Baby, Let's Play House_ Elvis Presley and the Women Who Loved Him - Alanna Nash [259]
Delta, a diabetic alcoholic, had a nasty disposition and hated everybody—she flipped the bird to fans and once set fire to her wig because someone liked it and asked her for it. But she was kin, and Pat had left her flat broke, and she had nowhere else to go. Elvis despised her drinking, but he found her antics amusing, and Minnie Mae also liked the idea of having her daughter live with her. That made Elvis happy, too.
At the Circle G Ranch, Elvis’s initial plan was to build a new home for himself and Priscilla near the cross and the big lake. Then he would give each of the guys an acre of land and the down payment to build his own house, since no one in the group except Marty and Lamar had a home of his own. They would all live there together with their wives and families.
The guys were ecstatic about the idea, and Joe and Joanie made plans to move from California. But Vernon, punching numbers on his calculator and holding his head, nixed the idea right off. Instead of standing up to his father and saying he was the one who made the money and would do with it what he liked, Elvis honored Vernon’s position as his business manager.
“How are you going to break it to the guys?” Marty asked. “I’m not,” Elvis said. “You are.”
He felt bad about it, but then he got another idea: If he couldn’t give them houses, he’d give them house trailers. He bought the first one for Billy, and then found a three-bedroom model for himself and Priscilla. Pretty soon, there were trailers everywhere, twelve in all, to the tune of $140,000. But everybody needed a truck, too. He bought twenty-two in one day—and three more another day—giving them to anyone he could, even the carpenters and electricians working on the place. He couldn’t spend money fast enough.
He loved to see people’s faces when he did something like that and found gratification in giving people big-ticket items they couldn’t afford themselves. If he had a good feeling or experience from something, he also just wanted to share it. But part of his motivation was swing guilt, a phenomenon of the twinless twin, says psychologist Whitmer, meaning Elvis felt compelled to earn applause to affirm his oneness, his uniqueness. But then he swung back in the opposite direction out of guilt for being the individual who received all the recognition, instead of his twin.
Elvis had always been a generous person, beginning in childhood, when he gave away his toys to other children. And long before he bought the ranch, he was already in the habit of buying cars for friends, family, employees, and even strangers. But once he began walking the spiritual path, says Larry Geller, “He started to get very philanthropic, and he really did give away a lot of money and significant gifts. Buying the ranch was a very large manifestation. It freaked Vernon out.”
More than that, it almost literally gave Elvis’s father a heart attack. Vernon despised it when he gave away money—he frowned on Elvis’s annual Christmas donations—and was preoccupied with the idea of people taking advantage of his son’s generosity. After the truck-buying frenzy, he reminded Elvis that the ranch wasn’t a working farm, so all the money was going out and none was coming in. “Get a ninety-day note and cover it,” Elvis said, nonchalantly.
“He had a couple of months before he had to go do his next picture, which was Clambake,” Marty recalls, “and he spent almost every day down at the ranch. It was winter. We had a little office by the stable, and one morning about two o’clock we were standing outside there.
“It was snowing, and Elvis was on a small tractor, pushing the snow and mud out of the way. Vernon walked out of the office and came up to me with an adding machine tape in one hand and a flashlight in the other. He was, like, whining. He said, ‘Marty, look at this! He’s spent $98,000 on trucks and given them away!’ I said, ‘What do you want me to do