THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, June 12, 1996 TAG: 9606120019
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Larry Maddry
LENGTH: 67 lines
IN A MANNER of speaking, Donald Featherstone - bless him - has given our entire country the bird.
The bird is the pink plastic three-dimensional lawn flamingo.
Travel a few miles down the road you'll see a bungalow or a mansion with one - usually two or more - plastic flamingos beside a plastic kiddie pool, or tiptoeing through a flower bed, or standing watch beside a reflective ball on a pedestal.
And good ol' Don is responsible. Since Don designed the first three-dimensional plastic flamingo back in the 1950s, about 20 million have been sold.
Twenty million. Now that's a tribute to the American lust for yard beauty!
Most of them have been purchased at stores like Kmart, which is to the lawn flamingo what Capistrano is to the swallow. No matter how many go out of there, a fresh supply always comes back.
Beauty, of course, is in the mind of the beholder. So there are probably millions of Americans who believe the plastic flamingos are tackier than Dennis Rodman on a night out.
Not me. I have been using one as an indoor decoration since . . . gee, when was it . . about 24 hours before my wife filed for divorce.
My flamingo's name is Fleming. Flem makes a nice pet. He's a neat accent piece and looks especially good standing in a white bathtub when I throw parties at my bachelor digs and dress up the guest bathroom with matching pink towels.
It's so hard to find a woman with good taste these days. My girlfriend - Princess Liberal Right-Thinker - doesn't care for the flamingo, natch. She tells friends my pad is a Fleming ruin. But what does she know?
One thing's for sure, I wouldn't trade Flem for a hundred of those cast-iron lawn jockeys that rich people park by their driveways. I think they're tacky. And I wouldn't dream of putting one in my bathtub unless it were hitched to a plastic sea horse.
I wondered whether Donald Featherstone, the vice-president of Union products in Leominster, Mass., thought his creation was tacky. So I phoned him.
``I think one would look elegant in front of the White House,'' he said.
Don is a graduate of the the Worcester Museum's school of art. He's a man who knows tacky when he sees it, he said.
He has a collection of photographs mailed to him by flamingo purchasers. One is of a wedding where nearly every decoration was a plastic flamingo.
His company makes about 40 other lawn animals, including cows and dogs. None of them tacky, he said.
Well, surely there is a tacky lawn ornament out there somewhere. Yes, he conceded, but his company doesn't make it.
``There's the bend-over lady,'' he said. ``Definitely tacky.''
I was sorry to hear that, because the bend-over lady has always been one of my special favorites. You've probably seen one: a back view of a woman bending over to tend her garden, revealing her underwear.
Wherever he goes, Don makes no bones about telling folks he is the creator of the three-dimensional plastic flamingo.
``Why, it is the most easily recognizable piece of Americana made for 40 years without interruption,'' he boasted.
What a proud man. Said he was glad I had called. . . tickled pink, actually.
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