No News Was Not Good News

In our lives we can recall exactly where we were the day we heard certain things about people places and things..for me I know exactly where I was on the day that Marilyn Monroe died, the day JFK was assassinated, the day The Beatles arrived in the USA and the day we found out Elvis was gone..
On August 16, 1977 I was at my sister's home in Polo, Missouri on vacation and watching her children for her that day. We never had the radio or the television on all day, so we did not know what had happened until my sister came home that late afternoon.
She sat in the car for awhile and as I went to see what was up, I could see she was crying. Oh no was my first thought, what was wrong?? My sister was not one prone to crying much unless something really bad had transpired. As most people would I was thinking this was a family matter..
When I got to the car she looked at me and her eyes were quite red and swollen and she asked me if I had heard..heard what?? Elvis is dead she says..I looked at her like she just dropped from Mars! Elvis Presley?? Yes she said who else do you know by that name? Of course the tears sprang to my eyes as my thoughts turned to the fact I had tickets for myself and my boyfriend to see him in Springfield, Massachusetts the next month. I had waited so many years to see Elvis and now it was not to be! He had been at fairs close to us as we grew up but we never got to go to those and had watched him faithfully on anything we could.
That night we took the kids to dinner and went to the laundromat to wash clothes and every where people were sobbing and kind of in a state of shock. I remembered the zombie like state we all moved in when JFK was shot and we were not much different that night.
I must admit as I was growing up The Beatles had taken over my musical taste and I had not followed Elvis as much until I had reached my 20's and then I began to listen to his music more and more. I loved "Moody Blue" and had one of the blue vinyl copies of the 33 1/3 LP and played it almost everyday. His music had become mellow and rich and appealed to me more than most artists of that time.
My thoughts went to the boyfriend I had as a teenager, Bobby Dean Jennings, and how he might feel right now as he used to do a spot on Elvis impersonation and would serenade me with Elvis songs all the time and oh how he could move his legs in that same Elvis shake!! Still makes me smile to think about it!
So I never got to see Elvis perform in person and even traded the tickets in for another concert..wish I had not done that as I have seen tickets like that go on Ebay..but more than selling them, I wish I had kept that little piece of Elvis memorabilia.
So to me that was the day the music died..but I knew there would be more days to come that others we so love to listen to and watch would leave us too. At least on this mortal world on our audio and video equipment ELVIS LIVES in our hearts!!