Graceland the True Story

Larry Bowen

Copyright © 2019 Larry Bowen

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING, INC.

New York, NY

First originally published by Page Publishing, Inc. 2019

ISBN 978-1-64462-488-3 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64462-489-0 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Memphis Elvis and Me

Dedicated to my mother Mary Lee Bowen, my father Leon Bowen, and my brother and sisters, Cassandra, Crystals, Nedra, Phyllis, Charles, and Keith Bowman.

Introduction

This is the true story about a house that was owned by Elvis Aaron Presley in Graceland that he shared with all his fans and the last class of graduating students of Whitehaven High 1976, one year before his death. This story is about the last five years of Elvis’s life and the students who adored him. How three families—the Bowens, the Bowdens, and the Presleys—came into play one day. This story looks at how Elvis treated us and how his fans treated him on a daily basis. The truth must be told and how Graceland would never be the same again after Elvis’s death. Immediately after his death, Graceland was remodeled. The front of Graceland where all his fans stood were shut out.

When I look back on it now, it reminds me of when we first moved to Whitehaven. How whites did not want the blacks to migrate to the area. That’s how the fans in Memphis were treated after his death. Elvis always shared Graceland with my classmates. Elvis knew us by sight and some by name. He knew me as bubba. Little did Elvis know that sometimes my father called me bubba. Elvis knew, and so did I, that a lot of girls lost their virginity in front at the wall at Graceland. It was lovers’ lane. We parked our cars up at the wall and made out until all hours of the night. Sometimes we would see Elvis looking out over the grounds, but all the students and his fans had a pact with Elvis that as long as we stayed on the outside of the gate, we could party all night long, and we did almost every weekend.

I was there almost every night. I worked next door at Burger King, and my school was four blocks away. I ate my lunch at Graceland. You had a choice to eat in some boring cafeteria or eat at Graceland; the choice was easy. Hoping that Elvis would come down to the gate and speak to us—that’s if he was home. Sometimes he would say hello to his fans, or you would hear about a student saying Elvis had signed a book or a lady’s halter top.

The very next day every student at Whitehaven would be at Graceland, and that day Elvis would be a no-show. You never knew when Elvis would show except Christmas and Halloween, Elvis’s favorite holidays. This is the story about how Elvis shared his home and his heart with the last class of Whitehaven students, who knew and admired him. I know I did. He was a special man, and I hope to shine a little light on the king’s story.

The Graceland you see today is not the Graceland I grew up at. I want to share the Graceland that I remember, so maybe you can remember the Elvis I knew and understand why so many people around the world loved him so much.

I will take you back to the year 1972, five years before his death, even though I knew Elvis growing up around Graceland, the second most visited house in the country. This is the true story about the real Graceland that you would have had to live there through that time and era and be a part of Elvis’s life. When he was alive, no one had shared that with the public. Well, the time has come. Graceland and the king. The man whom people would travel to Memphis each year to pay homage to, Elvis.

Through my eyes and memory, you will know the real Graceland and the people who loved that house and the man who lived in it. Not the money-sucking, blood-leaching Judas that after Elvis’s death created the Graceland you see today. This story will tell how Elvis really enjoyed all his fans and how Elvis shared Graceland with Memphis.

Memphis Elvis and Me

It was the summer of 1972. It was a very exciting time for me. My life was very rich. You see, I lived in the suburbs of Whitehaven. My father wanted all his children to live like princes and princesses. He was not very demanding, but he was very generous. He owned Leon’s, which was one of the hottest nightclubs in Memphis in the ’70s and ’80s. His first nightclub was called Skunk Hollow. Even that hole in the wall made a ton of money. His family lived and wanted for nothing, and that meant the entire family. All he asked of his children were good grades.

Whitehaven in the ’70s was considered one of the best schools in Memphis. Seventy-five percent of the students went on to college throughout the country. That was the plan my mother, Marylee Bowen, and father, Leon, had for their kids. I must say my family was, and still is today, very close, which is good to know in your heart. My siblings and I argued but never hit one another. My parents strictly forbid it. My father’s number one rule was never ever hit one of your sisters ever. Most of my life my father was a man that people either loved or hated. It was mostly jealousy because there was nothing my father couldn’t get—guns, furs, jewelry, women, and hookers.

