A Little Thing Called Life-By: Linda Thompson

Made in Memphis

My love for Elvis began long ago in my little Memphis girl's heart. In my mind, it seemed perfectly logical that I would grow up to marry the man everyone in the Mississippi Delta talked about and swooned over, and whose music was rocking the world. Why not aim high?
"Y'all know what, Mama and Daddy?" I declared at the breakfast table one humid Memphis morning. "When I grow up, I'm gonna marry Elvis Presley!"
My parents smiled indulgently.
"Well, now honey child, by the time you grow up, Elvis will be too old for you," they said.
"I don't care, he'll still be singing 'Hound Dog'!" I retorted, underterred.
And so he was.
My family was "country"----Southern to the core, as was Elvis'. Country connotes much more than a musical genre. It indicates strong familial ties, a particular prefrence for "soul food"---country fried, refried, chicken fried anything, double dipped, extra creamy and thickened gravy (not on the side). In fact, just fry any food group. If it's fried, it'll always taste good. Add some overcooked vegetables, preferably turnip greens steeped in ham hocks or salt pork for flavoring, and finish it off with hearty corn bread baked in the oven in a cast iron skillet. Of course, the unique musical melange of the region is so much a part of life in the South that is was a form of sustenance for us, too. It certainly was for Elvis. Southern gospel, country, blues, rock, and the amalgamation of all those genres engendered his redefinition of music as we know it today. Although Elvis drew on familiar Southern musical forms, he was a true original, and he created a sound that was his alone.
My mother, Margie White Thompson, was five feet ten inches and 126 pounds of dark haired beauty when she married my father, Sanford Able Thompson, a six foot tall, 165 pound handsome young man. He had just returned from two and a half years of service fighting in Germany, Belgium, France, and England during WWII. The first time my father saw my mother, he turned to his army buddy in the restaurant.
"You see that woman over there?" He declared. "I'm going to marry her."
For him, it was truly love at first sight. They knew each other for only six months before they married, and their marriage lasted for forty-five years, until my mother died. My father never remarried. She was the one love of his life.
Even with their deep love, theirs was not an easy life. They both had their own privations growing up in the Depression-era South, and these shaped much of their adult lives. My mother had been one of five sisters born to a poor tenant farmer and his housewife. She had to quit school before graduating to help her father work in the fields, picking cotton, sawing logs, and plowing rows with a team of mules. Her statuesque height, fitness, strength, and determination came in handy for the hard work she had to do.
Her long legs couldn't move fast enough when she decided to get married at only eighteen, just to get away from her difficult life, and in the process she said "yes" to a man who would prove to be abusive. She soon became pregnant, which only made things harder. Mama told us the story of when she decided to leave her philandering new husband. It seems she was eight months along when hubby pulled into their driveway with a date, who waited in his car while he changed shirts. I don't believe he escaped with that new shirt intact, and that was the end of that ill-fated union.

My mother's first child was a boy, and she named him Donald Joseph. She readily took to mothering and brought her newborn treasure home to live with her parents. Donald Joseph was a gorgeous baby, Mama said, with perfect little features, long eyelashes, olive skin, and a head full of dark hair. Sadly, he died in my mother's arms when he was only weeks old. Mama said when she went to gather him in her arms, a beautiful blue light moved across his bed. She knew then something was wrong. My mother was left devastatingly alone with the love only a mother knows lingering in her aching heart.

Years later, when my brother, Sam, and I were born to Mama and Daddy, she became obsessed with protecting us and made certain we never doubted how deeply she was devoted to us. We would come to understand that her overprotective nature was the result of her tragic loss so many years before, a loss she never overcame. Her deep sadness over Donald Joseph stayed with her until she left this earth.