Tales of the Lost Flamingo

By Mike Griffin

Tales of the Lost Flamingo takes its readers on a journey through life's circus utilizing a cast of unforgettable characters magically woven into twelve individual but interwined stories that peek through the holes in the Big Top like a dozen wide-eyed urchins.

Mr. Griffin's debut novella, , is a comic conundrum as wild and wacky as a Volkswagen full of clowns. Enjoy the show as they spasmodically spill out on the sawdust floor in a hysterical, heart wrenching tarantella that only the manic music of Mr. Griffin's calliope can provide.

Watch Chester Cranepool defy death beneath a falling safe. See the President of the United States sing and dance his way into historical oblivion. Go on patrol with the men of the 196th Light Infantry Brigade in Vietnam. Take a midnight bus ride into eternity with Sergeant Jerome Buck. Guzzle rum with a famous artist and relive the movie career of Lamar 'The Star' Fandango. Discover love on your door step and experience Happy Hour with Big Al and the gang at the Hideaway Bar. Meet the real Herman Melville as he stalks a prehistoric mudfish in the Okefenokee Swamp. Drink pina coladas with Elvis and vistit Sarasota, Florida's hottest night spot. Wind up your visit to the Big Top with one last bumper car ride you will never forget.

Grab a seat in the peanut gallery. The circus is coming to town.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Aug 16, 2011
• ISBN: 9781456760533

Mike Griffin

Mike Griffin is the author of three previous books inspired by his years as a Florida resident searching for his own Fountain of Youth. Mr. Griffin now resides with his wife Jackie in the land of the four seasons where winters are mild, snow birds are an endangered species, and the call of the lost flamingo is but a distant memory.

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© 2011 Mike Griffin. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 8/9/2011

ISBN: 978-1-4567-6053-3 (e)

ISBN: 978-1-4567-6054-0 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4567-6055-7 (sc)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011909329

Printed in the United States of America

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Introduction

The Last Daredevil

Mr. Cranepool Goes to Washington

Happy Birthday

Billy Willow

Going Home

Oil on Canvas

Star of the Show

Fantan

Happy Hour

The Legend

of

Captain Bowfin A. Griffin

The Motley Collection

Florida

Treasures

Shortcut to Poughkeepsie

About the Author

Dedicated to:

Molly, Matt, Jayce, Jackie, and in memory of Terry.

Introduction

Tales of the Lost Flamingo is a quasi-fictional trip through life using the seemingly unrelated short story as the tour guide. Like Dante used Ulysses, I chose Chester Cranepool to tell the tale.

Every book, starting with the Bible, must have a beginning, middle, and an end. The Lost Flamingo begins its journey in a boys’ school up north, debuts in Madison Square Garden, dances with the President of the United States, dies in Viet Nam, is resurrected on a midnight bus ride, gets pie-eyed in Bisbee, Arizona, finds love and a chocolate lab on its door step, hunts for prehistoric mudfish in the Okefenokee Swamp, tends bar for Elvis in Sarasota, Florida, and finally meets its mortal fate on a futuristic interstate in New Jersey.

These twelve tales incorporate an assortment of protagonists to weave the underlying story of the author’s own sojourn through life into an amalgamated matrix of his personal experiences, culminating in everyone’s ultimate destiny.

I believe that we all have a little Chester Cranepool in us. He was basically a kind and gentle man with a Crusader Rabbit spirit he could barely control. I also believe that at one time or another, everybody has thought about setting out in search for their own imaginary – but very real – Lost Flamingo.

Enjoy the quest,

Mike Griffin

2011

The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous.

-Goethe

ONE

The Last Daredevil

There’s no business like show business.

-Irving Berlin

Chester Cranepool was a small, quiet, unassuming individual. How this insignificant specimen of humanity became a household word is the subject of this story.

As a small boy, Chester was reared by an over-protective spinster Aunt while his mother spent most of her time in a sanatorium succumbing to tuberculosis. His father had died when he was just a baby, and his Aunt Clara was the only real parent he had ever known.

Chester grew up in a small, concise community not far from Boston. His Aunt’s house was a large, rambling, Victorian structure that fit her own large, rambling, Victorian personality to a tee. She was one of a large group of pompous, Puritanical old Boston biddies who gathered every day for tea and told lies about their ancestry. Except to berate, belittle and criticize Chester, Aunt Clara had very little time for him.

When Chester turned twelve, his mother died leaving him in the permanent care of Aunt Clara. She received a sizeable sum of insurance money and elected to send Chester to an all-boys school as an alternative to having him board with her any longer.

When September finally rolled around, Chester stood dry-eyed and tight-lipped on the roadside next to the large wrought iron gates that surrounded the compound which was to incarcerate him for the next four years. He looked up with mixed emotions at the sign that read, ‘Devonshire School for Young Men’ and thought to himself, as he walked beneath the prodigious portals toward the hallowed halls of regimented ivy, that he felt more like a condemned man than a young one. Resigned, he shuffled miserably through the crisp autumn air toward the administration building whereupon he had been instructed to find the headmaster, Dr. Chambers. As luck would have it, Chester found the proper building almost immediately and timidly entered. Receiving hand directions from a mute janitor, Chester found himself knocking shyly on a large oaken door marked A. C. Chambers, PhD.

Enter, came the reply, fired in a clipped military fashion. Chester complied and managed to navigate his small, insignificant self into the awesome office.

As he stood, trying to control the spasmodic knocking of his knees, the headmaster boomed, Your hat, Mister! Chester grabbed at his head, sending his hat flying into space. He watched in horror as the cap landed squarely on top of headmaster Chamber’s desk snapping the head off of an antique pink flamingo. The doctor eyed first the broken flamingo and then glared at Chester with the blood red eyes of a Gila monster.

