It’s Christmas 1957 and I’m twelve years old and Elvis Presley has taken the world by storm with his jet-black hair and his long sideburns and that sensual voice that can calm that storm or stir it to hurricane force. Like every other female, I am totally besotted with that phenomenon.
All I wanted for Christmas that year was a record player so that I could go to my room, close the door and be alone with Elvis.
Several days before Christmas my mama placed a big, wrapped box underneath our cedar tree and I was so excited because THIS WAS MY RECORD PLAYER. I would finally have my time with my obsession. My Brother was quite a few years younger than me, and he was so excited to get some type of toy, but I was ecstatic knowing what I had to look forward to.
Christmas morning dawned, of course I was the first one up on that cold morning, I’d waited long enough to hear my favored one on my own record player. My parents let me open fist and I could barely rip the paper from the big box I was so excited. As the last of the bright colorful paper fell away, I opened the box and there laying on a bed of white cotton, holding two bricks was a small pink coin purse with ten dollars inside. I was wrecked. WHERE WAS MY RECORD PAYER AND THE ELVIS RECORDS? With tears in my eyes, I looked at all my people and they were laughing. LAUGHING!! Then my mother pulled another package from the back of the tree and there it was, my “Elvis’s sound machine!”
I have so many memories from my childhood and living in that small house on East Adams Street and all the Christmases that we shared as a family. We never had lots of money and we didn’t get lots of gifts, but we didn’t know we were poor. Now I remember them borrowing money some years just to buy us Christmas but then I didn’t realize. I was too young to be privy to any of this “grow-up” business I just was a happy little girl with parents who loved their children and did all they could to make Christmas happy.
This, these memories have been what I have based my Christmas happies on through the years. Just make Christmas happy, joyful, and oh so memorable for my children so that when they are my age, they too will have these cherished remembrances to look back on.
I’ve made this cake for a long time.
Now I find out it was called an Elvis Presley Cake. It’s a delicious dessert.
1 package yellow cake mix
1 cup whole milk, (I use buttermilk)
½ cup oil
1 -8 oz can of crushed pineapple in heavy syrup
3 large eggs
¼ cup sugar.
Mix all together and pour into a 9x13 pan.
Bake 350* for 25 minutes.
Frosting
8 oz soft cream cheese
1 whole package of powdered sugar (16 oz)
1 t. vanilla
¼ cup chopped pecans.
Spread on cooled cake.
