Flag Man

Every town has them, crazies. In Hartford, Wisconsin, where I grew up, there was, and still is, a 400 pound Native American-looking woman, Veronica, who I consider Hartford's finest. She would come to the pool every day where I worked just to hang out to the teenage lifeguards. She would talk to them continuously about how she was on a new diet, covering topics from what she already ate that morning, to what she planned to eat as soon as her son got back from the concession stand. Yes, she had a teenage son, and when their powers combined- I am Super Water Displacement! Her son was also fatter than your average minivan, and although he probably wasn't...er...handicapped, I'm sure he must have been in all the special-ed classes. I suppose that's what a crankshaft compulsive eating habit, live in the dark, antisocial upbringing will do to you. Weird as hell. So the two of them would have their fun, annoying anyone and everyone who crossed their poor forelorn paths, and when the pool would close in the evening, the two of them would get into their rusted out purple Buick with plastic Wal-Mart spinners and drive off into the sunset.

The Hartford pool has a good, long list of mentionables, which I can get to another time. And I won't get into the old guy from Hartford that rides his bike around all day smoking cigars. All day. Never stops pedaling, never runs out of fine convenient store tobacco.

And here's one that has national acclaim, go ahead, see for yourself.

I used to live in Chicago, and there was a man who built a real working puppet show and mounted it to his bike and drove around Lincoln Park and other downtownish areas long after dark, and only in the dark, running the shows. People would talk about it from time to time on the radio, but I SAW IT! I saw it before I knew of his reputation, and that shiz was crazy.

And finally, arriving at today's inspiration, I may be the first person to be explaining this guy in the picture. Pensacola, Florida, man in Coke bottle glasses, blaze orange construction vest, head phones, and a stick mounted with two small American flags that look like they've been extracted from a graveyard. I've seen him on three different highways, holding his stick in front of him, literally galloping through traffic, one foot in front of the other, and never changing his hop-step. I don't know who let him out, but his patriotism gets me every time.

Let us not forget about the shipwrecked shrimpin' boat cap'n who's rigged his bicycle up to a lawnmower engine, and noisily rides about town in his white and gold emblem captain hat, his hairy white chest exposed to the salty sea wind through his blue Hawaiian shirt, and his long white beard flapping in the wind. He carries a pizza box on the front basket of his bike, which makes him look legit.