A few months ago, I was preparing to play bass guitar at a worship service at church. Right before the service started, a man brought be a grocery sack containing a picture frame. The service was just moments away from starting but I took time to peek at the contents of the bag. Inside I found a photo of Elvis wearing a karate uniform. There was another man in the picture, also wearing a karate uniform. I considered that it might be the man that brought me the picture, but I thought he was too young to be him. I hadn’t known this man very long and I still don’t know him that well. He had been around me long enough to know that I go to Graceland every year for Elvis Week. Later when I was showing the picture to friends, we noticed that he had written a note to me on that back of the frame that said “To Art, Because thou art strong”. I didn’t get to talk to him about the picture until about a week later.
He told me that he had a collection of Elvis pictures and this was from that collection. He wants to give this collection to a museum he told me they are building in our town. The museum is not an Elvis museum but one to commemorate a factory that was a in that part of town. I don’t know why they would want to have his Elvis photo collection.
He also said, “You know that Elvis is still alive!” I know I looked at him like he was crazy as I replied, “No, I didn’t.” Then he told me that Elvis had swapped places with an impersonator years ago and the impersonator had taken all those drugs and died. He said the truth would be revealed soon. I immediately noticed that his story was basically the plot to the movie Bubba Ho-Tep. In that movie, what he described happened but today Elvis is in a nursing home in Arizona. He is friends with a black man who thinks he is JFK. Elvis and JFK fight mummies that suck the souls from the old people at the nursing home. I was disappointed that the man that gave the picture didn’t tell me the rest of the movie as part of his story.
