u/TitoDiablo

I grew up in Memphis, close enough to the old Fairgrounds to hear the screams before you reached the gate. The Zippin Pippin is one of America's oldest wooden roller coasters, and it held the weight of millions who came before me, all clenching their jaws, pretending they had a choice in what came next.

Elvis knew something about needing a force stronger than himself.

By 1960 he belonged to the world. Every movement was seen, every exit blocked by screaming fans, always wanting what he could give, then wanting more. So he came in the night, when the world was sleeping, to feel the timber shake beneath him. From midnight until first light, the Memphis Fairgrounds became his escape from the trap of being Elvis.

The coaster's force demanded his whole body. He could not negotiate with the drops. He could not charm the timber. He sat in the front car and rode again and again, sometimes for hours, waiting for the release he trusted would come. For those few hours, there was no Elvis. He was only a body moving through air, accepting the track.

Eight days before he died, he returned to the rickety old coaster one last time. He was forty-two.

Here is a strange calendar coincidence: August 16, the day Elvis died, is also National Roller Coaster Day, because of an 1898 patent for a loop someone believed the body could survive. Maybe it wasn't a coincidence.

The Pippin stood alone in the weeds for years after the Fairgrounds closed, too beloved to tear down, too broken to ride. Then Green Bay, Wisconsin, of all places, took up its ancient bones and rebuilt them on the bay, where children who have never heard of Memphis, and maybe not Elvis either, raise their hands to the northern sky and let go.

I wrote the fuller reflection for my Sunday newsletter, if anyone wants it: https://substack.com/@thespiritualalmanac/p-210113456

Did he sense the end coming? Did he need the chain to haul him to the top one last time?