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TUPELO, ELVIS BIRTH SACK

Miss. -- It is 108 miles from Tupelo to Memphis, but the distance between Elvis Aron Presley's birthplace and Graceland can only be measured in astronomical terms. It is nearly beyond understanding.
The two-room shack where baby Elvis first cried out - diapered hips moving provocatively, we are sure - is smaller than the dining room at Graceland. The poverty he grew up with and away from is equally amazing.

The "shotgun house" is so small and frail, you wonder how it contained the spirit of the future King of Rock & Roll. There's a statue of Elvis as a 13-year-old and a "museum" containing a few odds and ends. But to visit the small house is to get a glimpse of a life that surely shaped the young Elvis in a way that colored his approach to success.
He wasn't going back to this.

 Elvis lived here until he was 3, until he and his mother were evicted because they couldn't make payments on the $180 loan taken to build the home. His father had gone to jail for nine months for forging a check, so even this tiny shack was too much for the family to afford.

Ultimately, the reunited family moved to Memphis when Elvis was 13, hoping for a better life. In some ways they found it. Born here on Jan. 8, 1935, Elvis died at Graceland on Aug. 16, 1977, only 42 years old.

The home at 306 Elvis Presley Drive is open to the public for $2.50; it is so small, it doesn't take long to see it all.

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