Elvis Fan Relives That Sad Day, 20 Years Ago . . .

I guess it’s true you never forget your first love. Mine was Elvis Presley.

“Don’t Be Cruel” in 1956 was my first awakening that a world existed beyond my Hoosier borders. I was 9 at the time. I had never before--and have never since--heard such a magnificent voice. It seems like four months back instead of 40 years ago that, in my juvenile excitement, I thought history had been made when every station on the radio dial was playing “Jailhouse Rock” its first day of release.

A few years ago I toured Graceland, Elvis’ home in Memphis. Here I was a grown man, but I remember thinking, wow, Elvis used to live in these rooms. I never felt that way at Washington’s Mount Vernon, or at Lincoln’s boyhood home in my native Indiana, or at Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage. But this was E.

Maybe you have to be a Presley fan to remember where you were 20 years ago today when Elvis died. I was filling in for the city editor, who was on vacation, at the afternoon Louisville (Ky.) Times.

The stunning news came after our paper was already on the street. I wanted to make sure we had something special the next day, and different from our sister morning paper, the Courier-Journal. I called one of our editorial writers and asked him to write a first-person piece about Elvis for Page One.

He didn’t want to do it. Editorial writers aren’t permitted to write stories, he said. I wasn’t about to give up. He was the best writer in the building (and an Elvis fan) and in my first real decision as a quasi-city editor, I wanted this perfect. I spent the next two hours tracking down our bosses, who had gone home for the day, to get permission for him to write this story for us.

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The executive editor over both papers was having pre-dinner cocktails at a black-tie reception when I reached him. His cool response told me he didn’t understand Elvis. He considered it bad form to pull in an editorial writer for this task. But we were a newspaper of the South, and Elvis was our king. So I begged.

Permission finally in hand, it was back to the editorial writer. He was eating dinner with his family when he got my call. I was single at the time, and not as sensitive as perhaps I should have been to the sacrifice I was asking of him. Begrudgingly, he agreed to drive back to the office to do it.

I stayed at the city desk just to make sure he didn’t kiss me off. He showed up about 10:30 p.m., after putting his youngsters to bed. His hello was a mere grunt.

Like any good reporter, he headed first for the newspaper’s library, which is where I left him. When I returned at 6 a.m., I found him on his office floor, leaning against his desk with his 6-foot, 6-inch frame stretched out, shoes off, pencil in his mouth, intently reading over a written copy of his piece one last time. He had spent the entire night putting it together.

And it was marvelous. We ran it across the top of our front page with a banner headline. Later that day, he said writing it had been one of the most satisfying experiences of his career. His unexpected thanks ranks high in my personal highlight book.

The editorial writer’s name was Dave DeJean. As I write this, I’m wondering if Dave remembers where he was and what he was doing 20 years ago today.

I’m sure you’ve heard enough about Elvis Presley this week. But I only tell this story every 20 years.

Beach Best? Men’s Journal, an adventure/travel magazine put out by the Rolling Stone people, took a look this month at what it considers the best American towns to live in. One of its co-winners was our own San Clemente.

“The town serves as a backdrop for 5 1/2 unspoiled miles of sand,” Parke Puterbaugh writes for the magazine. He is also co-author of a book called “California Beaches.”

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Puterbaugh was impressed with the surfing, the city’s slow growth regulations, its shops and its booze. Especially a drink called a Cotton (rum, triple sec, pineapple and orange juices), named after the old Cotton estate where Richard Nixon once lived.

Writes Puterbaugh: “My last night in San Clemente, I pull up a stool at a bar so close to the waves it’s like surfing vicariously. . . . After a few Cottons I feel as if I’ve wiped out on a big wave--but I don’t particularly care.”

Its other town in the Top Two, by the way, is a mountain town--Ashland, Ore.

Where’s My Number? I was steaming a bit this week when I took my package into the main Post Office in Santa Ana and saw officials there had taken down the take-a-number system. Take-a-number means you don’t have to stand in a long cattle line, moving your package along with your foot as you inch your way toward the front. You can go sit on a bench, or peer out the window. This particular cattle line was all the way out the door.

“What happened?” I asked impatiently when I finally got to a postal clerk.

“It’s the UPS strike,” he explained. The Post Office package business has picked up so much because of the UPS strike that people were abusing the number system. They were grabbing handfuls of numbers and saving them for friends who showed up later. Customers began to complain, so the numbers had to come down.

Thankfully, take-a-number comes back, I was told, after the strike is settled.

Wrap-Up: We all have different favorites among radio deejays. Mine is Charlie Tuna, the morning drive voice of Orange County-based country music station KIK-FM. I called Tuna to ask him if Elvis Presley had any influence on his own career.

“Are you kidding? He’s the reason I got into radio,” Tuna said. “I was about 10 years old when I caught Elvis on the Dorsey Brothers’ TV show. I’ve never had an experience like it. That was the birth of rock ‘n’ roll for me; that’s when I first knew I wanted to be in this business.”

Remember when Elvis gave up the movie business and returned to live performing? The night of Elvis’ grand return opening in July of 1969 at the old International (now Hilton) Hotel in Las Vegas, that lucky dog Charlie Tuna was there.

“When Elvis walked out on stage, it was instant electricity,” Tuna said. “Elvis was simply the greatest singer--and greatest performer--who ever lived.”

Jerry Hicks’ column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Readers may reach Hicks by call-ing The Times Orange County Edition at (714) 966-7823 or by fax to (714) 966-7711, or e-mail tojerry.hicks@latimes.com