All the King's Horses by Kimberly Gatto

Author:Kimberly Gatto
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781621576174
Publisher: Regnery Publishing
Published: 2017-07-04T04:00:00+00:00

A man and his horse. Elvis and Bear pose stylishly for the camera in this photograph taken at the Circle G Ranch in 1967. Photo from the Russ Howe Collection.

Modern-day view of the porch at the ranch house at Elvis’s Circle G Ranch in Horn Lake, Mississippi. Photo courtesy of Whitney Lee.

At home on the ranch, Elvis seemed to be happier and more content than ever. Geller paints a picture of his friend, energized and full of hope, sitting at the kitchen table at his Graceland home. The star was sketching feverishly, creating illustrations that would ultimately evolve into the logo for the Circle G Ranch. The final logo would consist of a circle with the letter “G” enveloped by wings on either side.

Once his drawing was complete, Elvis had his logo, or brand, applied to trucks, horse blankets, signs, and various other items at the ranch. In fact, there were many new items on which to affix the logo. Aside from tractors and other farm equipment, Elvis had decided that everyone at the ranch should have his own pickup truck. He began purchasing vehicles for his friends, ranch workers, and horse handlers, much to the dismay of his ever cost-conscious father, Vernon.

Elvis’s extreme generosity, which has since become well-known, was in full swing at this time. When he found that there was an extra truck on hand, the star gave it to one of the workers who had been laboring at the ranch installing trailers. “I saw him ask one worker for a dollar,” his lifelong friend George Klein later recalled. “When the startled guy reluctantly handed him a crumpled bill, Elvis tossed him the keys to a Ford truck.”5

Elvis’s generous spending habits continued to trouble Vernon, who retained the bitter taste of poverty he had experienced as a younger man. But when the elder Presley questioned his son’s penchant for spending, Elvis simply replied, “I’m having fun, Daddy, for the first time in ages. I’ve got a hobby that I look forward to getting up in the morning for.”6

Elvis enjoyed the tranquility offered by the ranch, but he also liked being surrounded by his inner circle of friends, who often acted as personal bodyguards and were coined by the media as the “Memphis Mafia.” A person who did not enjoy being alone, Elvis was most comfortable when surrounded by friends and family. In order to ensure that his friends could be at the ranch on a constant basis, he developed a plan to create a miniature community within the confines of the Circle G. The quickest way to do so, he surmised, was to purchase eight house trailers, which would be installed in a circle beneath a hilly spot near the lake area. Each house would be equipped with the proper electrical and plumbing amenities, and a septic system was constructed on the land. Additionally, after the public began crowding around the ranch, Elvis had a ten-foot-high wall built around the main parts of the property. While the work was performed by skilled laborers, all of it was planned and overseen by Elvis himself.

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