Most of us had a grandma who said things her own way. A pet name nobody else used, or a little phrase she’d say at the door every time you left.
Elvis had one too, and she lived with him at Graceland.
Her name was Minnie Mae Presley. She was Vernon Presley’s mother, which made her Elvis’s grandmother on his father’s side. Elvis nicknamed her “Dodger,” and the name stuck. She lived with Elvis and his parents in all of their Memphis homes, Graceland included.
Linda Thompson got to know her well. Linda was Elvis’s girlfriend in the 1970s, and in August 2023 she came back to Graceland as a special guest at Elvis Week. She gave a long talk to fans, and one of them filmed the whole thing.
When Dodger came up, Linda had nothing but kind words. She called her “the cutest, cutest little woman” and said she was “quite the character.” She even said Dodger “looked the same in her Eighties as she did in the ’50s when they were in Germany.”
Linda tells the Dodger story in her own words in this fan’s recording of that 2023 Elvis Week talk at Graceland.
Linda Thompson talks about life with Elvis at Elvis Week 2023
Here’s how the story goes.
Elvis and Linda kept late hours. Really late. They’d come in long after most folks in Memphis had gone to sleep, and they always stopped to tell Dodger good night before heading to bed.
Elvis adored her, and Linda saw it up close. “He was so lovely to her. He was just an inordinately affectionate human being anyway,” she said.
So the two of them would say their good nights. And every single time, Dodger gave them the same sweet answer.
“Whenever we would come in and say ‘Good night, Dodger,’ she would say, ‘Good morning, son.'”
Good morning, son.
Dodger had it right, too. By the time Elvis and Linda were turning in, her day was just getting going.
Linda explained the mix-up in her talk. “So she was ‘good morning’ to us, but [we were] ‘good night’ to her because we were going to bed.” Then she summed it up even more simply. “Therefore, our hours were turned around.”
Dodger’s mornings had a routine she kept to, and Linda remembered every step. “She would get dressed, put her little make-up on, pull her hair back in a little bun, put her house dress on.” Then she’d walk to the kitchen and sit down at the counter for breakfast.
So while Elvis Presley was saying good night, a tiny lady in a house dress was fixing her hair and getting ready for breakfast under the same roof.
Dodger wasn’t the only Presley in Linda’s life back then, and this clip shows her with Dodger’s son, Elvis’s dad Vernon.
Linda Thompson with Elvis’s father, Vernon Presley
Plenty of grandmothers wait up for the kids to get home. Dodger did it a little differently. She simply got up a few hours early and met them coming the other way.
Linda still remembered those two little words decades later, when she shared them with fans at Graceland.