October 8th, 1960, Elvis Presley and Clint Eastwood met at a Los Angeles gun range. Two men standing at the beginning of legendary careers. Both searching for the same thing. A few hours of peace away from a world that was trying to turn them into something they weren’t entirely sure they wanted to become….
Burbank, California, February 1973. On the Tonight Show studio was packed. Nearly 30 million people were watching from home. And Johnny Carson was about to ask Elvis Presley a question he had been carrying for years. Not a question about Hollywood, not a question about Las Vegas, not a question about fame, a question about…
The spotlight hits Elvis Presley as he walks onto the Overton Park Shell stage for the first time. From the crowd, a man’s voice cuts through the summer night. This music is the devil’s work. Elvis stops, looks directly at the heckler, then starts moving his hips. 5 minutes later, that same man is on…
Utah, 1959. Moab, a small town on the Colorado River at the edge of the canyon country. A surveyor named Harlan Pruitt is 70 years old and losing his house to a hospital debt of $890. His maps are going with it. 40 years of hand-drawn surveys on linen paper, the only accurate record of…
Texas, 1961. El Paso, the last week of April. A man named Ruben Salcedo is being evicted from the small building on South El Paso Street where he has run a translation and document service for immigrants processing papers at the border for 11 years. He owes $620 on the building. He served as a…
Oregon, 1963. Pendleton, the last week of September. A rodeo clown named Dick Carver is being discharged from the county hospital on a Wednesday morning with a bill for $1,100, a leg that will never bend right again, and no insurance, because there is no insurance for rodeo clowns. He worked the arena for 19…
California, 1958. Cannery Row, Monterey. The last sardine cannery on the row shut its doors in October. The fish had been going since 1945, and the last boat came in nearly empty, and the owner looked at the numbers and locked the building on a Friday afternoon without a meeting, without a notice, without a…
A farrier’s toolbox is not a simple thing. It takes years to build right. The nippers and the pullers and the rasps and the pritch hill and the hammer and the anvil, each one chosen for weight and balance, worn to the specific shape of one man’s hands over years of use. You cannot replace…
She never wrote to John Wayne directly. She wrote once to the agency, a short letter thanking them and asking that the thanks be passed along. The letter came back unopened with a handwritten note from a secretary. It said, “Mr. Wayne asked that I return this. He says the account is settled and no…
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