The Ghost and The King

Egos, Altered

Photo by iuliu illes on Unsplash

On a piece of cork board at the Reverb Lounge, with a red thumbtack, there’s a Polaroid picture of Albert Turbeker at the age of 11 with Elvis Presley, four months before Elvis’s death.

“Neither of us knew he was gonna die,” Al likes to say,sometimes smiling and sometimes sad, depending on what song he was going to intro.

At the Reverb Lounge, Albert Turbeker is “Alvis,” claiming some sort of mystical musical anointing when he had met The King.

Alvis drinks peach brandy, combs his black wig with a TCB comb and is known to cry real tears during In the Ghetto.

In September and October Alvis takes vacation from weekends at the Reverb Lounge.

His last night in August, he  always signs off by saying “Even the King of Rock n Roll needs a break sometimes.”

Albert Turbeker knows that is kind of a lie, because he doesn’t take a break.

He goes five hours north, up to his family’s old farm outside of Roscommon, where he runs Apparition Al’s Haunted Hayride.

Albert Turbeker and his crew build the best props, Albert hires the most experienced professional haunt actors, and every haunted attraction guide in North America rates Apparition Al’s in their Top Ten.

Apparition Al drinks tequila with two ice cubes and an antacid tablet, drinks three of those a day, and keeps his head neatly shaved.

That farm is the scariest place on Earth for two months out of the year, Albert Turbeker will tell ya, but he won’t let ya take his picture, because Albert Turbeker is only scared of one thing, and that thing is that someone will find out Apparition Al is Alvis, and vice versa, though most of the kids screaming in terror on the farm have no clue who Elvis Presley is, and the sparse crowd at the Reverb Lounge in Toledo, Ohio couldn’t give a pinky diddle in the asshole about no haunted attraction in Roscommon, Michigan, they just want to see the Marilyn Monroe stripper who comes on after Alvis.

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