MEMPHIS - It was, I thought in my sanctimonious fashion, a chance to engage in a little social anthropology. Won't it be curious to see all those Elvis fans lined up outside the rock 'n' roll king's home in Memphis. Interesting people they are, driven by a fascination, even a long-lasting adoration, for a man now dead 25 years. He perished here at the age of 42, on the eve of another wearying concert tour.

Last weekend's trip started in a conversation with a close friend of long-standing who lives now on the West Coast. The exchange concerned the need to find a significant way to mark my then-upcoming (thankfully passed last Thursday) 50th birthday.

"Where," she said, "would you like to go that you haven't gone before?" I mentioned Graceland. Wasn't much of a fan, I told her, but I'm still curious. All those people. All that adulation.

A few days before the 25th anniversary of Presley's death, she announced she'd booked the trip. Tickets, hotel, passes to Graceland. Dress cool, she said -- Memphis in late summer is approximately the same temperature as Satan's sauna.

In any case, we arrived on the second morning in Memphis at the Graceland complex, where buses transport something like 4,000 people a day to the grounds of the home for a tour of the downstairs and outbuildings. The sun was blazing on the paved lot across Elvis Presley Boulevard from Presley's mansion (though it's a much smaller house than one imagines) whereon sits a museum complex housing cars, mementoes from fans, gift shops, airplanes.

Tourists, most from out of state, many from overseas, strapped on small tape players that would guide them through the house, to which they were taken by a fleet of buses. Middle-aged folks they were, mostly, pausing to have their souvenir pictures taken by a Graceland staffer. (Twenty bucks for two 5x7s and a key chain.) Sweat was pouring. But spirits were high. The process was well-done, efficient but friendly.

It is 1977 forever at Graceland, which is in decoration and spirit a reflection of the owner -- flashy in some places, outrageous in others (the Jungle Room, with its shag carpet on the ceiling) and in the end, a monument to a poor young fellow's dreams fulfilled. He hit it big, made it, spent it, and then left it long before he should have, a prisoner of his fame surrounded by people who didn't, perhaps couldn't, protect him from the wretched excesses easily available to the famous.

At the gravesite -- like the rest of the place, smaller than you'd expect -- flowers were abundant, including an arrangement modeled after one of Presley's performing suits. People were subdued, as they might have been at any such place.

Much has been made of the Elvis phenomenon, and much fun has been made of the devotees who come to Memphis as if on a religious pilgrimage, of the men who style their hair a la Elvis, of the women who wear the T-shirts and frame the old ticket stubs, of the truly countless restaurants and clubs with "Elvis" somewhere in the title. The true believers do not laugh at Elvis jokes. They're hanging on, say the jokesters, to misplaced worship for an unlikely hero whose peak was a distant memory by the time he died. What in the world are they thinking?

So those of us who fancy ourselves possessed of a certain sophistication look at him, and at them, with a whimsical curiosity. We enter the gates of Graceland anticipating the affirmation of all our preconceived notions -- what the fans will be like, what they'll say to each other, how they'll react.

Notions can make us bigots if we hang on to them tightly. For here, some days removed from the tour, is what they were like: Just as nice as they could be. Friendly. Somber. Respectful. Our companions on the tour were quiet and observant, studious almost. They are the kinds of people who stop and help you with a flat tire, who don't like to miss prayer meeting, who meet new neighbors with a casserole, who open doors and expect them to be opened. Salt of the Earth, we used to call them. My guess would be that all of them had a flag flying yesterday, and visited the courthouse square for their town's remembrance of Sept. 11.

Perhaps we who have been so smug all these years about this whole Elvis thing forgot that these are the people from whom he came, and thus these are the people he inspired. You can't spend enlightenment that disabuses you of your own certitude, but it's not a bad gift after all. So happy birthday to me. And...long live the King.