When I was a young man, about 15 or 16, I was involved with a drug Lord. It wasn’t my finest moment, but I did what I had to do to survive. I didn’t live in a great area of LA. Crime was rampant and it was crime boss against crime boss. Nobody lived there without a connection to one crime lord or another.

I ended up seeing how corrupt the system was and decided to help the FBI and CIA take down one of the more prominent drug lords. I was able to successfully be a mole and he was brought to justice. As a result though, I was placed into witness protection.

The strange and remote places that they’d set me up in with my new identity never ceased to surprise me. Remote little towns they found that were so obsolete they had less than a thousand people living there. Everyone knew everyone. Which was nice in a sense, but it made it harder to move if my identity was ever compromised.

Guappo, New Mexico was my newest home for the time being. Since I was single and unmarried, I was able to move around a lot. And my new town was quaint and quiet. Everyone knew everyone in this town, so when I went to the grocery store one day, I was surprised to see a man  I didn’t recognize. Granted, I hadn’t been in Guappo for long, but I had met many of the residents already.

The stranger was old, maybe 70 or 80. He had a lithe build though for his age.  He obviously was alone and he seemed to be just another old person. I quickly learned I was wrong.

He approached me and said, “ You. Young man, I have seen you standing there staring at the freezer for quite some time. In my experience, people only linger when they have stuff going on.” He definitely was not wrong in that sense. I was sizing him up, but I had no idea why he seemed so familiar. He had a face that had aged well, wrinkled but with lines showing a long, fulfilled life instead of sorrow. But I could tell there was sorrow as well. He had lost someone or something. It had never left him.

“Well, Sir, I was just staring because I was trying to find a meal for tonight. I happened to run out of food and I didn’t want to go all the way to a store far out.” I finally answered. He looked at me and I saw that his hair was actually still dark and not the typical silver you see.

I walked away after the man had decided I was not worth the hassle of trying to figure out. But as I watched him, I recognized his gait. I had watched countless black and white VHS tapes of that walk. My mother had sung his songs to me at night to try to get me to sleep.

I had just met the King of Rock n’ Roll. I had just met Elvis Presley.