Nation: Hound Dog Days in Memphis

A city survives labor turmoil and Presley mourners

Memphis, summer 1978. A steamy day in the pleasant but tired Southern town, nestled in a bend of the Mississippi, that gave America the blues, W.C. Handy and Beale Street, Holiday Inns and Piggly Wiggly supermarkets. And Elvis Presley.

It is a year since Elvis' death, and mourners are making the pilgrimage to Memphis and the grave of the rock king at his mansion known as Graceland. But the streets are eerily quiet as the evening advances. Only the buzzing of summer locusts in the crape myrtle trees...

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