In posts here and here we mentioned Joe's love of things others might consider "tacky." This includes pink flamingos. Joe never professed a fondness for them the way he did for gazing balls. Some people in our family assumed that since he liked gazing balls he must also like pink flamingos.
Mom and Dad gave him his first pink flamingos - the real deal - plastic pink flamingos on wire legs for his birthday one year. Joe received additional pink flamingo related gifts over the years, including a set of tiny flamingo decorations for our year round Christmas tree.
We put the big pink, plastic birds in the West North Street back yard periodically. I don't think they ever made it to the front yard. They ended up in our garage and were taken by someone when we filled up the garage with items people could take before we moved. Wonder if those flamingos ended up in someone's yard or as a white elephant gift?
Another family connection - Mom and Dad's yard on North Oak Street was flocked or flamingoed. A whole bunch of pink flamingos appeared in their yard one morning. It was a fundraising event connected with Jack Starr's church - quite a sight.
The Smithsonian magazine, September 2012, had an article, "Pretty in Pink" about this unique lawn ornament. They originated in 1957 in Leominster, Massachusetts when the plastics company Union Products asked sculptor Don Featherstone to sculpt a pink flamingo. The then "revolutionary injection-mold technology" was used to turn out the plastic bird that could bring a piece of "tropical elegance" to a house that otherwise looked like every other house in endless look alike houses in subdivisions. The birds went from being considered pretty to tacky to a joke. Check out the Smithsonian article for more on the journey.
Don Featherstone and his wife Nancy still live in Leominster, Massachusetts with a flock of 57 plastic flamingos in their yard (to commemorate the bird's 1957 birth).
In this video Don Featherstone talks about the origin of plastic pink flamingos and their ongoing manufacturing. The box at the end looks just like the box we had in our garage. Wonder if we had "signed" Don Featherstone flamingos?
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