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Melanie from Mobile, Alabama,  taught me how to make my bathroom smell good this time of year.  It's free--all you need is a Magnolia tree growing nearby.

Elvis died 35 years ago today, and if that's not enough to boggle my mind, I remember as if it was yesterday watching Jailhouse Rock at the Castro Theater in San Francisco in 1957 with my brother.  

Here's a view from Market Street, looking right into the district as I remembered it as a little boy--  even the  very old style Muni streetcar.  Our house was near the bottom of the "N" in the Bank of America sign.

 I was amazed at the sleek "new" cars when they replace those old clunkers in the late 50's.

We were living not far from the theater on 20th Street with our grandparents, and were in the 5th grade at Douglas Elementary School. This is pretty much the panorama of the city we had from our back porch (we were actually closer). 

The neighborhood had a mixture of working middle class, many of whom were Irish Catholic as we were.  We attended the Most Holy Redeemer Church, as my mother had before us, and she had attended the Most Holy Redeemer School as well.  I thought about that one day when I was taking a Catechism class from the nuns in the old school building.

Elvis is dead, and things have changed, as this article so thoroughly  illustrates.