truck, man. Drive it.”

  For the first time, receiving something from Elvis didn’t feel special at all to me. He didn’t care whether I wanted it or needed it. It didn’t even matter that it was for me—he was handing them out to everybody. And the giving didn’t seem to mean anything to him. When he’d bought me and the guys our convertible Cadillacs, the act seemed so personal and loving that some of the guys got choked up over it—the feeling behind the gift meant so much more than the cars themselves. But this brand-new truck had no meaning at all, for Elvis or for me. He was just spending money. The motorcycles and the Cadillacs were extravagant gifts, but they had, in some way, pulled the guys together. Elvis’s unlimited spending and gifting was now creating more pettiness among the guys. Somebody was always upset that so-and-so had the nicer trailer, the fancier saddle, or the better-color truck.

  He could tell that the Ranchero left me cold, but he barely reacted. He just walked toward an electrician who happened to be there that day, working on some of the power lines to the trailers. Elvis called out to this guy, a stranger to all of us.