Elvis has left the yard, but not the heart

CLARENCE - The day Elvis died Freida Bixler became a fan.

And tomorrow Freida is off to Graceland, his historic Memphis mansion, for the 26th time.

“It's going to be so fun,” says Freida, 61, of the upcoming Elvis Week that ends Sunday, the 32nd anniversary of his death. “I took my mom for years.”

Yes, her late mother, Maxine Feuss, was the real Elvis Presley fan.

“I grew up with a picture of Elvis on our living room wall,” Freida says with a chuckle. “I thought he was my brother.”

Today, Freida's home is all Elvis - from posters on the front porch to liquor bottles and replica gold records in the kitchen to a life-size cardboard cutout that emerges from a closet on special days.

One such occasion occurred this summer when Clarence celebrated its sesquicentennial. Freida decorated her front yard as a tribute to Elvis. It included the Elvis cutout, an acoustic guitar, a large teddy bear wearing an “I love Elvis” T-shirt, painted “blue suede shoes” and plenty of vinyl records labeled with titles of Elvis' more popular songs.

“Everybody was putting things in their windows,” Freida says. “I thought I'd do a rock and roll garden. Then I thought, I'm going to do Elvis. No doubt about it.”

Visitors often stopped to snap photos of Freida's Elvis tribute, but once the celebration ended, she took it down. She tossed the teddy bear, the records, the blue shoes that came from son, Marty.

“He donated those to my garden,” she says. “When the kids were little, I'd buy them Elvis T-shirts and they'd wear them proudly to school.”

“Mom made us wear them,” Marty says with a smile. Then, he adds, “I think mom has me burned out on him.”

That might have been Freida in her younger days, too. Ricky Nelson, she says, “was my guy.”

But, the day Elvis died, her mother called on the telephone, devastated.

“Then, I became an Elvis fan for her,” she says.

At least a dozen times before her death at age 80 in 2007, Maxine accompanied Freida to Graceland. They'd often stop in Tupelo, Miss., his birthplace.

“I told her I'd take her anywhere she wanted to go (for her 80th birthday). She wanted to go back to Tupelo.”

This year, Freida and three friends will stop there again to visit the birthplace and the hardware store where Elvis bought his first guitar, before going to Memphis.

“You wouldn't believe all the people I've been with,” Freida says, opening one of many scrapbooks of her visits. “These are my pride and joy. My braggin' books.”

Picture after picture depict Graceland scenes from Elvis' jumpsuits in a closet to his cars. In other photographs Freida poses with the Jordanaires (the first group to back up Elvis), with Elvis' first drummer, with people cast in his movies. Never, though, has she met Priscilla Presley or the daughter she had with Elvis, Lisa Marie.

Obviously, that brings up the recent death of Lisa Marie's ex-husband, Michael Jackson, and comparisons to Elvis.

“He don't mean nothin',” Freida says. “I can't help you there.”

Then again, she remembers when Michael Jackson unveiled his popular moon walk dance, how she sprinkled powder on the kitchen floor to make it easier for her kids in stocking feet to imitate the move.

But, while Michael Jackson billed himself as “The King of Pop,” Elvis was the real King, the “King of Rock and Roll.”

For the Freida Bixlers out there, there will never be another Elvis.