
11.
“The ‘Construction Clown’ in Cincinnati, Ohio. I lived in Roselawn and Bridgetown as a kid and started to hear stories from friends about a middle-aged man with a clown collar/ruff, hard hat, clown suit, and a construction worker’s metal toolbox riding the public transit ‘all day’ without purpose, or milling around construction sites. There’s no way that’s true, I thought, until one day, I took a bus to a local Kroger grocery store for something. As I walked through the parking lot to the store, I saw him standing outside the front doors, toolbox in hand, hard hat, white ruffed collar, bright red sweatshirt, overalls, and work boots painted yellow. It was terrifying. I milled around the parking lot for what felt like forever and noticed that most people coming and going from the store were avoiding the guy. He just stood there, not moving, in the middle of the entry/exit doors of that Kroger.”
“Suddenly, though, he was gone. I didn’t see if he walked away or got into a car or went inside, but I had lost my nerve completely and went back to the bus stop. As soon as I paid the fare and looked up to find a seat, there he was…just sitting in the middle of the bus. I realized the bus had also stopped right in front of the grocery store, so he must have gotten on there. Anyway, I sat one row back from him, and he didn’t move or say a word until it was time for me to exit. I saw him again a few more times in the neighborhood, almost always in passing while he was riding the bus again or standing at various bus stops. He was always dressed in the red sweatshirt and overalls or a full-on clown suit. One time he had a shovel. Then, one day, he was just gone, and people stopped talking about him.
Probably 20 years later when I was in my thirties, I was visiting home and running around the city with my mom. We ended up in Covington, Kentucky, doing something or other, and were stuck in traffic on MLK Boulevard. As we inched up the road, I looked over and saw a silver bust statue of the guy! It was in front of the Hellmann Creative Center. I completely lost it…nobody, including my mother, had ever believed me when I told stories of seeing this guy when I was a kid, but there’s a fucking statue of him right there on the side of the road!
Anyway, meet Raymond Thunder-Sky, Cininnati’s ‘Construction Clown.’
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