Mr. Cranepool, I presume? snapped Chambers.

Ye…ye…yes, sir, stammered Chester. In response, a dossier flipped open and Dr. Chambers began his examination with the standard indoctrination speech that had reached perfection during the past twenty years.

We here at Devonshire are proud of our heritage. We are steeped in the fine tradition of our forbearers and we take great pride in the accomplishments of our school and its graduates. You will be expected to maintain our exemplary standards and conduct yourself accordingly. Mr. Hall, at the end of the corridor, will assign you a room and provide you with proper attire. Is that quite clear, Mr. Cranepool?

Chester managed to stutter another, Yes, sir and turned to leave.

Mister Cranepool! Chester froze in mid-stride. The headmaster pointed disgustedly at the lump of material still residing on his desk. Chester meekly removed the offending head gear and made his exit as unobtrusively as possible.

In the first year at Devonshire, Chester managed to establish himself as an object of profound ineptness. It seemed as if everything he tried to do turned out not only wrong but humorous to everyone around him. Chester’s roommate, Rodney Whittaker, was a striking contrast. Rod, as he was called by his troupe of admirers, was the epitome of success. He excelled not only in his studies, but also in sports. Being something of a practical joker, he invariably devised ingenious methods to expose poor Chester as a funny, fumbling fop.

One typical incident occurred in history class when Chester was seated at his desk taking an exam. He was so engrossed in the test that he failed to notice a steady stream of ants crawling from the confines of his desk into the folds of his cuffs where crumbs of bread had been carefully and cunningly placed. He began to scratch, surreptitiously at first, trying desperately not to be conspicuous, then with increasing fervor as the ants infiltrated his uniform. Finally with a scream he could no longer suppress, Chester leaped to his feet and began wildly discarding his ant-infested clothes from his socks to his bowtie.

At the spectacle of this preposterous sight, the entire class went into convulsions. Even the teacher was doubled over in a fit of uncontrollable laughter. This was the type of torment that Chester bore with a seemingly quiet, mild-mannered fortress of internal fortitude. But deep down in the furnace of his soul, the fires began to rage.

In the spring of Chester’s junior year at Devonshire, an incident occurred that was to change the entire course of his life. It happened as yet another example of Cranepool incompetence. During one of his physical education classes, Chester was involved in a game of baseball. He was playing his usual position – the bench – when a high foul ball was hit in his general direction. Chester, his mind a million miles away, wasn’t aware of the hard ball that descended towards him. Oblivious even to the shouts of heads up! that filled the air, Chester remained unperturbed. The hand-stitched sphere of rawhide landed squarely and with resounding force on top of Chester’s head. The assembled members of the team were momentarily silenced as they waited to see how badly Cranepool was hurt. They couldn’t believe their eyes when Chester remained sitting as if nothing had happened.

Rodney Whittaker was the first to regain his speech. Cranepool, you OK? he asked?

Sure, Rod. Why not? replied Chester.

But didn’t you feel that ball hit you? he inquired incredulously.

Ball? What ball, Rod?

Cranepool, you nitwit. Man, you sure got a hard head! Little did anyone know that Rodney had just made the understatement of the century.

In his senior year, Chester Cranepool began to experiment. He was still the object of his classmates’ ridicule, a position he accepted with a firm resolve. He had managed to obtain passing grades even though he spent many hours daydreaming. He had even read a book on the famous Houdini and how he had won acclaim far and wide as the world’s greatest escape artist. Chester, continually ribbed and roasted by his classmates, sought refuge in the vision that some day he was going to be as notoriously well-known as Houdini. He remembered the day he had been beaned by the foul ball, and knew that for some strange reason, he hadn’t felt it. He was going to find out why.

Chester Cranepool had a plan. He began by dropping various objects of differing sizes and weights on his head. On weekends, alone in his room, Chester would get down to the business of determining exactly how much weight and force he could endure. In the first nine months of experimentation even Chester couldn’t believe his progress. He had worked his way up from billiard balls to bowling balls, to sledge hammers, to chunks of angle iron. His crowning blow, so to speak, came when he rigged a hoist and dropped one end of a railroad tie on his skull. Nothing – no ill effects whatsoever.

At class graduation, Chester walked across the stage to take his diploma from Dr. Chambers, he was filled with a new inner courage that allowed him to face the jeers of the student body with a secret, sarcastic smile of his own.

Chester left Devonshire and headed straight to New York City where he arranged an interview with Colonel Ben Fogarty, the President of the famous Fogarty Brothers’ Circus. He walked into the Fifth Avenue office building dressed in his only suit, an ill-fitting seersucker that covered his short, squat body like a tent. He was only eighteen at the time, but the forces of nature had already conspired to give Chester the appearance of a paunchy, balding, middle-aged retail merchant. Colonel Fogarty’s secretary eyed Chester suspiciously as she buzzed her boss on the intercom. A Mr. Cranepool is here to see you, sir.

Send him in, came the brisk reply. Chester walked into the massive office with the self-assurance of an insurance salesman. He couldn’t help but notice the interior that was gaudily decorated with all manner of circus trivia. The Colonel sat behind a huge desk smoking an equally huge cigar. What can I do for you, my good man? boomed the Colonel.

Chester walked to Fogarty’s desk, lifted up an Indian club that doubled as a paper weight, neatly flipped it six feet into the air and let it bounce squarely off the top of his head. The Colonel stared in amazement as Chester smiled and said, "Colonel Fogarty, sir, I can drop lead, iron, steel, anything