From Graceland: Karal Ann Marling describes Graceland Too:

"Holly Springs, Mississippi, lies twenty-nine miles north of Oxford, at the intersection of highways 7 and 78, exactly halfway between Tupelo and Memphis. All roads to Memphis from northeast Mississippi run through Holly Springs, which boasts more than three hundred structures listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Most of these are the palatial homes of nineteenth-century cotton barons--big, stately, colonnaded mansions named Montrose and Oakleigh.

"On East Gholson Avenue, right off the square, stands a somewhat diminished version of these big houses, a bit too close to the street for baronial comfort. The whole place leans a hair to the right. Individual clapboards ripple and bow. The black shutters at the windows have been slathered in fresh paint, laid on thick and smooth like just-churned country butter on a hot biscuit. Two widely spaced columns uphold a pediment above the front door and shelter a narrow porch muffled in bright green kitchen carpeting, or cut-rate Astroturf. Built in 1853 along the lines of Rowan Oak [Faulkner's home in Oxford] and other Mississippi mansions of respectable scale and demeanor, this is Graceland Too.

"Graceland Too is home to the self-proclaimed `World's Number One Elvis Fan,' Paul MacLeod; his mother; and his son, Elvis Aaron MacLeod, who dresses and sounds a lot like Elvis Presley. The MacLeod house is named after Presley's Memphis mansion, to which it bears a superficial resemblance thanks to the columns and two concrete lions, guarding either edge of the facade, and a certain eccentricity of taste, expressed in pink and yellow drapes visible at the upstairs windows.

"Graceland Too is an Elvis museum, full of items like petals from the first flower laid on Elvis Presley's grave. It is also a sort of respectful parody of the real Graceland. Elvis had a TV set in every room. In Graceland Too, TV sets are monitored day and night for any mention of his name. References are filed away in more than a thousand notebooks stacked in the hallway at the foot of the staircase. The MacLeods claim to have 10 million Elvis items. Admission is $3."

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Copyright © 1996 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
All rights reserved
Illustrations: Karal Ann Marling

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