“On a recent hot summer morning, Libertyland was a forlorn ghost town. The sign had come down from above the front gates, leaving a ghostly outline of the letters. Trumpet flower vines choked the suspension bridge leading to Tom Sawyer’s Island. Ornamental fish swam in the canals, but the water was green and clogged with leaves.
“Power tools whined as a worker disassembled the Paratrooper, and the Dragon Wagon and the Little Fender Bender were already gone.
“The closure upset 9-year-old Leanna Ritter, whose mother, Mary, worked summers waxing the tracks for one of the park rides. Leanna said she cried herself to sleep when she heard Libertyland had closed.
“As she sat outside the park, squinting in the bright sunlight, she mused: ‘I wonder what Elvis would think about them taking this place down.'”
And we wonder why the national media — including this Washington Post article — seem utterly incapable of writing a story about Memphis without an Elvis angle.
