HomeSTORY OF THE MONTH
Flamingo Road
by Ron Van Sweringen
I just bought a pink flamingo, one of those plastic ones. You know the kind, with a neck like an s hook and a beak like Cher. They were in vogue before I was born....... well almost.
We used to have one in the front yard when I was a kid, we called her Fanny. We used to stick the garden hose in her mouth, fill her up with water and watch her leak all afternoon.
Our dog Spike, used to stand under her with his mouth open. People began slowing down in their cars, to watch Fanny leaking on Spike.
Mom said it was obscene and one day she sealed up Fanny's crack with crazy glue. Life was never the same after that, Fanny's legs rusted off and dad made her new ones out of coat hangers. She used to sway back and forth when the wind blew and then one day she took off in a thunderstorm.
Dad swore he saw her stuck on the top of a telephone pole out on route one. We all drove out to see and there she was with her legs wrapped around that telephone pole.
A few months later, we got another Flamingo, but Mom said no tricks with the garden hose this time. We left her alone until Thanksgiving. I volunteered her for the turkey in the Thanksgiving school pageant.
We glued feathers from an old duster on her butt and hung a red balloon with water in it, under her neck. Everything went fine until Bobby Jones, who played an Indian chief, cut off her head with his tomahawk.
My brother and I put her head on backwards with duck tape. We had to leave her feathered tail on, because the glue wouldn't come loose.
Mom looked the other way every time she passed her, but dad thought she was cool with her head on backwards. Everything was fine until Halloween, when someone kidnapped her. We saw her again two months later, when mom opened the Sunday newspaper, to the style section.
There she was in full color, in the Museum of Modern Art.
Thanks, Ron, we love your story. Now tell us more about you!
Born Ronnie Lee Van Sweringen, September 26th 1936, Hampton, Virginia. One older brother, Howard Lee Van Sweringen. My father was a United States Air Force officer during the second world war, so we moved constantly from base to base until he was sent overseas. I was an average student in all subjects except art. I was very good at drawing and painting and had several of my pictures displayed in a Fort Worth, Texas, department store window when I was 9 years old. I have painted throughout my life and recently had a six month exhibition of my work in" Astroism" at the Mennello Museum of American Art, in Orlando, Florida.
I left school in the 9th grade at sixteen when my mother and father divorced. I took a job at the lunch counter of a drug store in Washington, D. C., which lasted about three months until I was fired for waiting on a black customer. The lunch counter was still segregated at that time and I was told not to serve her, but when I looked into her eyes, I could not say no. I served her a cup of coffee and an order of toast. I was sixteen years old and when the manager of the store took me in his office and said " you're fired," I took off my apron, balled it up and threw it at him. "No I'm not," I said, "I quit."
I went into the Navy at seventeen, during the Korean conflict and spent three years at the Pentagon, carrying top secret documents back and forth to the Atomic Energy Commission in Washington, D.C. I rode a regular D.C. Transit bus from the Pentagon to make my pick up and deliveries, of course the briefcase I carried was handcuffed to my wrist. However I doubt that such important documents would be handled in the same fashion in this day and age.
I began writing at seventy years old after the loss of the love of my life. One day something said to me, "go buy a computer and begin writing." so I did. I paid the enormous sum of 700 dollars for a computer which I didn't even know how to turn on. I wrote for two years before I got up enough nerve to submit anything. I received two rejections and then BINGO! it started, I have had 102 short stories published in 8 years, and quite frankly writing and painting have kept me alive. Here's to another 102.
My motto is, "Writers are born, it just takes them a while to face up to it."
1) Why did you decide to write your story?
As with most of my writing, it just comes to me. I happened to pass a plastic flamingo in someone's yard here in Florida and I made up a story about it.
2) Do you have any projects you’re working on right now?
I just finished two novellas published together and available on Amazon. THE BOY NEXT DOOR and FLOTATION JONES andTHE WATERMELON MAN.
3) What things are you doing to improve your writing?
Reading the dictionary before I go to bed every night.
4) What tools do you feel are must-haves for writers?
A desire to write and the time and space in your life to let it happen.
5) What author do you admire, living or dead?
Hemingway
6) What recent book made an impression on you?
I'm not terribly up to date, but I revisit "Washington Square," on occasion.
Having accomplished a worthwhile life.
7) For what one accomplishment would you most like to be remembered?
Less than perfect, yet memorable.
8) Tell us about your family.
Less than perfect, yet memorable.
9) What would you like our readers to know about you?
I trust and believe in God.
10) Name one entity that you feel supported you outside of family members.
An art teacher when I was young who loved me and made me see wonderful things about myself.
11) Is there a message in your story that you want your readers to grasp?
I wrote this for one reason, to make someone, somewhere, laugh and maybe feel better for a moment.
12) Finally, do you have anything else to add?
Believe in yourself because in the end, you're the one that really matters.
