When I was 12 years old I sat in a restaurant, ate apple pie with Elvis Presley, and he autographed my hand. This was one night in 1955 after his performance at the Louisiana Hayride in Shreveport, Louisiana. I had attended his performance with two girlfriends, and was driven there compliments of my sister and her boyfriend in a beautiful yellow Chevrolet convertible from Stamps, Arkansas.

I was one of those little hysterical girls standing in front of the stage screaming at the top of my lungs. It was Elvis, the Pelvis, that turned the little 12 year old girl on, and she didn’t even know it. His songs, his performance, his warmth was magic of some sort to all. I’m not a big music fan. After Elvis, I liked Sinatra, popular and finally Moody Blues and classical. Love songs are for youth and/or when your hormones are raging, and country/western songs are for crying in your beer. I liked jazz until I moved to New Orleans.

We had found out where Elvis would be stopping for dinner, and we lay in wait inside the restaurant. Elvis came in with several member of his band and sat at a table close. They ordered dinner, ate, said hello to us. Finally, I or my sister invited Elvis over to our table to have apple pie with us. He complied. He sat with me and my two girlfriends.

Elvis was a beautiful looking man with the most beautiful hands. My sister also to this day remembers how beautiful his hands were. That is a peculiar remembrance of the King of Rock n’ Roll. I asked him, and he autographed my hand. I didn’t wash my hand for a week. He liked the attention and he liked little girls. Elvis was joking with me and said he wanted to see me again when I was 18. Oh, how I cherished that possibility.

The Presley group left first and I was filled with anticipation.

We didn’t get to the Louisiana Hayride the next time he performed there, but because we knew the timing of approximately when he would be coming through Stamps, Arkansas on his way home to Memphis, we lay in wait. I was too young to drive but was in the lead car. front seat and was the first to spot Elvis’s car, a White Cadillac El Dorado, the one with the giant fens like a shark.

I yell "go". We squeal out. The three car assault team headed after Elvis. We catch him, pull up beside him and beg, beg - motion - for him to pull over. He does. I was the first to reach the window of his driver’s seat. He rolled down the window a little, said he would not give us autographs, we should not have done that, thanks for being fans and goodbye.

He pulled away in his White Cadillac to the Milton Berle Show and the Ed Sullivan Show and history.