Elvis has left the Tilt-A-Whirl

Once, or at most, twice a year a traveling midway comes to Penticton, setting up shop either in the community centre parking lot or down by the Lakeside Hotel at the east end of Okanagan Lake.

On the toasty summer evening when went to visit earlier this year, it  was at the community centre, which to my mind is the most traditional of the two, and where I've been heading down to the fair here ever since I was a little girl (as a child it was within walking distance of our house and right across the street from my elementary school).

{Me in front of the Sugar Shack at last summer's traveling fair. Image snapped with Tony’s iPhone.}

As we stood in line for the Tilt-a-Whirl, the ride operator (perhaps picking up on the vintage vibe of my outfit) starting telling Tony and I a story about how once, many years ago, while filming a movie in Vancouver, Elvis Presley had spent time enjoying this very same ride.

Though I couldn't help being a tad sceptical, I eagerly went along with the fellow's tale and asked if we could sit in the same seat that Elvis had (after all, it's not every day here in Canada that one gets to come in direct contact with something the that King of Rock and Roll himself might once have touched!).

The operator was happy to oblige and so for about the next five minutes, we spun around and around happily, the sizzling July sun streaming over our faces, as my mind wondered constantly if I really was whipping through the air in the same spot that Elvis once occupied.

Later that evening when I got home, I did a bit of Googling to see if I could find out anything about an Elvis film being shot in Vancouver, but didn't unearth anything and so filled the experience away in my memory. Then a few weeks later, in the comment section of this post, a lovely reader (who goes by the username pigsmightfly) and I got into a discussion about Elvis (she's an Elvis fan club member) and I relayed my story from the fair.

She quickly wrote back and shared with me the fact that on August 31st, 1957, Elvis has held a concert and press conference at the Empire Stadium in Vancouver after completing the movie Jailhouse Rock, and shared this link all about Mr. Presley's time spent in British Columbia that year.





{Norm Pringle of CDKA Radio, Elvis and Elsie Pringle at the press conference Mr. Presley gave in Vancouver on August 31, 1957. Image source - which even includes an audio recording of Elvis from this conference.}


While the article doesn't specifically mention The King attending a midway, it certainly does place him in Vancouver (though, not to film a movie, as the operator had said, but rather to promote Jail House Rock), and - if we assume that the Tilt-a-Whirl Tony and I were on is at least fifty-eight years old (it very well could be, quality carnival rides, if well maintained, can last for decades), then the ride operator might really have been telling the truth: Elvis and I may have shared the same seat (pictured below).





We may never know for sure, but I rather adore the idea and have no qualms with telling people that, on a warm, gorgeous summer's evening one July, I got to sit in the same carnival ride seat that Elvis may very well have enjoyed himself nearly sixty years ago.