Somebody had to do it. It occurs, this close to Father's Day, that that particular phrase has come in handy a lot over the years. Especially when the kids are about . . . 8 or so. Who was the first person to drink milk from a cow? Why is the alphabet in that order? How do we know that picking up the telephone won't shock us with electricity? Well, somebody had to do it first, Dad replies. And that's why we know . . . stuff. Now, where's your mother?
News came this week that Mr. Don Featherstone, of the Worcester, Massachusetts, Featherstones, had died at 79. His claim to fame? He was the man who invented the pink flamingos, those plastic yardbirds/suburban props/retro-cool mowing pains. For better or worse, his little plastic birds changed the face of 1960s-'70s-maybe-even-'80s mid-America. And folks who like a little tradition, or at least kitsch, in their yards might have pink flamingos still. Or maybe they're just the types who enjoy giving something of a raspberry to anybody who might look down on Fly-Over Country, and all these hicks with their football and Southern accents. ("We might not live in New York or California, and, you might not believe it, but we prefer it that way.")
Why pink flamingos? Well, why not?
Mr. Featherstone was a sculptor by training and calling. He got a job at Union Products in Leominster, Mass., in the late 1950s. One of his first assignments was to conjure up a plastic duck. So he did. His next assignment was a flamingo. And he put one together soonest. The Sears catalog--another relic of a time past--sold the first plastic birds for $2.76. "Place in garden, lawn, to beautify landscape." Which thousands of people did. That is, when lemon-sucking homeowners associations weren't banning the critters.
Don Featherstone went on to design hundreds of other lawn ornaments over the years, but nothing clicked like the pink flamingos. And he was proud of them:
"I loved what I did," he told the local paper, the Leominster Champion. "You have to figure, my creations were not things people needed in life. We had to make them want them. Things I did made people happy, and that's what life is all about."
Well said, Mr. Featherstone. There should be more of your kind these days.
Now then, does anybody know who put the first white tire out front?
Editorial on 06/27/2015