The Man Who Copied Elvis

There had been happy times. Absolutely, there had been happy times. 

For many years he had toured the West Coast as ‘Pelvis Presley’, and boy did that make him feel as high as a kite. His problem was that although in a good light he looked a bit like 

Elvis, he sang like a twelve-year-old girl with laryngitis.

Slowly the audiences grew smaller until there was only him in a tent. Even the ticket people didn’t hang around. So he decided to take some time to come up with a new plan.

The Human Jukebox was his money-making idea. He stuck three large cardboard boxes on top of each other – and on the highest box, he put a little drawbridge which opened by means of some string. So people could see and hear him sing.

On the outside of the boxes he wrote down all the songs he knew and the plan was that the customer would choose a song, the customer would then shout out the song title, and follow that by putting money in the little slot (which fell into a plastic bag stuck to the back of the box.

People used to tease him by shouting something like, ‘Anarchy In the UK’ by the Sex Pistols when all he really knew was Elvis and Frank Sinatra. Sometimes, they would pick a song he knew, but then they would put an old button or a chocolate coin through the slot. He never found this out until it was too late.

So he gave that up too. Then he saw a job being advertised which involved dressing up as Ronald McDonald and handing out leaflets. The job was okay at first, but after a while, the little brats used to kick him in the behind or on the knees or even between his legs.

He decided enough was enough. The gun he found by accident was a kid’s toy, and the robberies were a lot easier than he thought. He held up three burger joints in as many evenings. The local newspaper even called him the ‘Ronald Mac Robber’. He was famous, and he had a bit of money at last.

The following week, however, there was a report of two more robberies – two he couldn’t have made – as one was fifty miles away and the other two hundred. Both happened at roughly the same time. So not only folks were stealing his ideas, but there must have been at least two of them. Wasn’t that just his luck? His first great idea, stolen.

It was on the final night of his journey on this Earth that he went in – dressed as a civilian – to the local burger joint. As he was standing in the queue, he heard a commotion and a few kids shout, ‘look it’s the Ronald Mac Robber’.

Now, this cheap-skate imitator annoyed him, and he decided to walk up to confront him. But not all Ronald Mac Robbers use fake guns. 

bobby stevenson 2020