An Elvis pilgrimage leads to a long-distance friendship
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Jul. 8—TUPELO — Elvis Presley got his first guitar at Tupelo Hardware in 1946. Seventy-one years later, Sara Dabbs found a friendship that spans two continents at the same store.
In 2017, Darryl and Bronwyn Scott were visiting Tupelo from Australia, exploring the town in which Elvis grew up.
Darryl Scott held the door open for Dabbs and greeted her as she was walking out. Recognizing his Australian accent, she jokingly asked, "Are you Crocodile Dundee?"
"From there, I just got to talking to him," Dabbs said. "They were just both so friendly and sweet, and I don't think I'd ever talked to an Australian before."
Years before her chance encounter with the Scotts, the former Lawhon Elementary teacher had acquired a piece of the stage curtain Elvis once sang in front of at the school back when it was called East Tupelo Consolidated School.
She went home, cut off several inches of the fabric and met back up with the couple. With that gift, an instant friendship was formed.
"They were both absolutely thrilled," Dabbs said. "(They) just held that curtain and couldn't believe it."
The Scotts' piece of the King's curtain is now framed and hanging on the "Elvis wall" in their home.
When they left Tupelo, the couple exchanged contact information with Dabbs. They stayed in touch via email and Facebook, eventually video chatting around twice a month.
Mindful of the 15-hour time difference, the Australian couple typically calls Dabbs on a Sunday morning around 10 a.m., while it's still 7 p.m. on Saturday in Mississippi.
Darryl Scott, 56, and Bronwyn Scott, 55, returned to Mississippi this week from their home in the Blue Mountains near Sydney, Australia, to visit with Sara Dabbs, 70, and her husband, Danny Dabbs, 73, in Tupelo.
Visiting Tupelo: A childhood dream fulfilled
Bronwyn Scott is a lifelong Elvis fan. Her father played guitar, sang and listened to records. That exposure to Elvis's music, along with his charisma, was what drew her in.
"I've been an Elvis fan all my life," she said. "It was my childhood dream to come here, go to Graceland and all that."
Darryl Scott remembers watching Elvis's "Aloha from Hawaii" television special as a child in Sydney, but for the most part, he married into Elvis fandom.
The couple's initial trip to Tupelo in 2017 was in celebration of their 30th wedding anniversary.
Their first stop in the All-America City was the Elvis Presley Birthplace, followed by lunch at Johnnie's Drive In, where they waited their turn to sit in the "Elvis booth."
From there, they went to Tupelo Hardware, where they had their fateful encounter with Dabbs.
That trip included stops in Los Angeles, Nashville, Memphis and Las Vegas, where the couple renewed their vows at an Elvis wedding chapel. The tribute artist who performed the ceremony sang "Can't Help Falling In Love," which they'd played at their wedding 30 years prior.
Returning for more than Elvis
The Scotts had planned a return flight to the United States in 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic kept them grounded in Australia.
Two years after they'd initially planned, they arrived in Tupelo Sunday to celebrate the Fourth of July weekend with the Dabbs family.
"We could go anywhere in the world, but we decided to come back here," Darryl Scott said.
On this trip, the Scotts flew into Dallas and visited New Orleans before driving "very scarily" to Tupelo on the opposite side of the road from which they're used to traveling.
"We only went down the freeway on the lefthand side once," Bronwyn Scott said with a laugh.
They experienced several firsts on this trip: hearing the National Anthem performed live, trying peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and enjoying a home-cooked Sunday dinner-style meal prepared by their hosts. The Southern smorgasbord included chicken casserole, purple hull peas, creamed potatoes, creamed corn, turnip greens and cornbread.
Along with the Scotts, other dinner guests included Roy Turner, executive director of the Elvis Presley Memorial Foundation, and Bill McGregor, the son of Mike McGregor, who worked as a jeweler and leatherworker for Elvis at Graceland. The Australian couple was mesmerized by little-known facts and personal tales about Elvis's life.
Although they could've seen Baz Luhrmann's "Elvis" film in Australia, the couple waited to watch it Wednesday afternoon in Tupelo — 9,000 miles away from home.
"If you're going to see it, this is the place to see it," Darryl Scott said.
On their second trip, the Scotts came bearing gifts for the people who had treated them so kindly the first time around.
They'd noticed a Queensland, Australia, license plate hanging in Johnnie's Drive In during their first meal there, so Darryl Scott brought one from New South Wales, the Australian state the couple is from.
And for Tupelo Hardware, they brought a branded teddy bear from Bunnings, an Australian hardware store chain.
After leaving Tupelo, the couple will see a bit more of the South, visiting Huntsville; Chattanooga; Gatlinburg; Lynchburg, Virginia; and Nashville before meeting up with the Dabbs family again in Memphis.
Before driving to Dallas for a 15-hour flight back to Sydney, the Scotts will take the VIP tour of Graceland and stay at the Guest House at Graceland resort hotel just as they did during their first trip. But this time, it'll be with their Tupelo friends.
Elvis's lasting gift to Tupelo
There are a handful of reasons the Scotts enjoy visiting Tupelo.
For one, the weather is similar to Australia, they said. It's currently winter back home, so they've actually enjoyed the Mississippi heat.
Another is Mississippi's laid back, friendly atmosphere.
"That's why we came back again," Darryl Scott said.
The King of Rock and Roll puts Tupelo on tourists' radar, he said. But what keeps them here is the hospitable people they encounter.
"The people that come into this city because of this man, that has been a gift to Tupelo," Dabbs said of Elvis.
"If it hadn't been for Elvis and the things that were here in his honor," she added. "I never would've met these wonderful people from halfway around the world."
