I tried to get to Memphis this summer, but my brakes went out on the way out of Minneapolis on a Friday afternoon after all the garages had closed. Instead, I rented a brand-new Mustang with a good, loud stereo and drove all night to Madison with my friend Dave instead. We cruised the deserted interstate at 85mph as dawn broke and played "Roadrunner" by the Modern Lovers over and over again until we stopped at a truck stop in Portage and bought a Thin Lizzy tape. Dave and I pledged to attempt Memphis again in two weeks.

We were easily thwarted this summer (and the summer before, for that matter), but I still dream of going to Memphis. Everyone should.

One route to Memphis from Minneapolis is US Highway 61, which starts at the northeast tip of Minnesota, runs from Duluth to Minneapolis and follows the Mississippi to the Delta. Highway 61, like its east-west transcontinental sister, is a rock-and-roll route. To a culture and music obsessed with the road, going somewhere, making out in fast cars and driving trucks, this is one of the roads. Bob Dylan (like it or not, the Dean of much of popular culture in the last decade - born in Duluth, raised in nearby Hibbing) named his controversial, brilliant and first all-electric record after it. To Dylan, it has been suggested, it was a way out of the backwards north country he lived in, the road to the scratchy 78s he heard played, fading in and out, on late night radio.

For me, though, the attraction lies elsewhere. For me, Memphis, like Cleveland, holds a weird mystique. Memphis is the home of The King, the home of Elvis Presley.

I am not particularly fond of Elvis. I only know of him as a sideburned and fat Vegas lounge singer, not the vital and dangerous young man my mother remembers (although she was more of a Teresa Brewer fan). I find his later records ("In The Ghetto", "Suspicious Minds") hilarious in their hopefully intentional campiness. He, like the Bob Dylan of this summer's tour, was only a sad parody of himself. I would not go to Memphis on the same sort of pilgrimage that hundreds of thousands of others have, making the trek to Mecca/Jerusalem/Graceland to genuflect, spending money on holy relics like vials of artificial sweat (holy water) and swatches of his jumpsuits (shrouds).

I spent a lot of time this summer, half-seriously trying to convince that Elvis Presley represented the Second Coming. In such oddball indicators as black velvet paintings and number-one singles, he certainly beats every other religious figure. The multi-million dollar industry he and Colonel Tom began is easily more wealthy than the fallen/falling empires of every televangelist combined. If the directing forces of Elvis Presley Enterprises, Inc., who direct the estate, were so inclined (and clever enough), they could wield more power than an average multinational corporation.

Which is not to say I have not fallen for it. While I was waiting to get my brakes fixed the Monday following my abortive trip to Memphis, I wandered around a mall, stopping at a kiosk that specialized in designer watches. I looked them over, considered buying a Mickey Mouse watch and was ready to leave when some familiar sideburns caught my eye. It was The King! On a watch! I forked over twenty-one bills and put it on my wrist. I still wear it. Ask me to see it sometime. Or ask former RT editor Kerri Arsenault to see her Elvis-at-Graceland ballpoint pen. Or admire RT writer Robert Byrne's Elvis baseball cap. We all fell for it.

So, you ask, why would I go? Well, I hope that when I get there, (this summer? over fall break?) I find that answer.

Perhaps, though, I have already found it.

A week after my abortive trip to Memphis, Dave and I were in a seedy bar in Minneapolis when an equally seedy guy walked up to us, told us his name was Mike and offered to sell us a brand-new ten-speed. "Fell off the truck," he said. We politely, drunkenly refused. He then offered to sell us a joint, which we accepted. He sat at our table to unobtrusively complete the sale under the table, so we chatted. He was from Memphis, he said. I told him of my dream of visiting there, of visiting Graceland.

"What for?" he asked, "It's just another grave."