If you wanted anything, just go to Leon’s. My mother, on the other hand, was the complete opposite. She ran a tight ship. She loved her children, but they feared her. She hit us with sticks, belts, or whatever she could grab. My parents were like night and day, and sometimes, we did not know whether the sun was rising or setting. My mother’s number one rule was everyone in her household went to church every Sunday. It did not matter if you worked at Leon’s until four in the morning. You had to be ready for church Sunday morning, or my mother would eat your dead. It wasn’t always like that. What I mean is, it didn’t start out like this.

When I was five years old, I was playing in my father’s closets, and at that time, he was treasurer or an elder in the church of Christ Vance Avenue. While playing, I found a church envelope stuffed with money. I did not know how much because I didn’t know how to count. They say you are a product of your environment and your peers. Many times my mother would say to me, You are just like your father, and she was right. All my life my father was my Christ.

I noticed people always surrounding him wanted to touch and shake his hand sometimes. I knew it was fear that made people want to shake his hand. My story is long, but every word is true. I want to tell my mother in this book that I am sorry for all the lies.

Everyone protected Leon Bowen. My father was a very powerful man in Memphis. Hollywood only portrays Italians and Sicilians in their movies. Well, this book is about the Southern gangsters. No one fucked with my father. Cops, firemen, city councilmen—no one! Finding the money in my father’s closest and spending most of it with my siblings changed our lives forever.

My father returned what was left, but the damage was irreversible. From that day on until now, my father has not returned to church. He came home wanting to beat the shit out of me but was too angry to punish me. That night my father returned to the streets, and suddenly my family started moving on up. We moved from the projects into our own home.

The memories of Willette Street are very pleasant, but we only lived there for one year. The thing I remember most was seeing my father cry for the first time. My aunt Vera was killed in an auto crash; her chest was crushed, and she died instantly. When the news hit our home, my father wanted all his children to wait outside on the porch, and we did what we were told.

Curiosity got the best of me, so I went around back of the house and peeked through my parents’ bedroom window, and there was my father sitting on the side of their bed, crying—with his hands over his face crying like a little boy. I’d never seen my father cry before. Fear came over me.

My mother said to my father, This to will come to pass.

Living on Willette Street made me realize that my father was just a man. The man who I thought was the toughest man alive, but cried like we all did.

In 1967 we moved to the suburbs of Whitehaven, and let me tell you that in 1967, Whitehaven meant white people arm in arm. For a while we were living in a cultural shock haze. The year 1967 is the year that will live in my heart for infinity. My father was starting a new job with the Memphis fire department, and we were starting a new school.

When I look back on 1967, my dog Bugger brings back the most memories. He was a small grayish terrier with large black eyes. Man, I loved that dog. Me being nine years old, he was the entire world to me. Weeks after moving to 242 Delta Road, we were all looking forward to a new start and a new life. We had finally made it to the east side. We were moving on up, and on the first day of school, my mother wanted her children to have a big breakfast. So we all washed up, always taking our baths the night before and sitting at the kitchen table.

My mother asked me to feed bugger. I searched throughout the house, and Bugger was nowhere to be found. My mother reminded me that Bugger was let out early because it was a school day. So I went to the front door and peeked out, and the search for Bugger was over when our white neighbors pulled Bugger’s skin and fur from his body and placed it on our porch. I was horrified, and my sisters went into a shock.

The police came and said to my mother, Well, that’s what happens when you move into a neighborhood where you are not wanted.

There were no witnesses; no one cared Bugger was gone. My father went outside, and in the middle of Delta Road, he was screaming at the top of his lungs, saying we were not moving ever.

The next morning, they slashed all the tires on my mother’s Mustang. My father repeated the same thing back into the street, yelling at the top of his voice we were not moving.

So as time went on, the cranks slowly faded away, and the white people in the neighborhood started to move away. At that a few black families moved into my street, and the Millers was one of them. At ten years of age, a boy needs a best friend, and Gregory Miller was mine. We needed each other because the white kids would not play with us. They wanted to, but their parents would not allow it.

