70 years ago tonight, Elvis Presley was the biggest young star in the country. The night before, he’d played the Cotton Bowl in Dallas in front of more than 26,000 screaming fans. The whole state seemed to be chasing him.
So you’d think the next stop would be something grand.
It wasn’t.
On October 12, 1956, the day after that huge show, Elvis played the Heart O’ Texas Coliseum in Waco. And when the night was over, he didn’t head for a fancy party or a hotel suite. He drove to a little house on Lasker Avenue that belonged to a local DJ named Eddie Fadal.
He stayed about two and a half hours. He played records and danced around the living room. At one point he held the Fadals’ little girl. Eddie’s wife later said the whole evening felt just like a family gathering.
Then Elvis got hungry.
Here’s the thing. The Fadals would have fixed him anything at all. This was the most famous young man in America, standing in their kitchen. But what he asked for wasn’t fancy in the least.
Elvis performing the same year he turned up in that Waco kitchen
There’s no film of that quiet night in Waco, so the clip above is the public Elvis from 1956, the one the whole country was arguing about. Watch it, then picture that same young man a few feet from Eddie Fadal’s stove, waiting on a plate of food.
So what did he want?
Scrambled eggs and bacon. That was it. The kind of breakfast anybody’s grandmother might fix on a Sunday morning.
Earlier on that same Texas trip, when a photographer in Dallas asked him to pose, Elvis reportedly said, “Sure, honey, let me finish my chili.” The picture became one of his favorites. Plain food and plain moments were the ones he seemed to treasure most.
Eddie Fadal never got over that visit. He was so moved by it that he later built a special den onto his home, a room just for Elvis to relax in whenever he came back through Texas.
And the best part?
That house is still standing. These days you can actually book it and stay the night, sleeping under the same roof where Elvis ate his eggs and danced in the living room all those years ago. The little den is still there too.
It’s a strange and lovely thing to think about. The King of Rock and Roll could have gone anywhere that night. He picked a kitchen in Waco and a plate of breakfast food, and the family who shared it with him held onto that memory for the rest of their lives.