Saturday, August 16, 2008

The King's Travels

In the mid 1980s, when a woman claimed to have seen Elvis in a grocery store in Vicksburg, Michigan, near Kalamazoo, a Denver radio station sent a local woman to try to find Elvis. There was a $1 million reward involved. Now you are aware, Elvis died in 1977, by most accounts.

The Elvis hunter was flown to Kalamazoo and searched Elvis’ possible favorite haunts; Malnight’s Bakery (best jelly-filled donuts in the world), Thurman’s Diner (best hamburger and French fries in the world) and even the grocery store where Elvis was “seen.” Theories swirled; some even theorized that he was being kept in an apartment at Upjohn’s Pharmaceutical getting drugs to keep from going bald. Reporting on progress every day to the on-air radio personalities, the Elvis hunter even talked with the woman who had “seen” Elvis, who gave her great details.

On the last day of the search, when the Elvis hunter called into the radio station person to person, the Phone Operator cut in and asked if Elvis had been spotted in Kalamazoo? When told no, the operator chimed in “That’s because he called my supervisor yesterday and told her he was in Battle Creek, MI.” As Battle Creek is the cereal capitol of the world, it was logical that Elvis was there with other flakes. No one got the $1 million, but for our Elvis hunter it was quite a trip.
by PCH @ Main

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

James Thurber on covering city offices as a reporter for the Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch: "And the Mayor's office was frequently besieged by diverting and passionate taxpayers: an elderly gentleman who could get KDKA on the steel rims of his spectacles, a woman who was warned of the approach of earthquakes by a sharp twinge in her left side, and a lady to whom it had been revealed in a vision that the new O'Shaughnessy storage dam had not been constructed of concrete but of Cream of Wheat."