In the summer of 1967, we built our first tree house that we spent most of the summer at. So we went on and joined the local Boy Scout together, and I knew at an early age that the chicks dig guys in uniform. But there was something else troubling me for the first time. I was afraid of another race of people. So moving forward to the summer of 1972.

The year 1972 was the first year of busing, and they showed the people in Memphis they did not want busing. But it happened anyway. My father was pleased that we were going to one of Memphis’s top-rated high school. Whitehaven High was practically all-white students and a handful of black students. But in the ’60s and the ’70s, Whitehaven High was producing doctors, lawyers, and scientists, and 70 percent went on to college, and so September 5, 1972, was my first day in the hall of Whitehaven High.

My best friend at that time was Michael Kirby. I knew in my heart my first day at Whitehaven this school would belong to me. I looked at my best friend and said we were home. My father reminded me that morning that I owned two things of this earth, my last name and my word, and to just be myself. First, I needed the faculty to admire me. I just wanted my teachers to respect me. So I worked hard on every subject, and so did my sisters.

My sisters Nedra and Crystal, I always protected them at Geeter Elm, and the same thing applied at Whitehaven. Michael and I joined several clubs at school, like ROTC, chorus, and band. The band and the music from the chorus somewhat brought the white and black students together, and we ended up with one of the hottest bands in Memphis, and the leader was Whitehaven’s coolest band teacher in Memphis, Jackie Thomson. He was as cool as they got. Most of the kids that attended Whitehaven, their parents were brokers, doctors, principals, and lawyers, but my father was a fireman and nightclub owner, so when the word got out that a student at Whitehaven had the keys to his own club, the football team, baseball, and even track wanted to know my name.

I was in. If there was one thing high school students love, that is beer. There is no getting around it, and my father trusted me on doing the right thing. The sports heroes always had students trying to hang around them. It was different for me; they all wanted to hang around me. I had what most students wanted: beer. I never stole from my father because my father knew what I was doing. You use every means you have to get to the top and hope and pray that no one gets hurt on the way up.

Personally, I never needed for anything, thanks to my parents, but my father wanted the world for his children. I was my father’s prince, and my brother was my father’s keeper. He loved us equally. It all started at the Spaghetti’s Cabaret and the Visualized of Soul. That was the name of my singing group. We performed at Whitehaven—Michael, Tony, James, and myself.

It rained the entire night, but we were a hit. The students and parents just loved it. The school was mine, and finally, I belonged to something. My friends and I were running our neighborhood. Nothing came in or out in our neighborhood unless we knew about it. We only sold pot or sometimes black beauties, but if you needed something stronger, we could get it. At the age of sixteen, I was pulling about $2,000 a week—not bad for a kid in the tenth grade.

I remember the assistant principal, Mr. Hawkins, came up to me, placing his hand on my shoulder, and said, You may have those white folks fooled, but not me.

Mr. Bowen, all in all, stayed out of my way, because the principal befriended me and somewhat admired me. When there were problems between black and white students Mr. Forino would send for me and tell what the problem was, and I would tell him, Michael and I would take care of it.

I never understood why he never talked to Mr. Hawkins about the black students. I guess no one at Whitehaven High really confided in Mr. Hawkins. I know I never did. So after Christmas break, I was practically part of the staff. No one ever knew but Michael and the principal. My popularity grew that year.

Mr. Forino called me into his office right in the middle of fourth period. At first I thought another student problem and to my adulate. He wanted the Channel Five Memphis to do a TV special on how students were adjusting to busing, and the student they picked was yours truly.

The Channel Five crew came one evening and remodeled our living room with lights and camera. It was a hit. My sisters were all nervous, but I was not, for some strange reason, I loved the camera and the attention. In my mind I had planned it all. I wanted Whitehaven, and their star quarterback, Scottie Baker, was not the star. The star went to the new sheriff in town, and his name was Larry Bowen.

After the TV special the students changed. They wanted to touch and shake my hand. Everything was falling right into place. My mother was right. I was just like my father in the sense that everything my father touched turned to gold.

