The Flamingo Street Monster

It happened 55 years ago this weekend, an anniversary I wish I could forget but can’t. The moment changed everything, sending me down a pathway that has molded me into who I am today. No matter how hard you try or how much time passes some things from childhood you never forget. 

This is a story about a real-life tragedy: a tragedy of events that unfolded right in front of me over a period of seven years. For years I was a witness as it happened over and over again, but did not ever really “see” or understand. And how could I? I was just a kid at the time. Sadly, it still happens too many times to too many people, even to this very day. 

This story occurred on a cool crisp October night a long, long time ago in a town with that old familiar street called Flamingo. I capture it here as best as I can remember; nothing has been added for poetic license. Nothing has been taken away to spare the reader from the unspeakable truths about to unfold upon this page. Monsters – they live among us – some even live right down the street. 

Looking back, I wish it weren’t true. Instead, I wish it were a nightmare I could wake up from, so I would’ve been spared my unwilling participation in some of the events of my childhood – events that not only shaped those formative years, but every year since. Alas, some of the worst nightmares occur in life when one is fully awake. 

Haunting me to this very day is the real monster who lived on Flamingo Street.

Darkness had descended upon the county fair, and the dim lights from the rides cast everything with eerie shadows. Even in the dusk, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Hunched over in the middle of the dusty midway was a helpless Bully Brad struggling to get free from what looked like to me a huge monster. How could anyone or anything make Bully Brad helpless? More curious than frightened, I started to walk over.  

The monster gripped Brad’s arm tighter and, while growling something unintelligible, raised a huge limb preparing to offer up yet another bone-shaking strike to his captive.

That’s when the unexpected happened. 

Instinctively I started to run over to help. How to help I really didn’t know. Bradley McAlister, the bully of Flamingo who had tormented me for the last six and a half years, turned his head towards me and made eye contact. With tears etching clear lines down his gray dust-covered face, the bully who once was had disappeared. In his place was a frightened little boy. He mouthed a warning wrapped up in pain no child should be familiar with.

“No.” 

The word hit me almost as hard as what was about to happen. I stopped running his way, stood, and watched in horror at the events unfolding not ten feet away. 

The blows came.

What I had witnessed at the county fair forever changed the relationship Bradly McAlister and I shared. I thought back at the times I’d walked past his house, the first on the right at the beginning of Flamingo. The delipidated, white clapboard had black shutters barely hanging on that threatened to fall off pulling down the old structure at any moment. When Brad wasn’t trying to fight one of us, he could be found sitting in a rocking chair on that sagging front porch – a front porch always littered with what I thought were soft drink cans. After the incident at the fair, I realized they were all beer cans, and his front porch was his refuge from the monster who dwelled within. 

In December that year, a great snowstorm covered Flamingo, and for the first time, the snowballs Brad hurled our way didn’t have rocks hidden inside – rather, they were soft upon impact. In the spring, during the few fights we had after school, all of Brad’s punches were pulled, turning fights more into wrestling matches. Because of all the practice I had wrestling my three brothers, he knew I was better at wrestling than he was, yet he still chose to do that rather than fist fight.  

I truly believe we would’ve become friends if my family hadn’t moved that spring. A move that happened in the darkness of night. A move we were forced to make for the sake of what was left of our devastated family.

But that’s a story for another time.

Next week it’s back to funny. And what could be funnier than a story about the universal button every parent wishes they had in their car? Yes, Dear Reader, after thirteen years it’s finally time. I think Yours Truly and The Wife are buying a new car and, regardless of the cost, we want it outfitted with one very important feature.

“The Button.”