Wrinkled Memories ~ "Sing for me Elvis Baby"

My Mother just loved our entertainment unit. A great, dark, Sendakian Beast of a thing,who's enormous wide mouth tilted open in front to expose a keyboard of settings, dials and knobs. It was a German made Grundig. The entire Top of the Beast flipped open to expose a reel to reel tape recorder and a LP record player which played 33-1/3 RPM records.

It was the late 1950s. My father was stationed in Germany and we lived on an Army Base.
Our Apartment was large and rambling and the complex was called Army Billets. Once each month or so, about payday, my parents would throw a party. The guests were fellow army buddies of my Father and their wives, and also German friends my parents had made in the nearby town.

Elvis was all the rage, and had even toured Germany in the Army at that time. To entertain her guests, my mother enjoyed making special recordings on the tape recorder housed in the heavy, darkly wood-grained music center. She would edit together songs and recorded dialogue from her Elvis records together with her own "impromptu" comments and song requests. The result was a recording capturing a fictitious party in which she had hosted Elvis Himself as her Guest of Honor.

During the monthly party when things had reached full swing and after everyone was well inebriated, she would slip one of her "Elvis at My Party" recordings into the Beast. "Bitte, Bitte, Bitte" my Mother would plead on the tape for Elvis to sing another song. "Oh come on, sing one for me !!!, Sing for me Elvis Baby!" Of course He would always comply and sing His heart Out. Maybe "Love Me Tender" or "All Shook Up." "Yeah Man" my Mother would exclaim in a loud but slurred Party tone. "Thank You, Thank very much" Elvis would reply. He was always so polite.

The response was none short of fevered excitement and envy mixed with amazement, especially among her local German Guests. This frenzy was intensified by the presentation of a Large Turquoise Blue colored enameled Water lily. When the handle located in the center was triggered, the leaves of the Flower would slowly unfold to reveal a spray of 20 uniformly arrayed American Cigarettes.

Those parties were always well attended often concluding with some sort of altercation or another.

Original Short Story by
Michael Hostovich