In May of 1998 I was in the middle of an Elvis Presley obsession, so I went to Graceland. Everything about the place seemed awesome to me, from the giant Corinthian columns out front, to the purple and yellow room with three televisions built into the wall, to the big man’s grave out back. But what has stuck with me the most from the visit is a particular story about Elvis. Elvis had grown up poor, and I’m sure when he was poor money was important. But when he started to make more money than he could ever spend, or maybe just enough money to have every material thing he wanted, it no longer held importance to him. So, during a party at Graceland he was inside with a guest who came from a poor background, and the other partygoers were outside on the lawn. His friend commented on how sophisticated all of the partygoers seemed. Elvis walked over to his desk, pulled a stack of money from one of the drawers, opened a window, and threw the bills out the window. The partygoers scrambled after the bills, shoving each other, trying to grab as much money as they could. Elvis turned to his friend and said, “They’re not that sophisticated.”

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "In May of 1998 I was in the middle of an Elvis Presley obsession, so I went to Graceland. Everything about the place seemed awesome to me, from the giant Corinthian columns out front, to the purple and yellow room with three televisions built into the wall, to the big man’s grave out back. But what has stuck with me the most from the visit is a particular story about Elvis. Elvis had grown up poor, and I’m sure when he was poor money was important. But when he started to make more money than he could ever spend, or maybe just enough money to have every material thing he wanted, it no longer held importance to him. So, during a party at Graceland he was inside with a guest who came from a poor background, and the other partygoers were outside on the lawn. His friend commented on how sophisticated all of the partygoers seemed. Elvis walked over to his desk, pulled a stack of money from one of the drawers, opened a window, and threw the bills out the window. The partygoers scrambled after the bills, shoving each other, trying to grab as much money as they could. Elvis turned to his friend and said, “They’re not that sophisticated.”" in the context of "Brett Baker, for Chicago now, published on December 22, 2016." to mean that wisdom is timeless.