I remembered when I turned sixteen, my father said to me, Today you will carry a gun with you at all times.

My brother and I never had a choice. My father had many enemies, and most people knew that my father would kill anyone who dared to mess with him or his family. The club had all types of clientele—pimps, gangsters, insurance president, high executives, many of whom were friends and plenty of them were cops. Most were on his payroll from drugs to fur coats to any type of gun—Leon’s had it. My father did not know about the drugs, because he did not allow them in his club, but my brother and I did it without him knowing, and with regard to the women at Leon’s, my brother and father competed with each other on how many ladies they could sleep with.

Between my brother and me, we fucked every waitress my father hired. It was part of the application, and the waitresses didn’t mind. Whatever my father, we his sons wanted; we got no bars hold.

One day my father whispered something into one of his cop associate. The next thing I remembered I was riding in the back of a vice car with my dick deep in the throat of some prostitute I had never met before, and the cop was saying suck his dick right, or tomorrow I will be hauling your nasty ass in.

When it was over, the cop said, This was on your father.

I was sixteen. Every time I walked into McDonald’s and smelled onions cooking, it reminded me of that hooker, because she was eating a burger while she was sucking my dick. Let’s just call the cop Big T’s; he loved taking me down to Bill Street and telling hookers Get your nasty ass in the back seat and suck his dick, and they never refused. I thought he did it to have favors with my father. I loved the authority behind it, and that’s the way it was at Leon’s.

You see, one time or another, my cousins managed Leon’s—Steve, Tony, Belly, Elton, Bebe, Emma, and so on, because my father gave his love not only to his children but also to all the families. He was also a loan shark. People who needed large amount of money, Leon’s was the place to go, and out of all the years we stood on that corner, we were never robbed because on any given day, there would be five to ten armed politicians at Leon’s, not including all the weapons we had in person. So people knew that to try to rob Leon’s was like signing your death warrant. My father made a lot of money at Leon’s. We sold the best barbecue in Memphis. We sold out every night. We always sold more food than alcohol. People just loved our ribs, and the girls were there every night to see either my father or his sons, and we always shared the girls with each other. It didn’t matter. What did matter was all the lies I told to my mother to cover my father’s ass. It got pretty normal for me to lie to my mother. As long as I can remember, I always covered for my father to my mother.

I did whatever it took for them to stay together because the kids always teased the kids with separated parents. So I would always say to my mother exactly what my father told me to say, and that went on for years until I graduated. People just didn’t say no to my father. Often I never said no to him. Whenever my dad would show up at Leon’s, wise guys would surround him. They all carried weapons, and they all protected him at all times. Even I did sometimes, and I would kill man, woman, or beast who would try to harm him.

I remember one day I was making Bloody Marys for my father and his good friends. There were so many people who wanted to be part of my father’s round table, but very few were chosen. Anyway, while I was making the drinks, a lady drove by Leon’s front window of the club and started shooting at my father. She was trying to kill him, and this wasn’t the first time some crazy whore was trying to kill my father. My father worked for his money and played harder with his money, but what he liked to do most was spend money, nice clothes, nice home, and very nice cars, and especially his children having all the things he couldn’t afford when he himself was a bud. So the club provided the revenue for his dreams to come true.

We all have a dream. Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream. Why couldn’t my father? The women who hung out at Leon’s were fast and free. You could at least get your dick sucked, and the guys knew that. So the word was out in the neighborhood, school, and even church that Leon’s was the place to be, so I was working for my father as assistant manager at burger joint and selling drugs. Being popular and rich shit, I had it all. So I decided it was time to start dating. Not for sex but for love.

I was used to sex, but what I didn’t know was what was before sex. No one ever explained that part to me. Back to the first time I did it, she was eleven, and I was ten, and she walked me through the whole thing, even placing my penis into her private part. The only thing that stood out the most about that experiment is that I liked it very much. Her name was Gennie. So at the age of sixteen, I was fucking ladies age thirty, thirty-five, forty, and so on. My penis was very large for my age, so older women would sometimes call out my father’s name in the middle of our sex. I would always laugh, and they would always be apologetic. I enjoyed pretending to be my father, especially when it came to sex. For as long as I can remember, my father cheated on my mother. To me it was normal for him to be with other women. But my mother indeed knew about all his affairs. My mother would always come to me.

