When I was about 10, my mom took me to see Elvis play the Pine Bluff Convention Center. The King was well into his heftier, jumpsuit stage and, as it turned out, less than a year away from the end of his earthly reign. A king is, however, a king, and my mom was a loyal subject. And believe it or not, the Pine Bluff Convention Center of the mid-70s was a palace.
But this is a story about Little Rock and one of its favorite daughters — my mom, Libby Jane Price Sharp.
Mom died a year ago December, before she had the chance to display her latest unconventional Christmas tree or perhaps even hang it upside down from the ceiling. And while childhood summers found her and cousin Robert (Moore, future Arkansas House Speaker) doing their best Tom and Huck along the levees outside Arkansas City, Little Rock was her town. The product of capital city society on one side and Delta gentry on the other, Mom taught me to say “yes, ma’am” and “yes, sir,” to hold the door for ladies and to stand when they entered a room.
But life as her son was a glorious paradox. One cold, late ‘70s December night, this child of the Old South told me and a cadre of my Cotillion buddies, after picking us up from the Holly Ball in the parking garage of the old Camelot Hotel, to “get out and let the air outta their tires.”
Someone had the audacity that night to partially block the exit ramp from that dungeon with their ocean liner on wheels. We could’ve gotten by, and did. But Mom had a twisted sense of humor that demanded tribute.
She taught me to drive in the War Memorial parking lot in her own ocean liner, a ‘76 special edition, white Caddy El Dorado convertible. She taught me to mix a JB Scotch and soda (two fingers), to fetch cartons of Benson & Hedges Gold in the grocery store (those were unenlightened times, I’m afraid), to love the Hogs and appreciate the finer taste of Hellman’s. She put Coke in my baby bottles (so the story goes).
My mom was no Carol Brady. More a mix of Julia Sugarbaker (the scotch) and Lucy Ricardo (the soda), and I suppose my sometimes slightly R-rated upbringing wasn’t conventional. But I never felt alone or unloved, never doubted she’d be there for me. As anyone who knew my mom could attest, knowing her was an adventure unto itself.
Grabbing my hand near the end of that Elvis show, Mom took me down front to join a mosh pit of middle-aged women shrieking and clutching the sides of their faces, just like in the footage I’d seen of the Beatles. Soon it was over, and the stage looming tall and black, I heard a man announce, “Elvis has left the building.”
On our way out to the car, Mom tried her best to explain to her little boy why it was necessary for him to do that. Elvis joined us on the trip home, 8-track roaring. I think of her every time I hear an Elvis song or see his image. Perhaps even now they share a donut and a smoke.
Libby left the building herself eventually, and the stage looms tall and black without her.