Who was it this time, Larry? she would ask.

And I would always reply with the same answers, He was with me, Mother.

Sometimes it was hard to keep up with all the lies. I was just a kid telling each parent what they wanted to hear. Dealing with my father, I did exactly what I was told to do. Not because my father was violent toward me, it was his giving toward me. Father found out early in life that having money was all you needed, and from that day on, he always kept plenty of it. At the movies all you see are Italians playing gangsters and mob bosses, like The Godfather. But what people don’t know and don’t talk about is that the South had their mob families.

My father was one to be mentioned, and his friends were all gangsters too, and the unique part about this story is that my father is the sole survivor. There is no one left. The smart wise guys died with their dick in someone or liver failure. They were all intelligent, but they all had a second life that dealt with racketeering, prostitution, gun running, and so on.

Being a fireman three days a week and being the head of the family seven days a week wasn’t easy, but he always liked being Leon. I was most proud of him being a fireman because the Memphis fire department had only a handful of black firemen in 1967. But nightclub life is what he loved best. Being a firemen was very serious to my father, so owning a nightclub, he could just be Leon, and everything goes.

When he wasn’t at the fire station, I was always with my father. He would sometimes take me to his mistresses; my mother called them whores. I would walk downstairs until he took care of his business. Sometimes I would hear the woman moaning. One time my father’s mistress sent her daughter downstairs to keep me company; she was only wearing a T-shirt. I pulled it up and put my dick in her hand, so I fucked her while my father was fucking her mother. Like father like son. I remember my brother telling me about Dad taking him to strange women’s house, but I never thought much about it. Until that night.

The summer of 1972 was very good to me. Summer was over, and back to school was approaching. I had never dated a white girl in my life, and that was about to change. I mean, not to say I never had my dick sucked before. This day was different. I mean, Whitehaven was wall-to-wall white girls, and they all were looking for their Mandingo. The white girls were doing something that the black girls weren’t doing, and that was sucking dicks, and the white girls were sucking dicks all over campus. So that meant I was all over the campus, and it didn’t matter where you wanted your dick sucked; they were ready and willing.

They would say to me, Put that big black cock in my throat.

What a feeling to have right before fourth period. The simple truth was, some of the white girls at Whitehaven were completely out of control, and their parents didn’t have a clue that their daughters were sucking black dicks. You see, they had never been exposed to a lot of good-looking black students, and when it happened, it was too late. It was all new to all of us, especially the black male students. Most of the girls I had dated up to this point only did basic screwing, but the white girls were into everything—I mean, the kinky shit. I loved the kinky shit. The kinkiest was a white substitute teacher sucking my dick in the janitor’s room while the student body was at a pep rally. Life couldn’t be better for me.

Power is a good thing when used right. The students loved my popularity, and the teachers loved my personality. But what surprised the white students the most was the wealth the black students brought to the table. My father always shared his wealth with his children and the community, but on that same note, I witnessed him beating a man almost to death with his hands. Thank God his fireman friends revived the man; he was very lucky. The look that was in my father’s eyes terrorized me. I still sometimes dream about that night, and I wake up sweating from my dream.

September 1973 I was a sophomore, and Whitehaven was all mine. In the daytime I was screwing all the club waitresses, and at night I would keep the best-looking cashier Burger King had to offer and fuck the living hell out of her. They would sometimes fight with each other to decide on who would stay for dick dessert.

My brother and I inherited the Bowen curse, and it took a lot of sex to satisfy our appetite. By this time all the students at Whitehaven knew exactly who Larry Bowen was. All the jocks knew to always be nice to Larry, or there would be no beer ever if my sisters or myself were in trouble. So everyone wanted to be in my circle of friends.

Once my white friend John Raily invited me to have dinner with his family, and I even wore a necktie to the occasion. I was very nervous eating in this huge house and very nice china. His mother and father watched my every move. I guess they wanted to know if I had any home training, and to their somewhat surprise, I did. All my siblings had good manners because if you embarrass my mother in public, she would literally