Most towns have their celebrities. One of the best-known men in Johnson City was Blinky The Clown. For over 35 years at carnivals, fairs and sporting events Blinky, in his gaudy costumes and outrageous trappings, was always a star.
At Christmas he was the town Santa Claus; at Easter, the Easter Bunny; in area parades he was Uncle Sam.
His dingy $30-a-month apartment was cluttered with costumes, trophies and awards. For a generation he was the children's idol, although his own childhood had been spent in an orphanage. He never learned to read or write. He never married.
Blinky called the testimonial dinner given in his honor "the high point in his life." "I didn't think I had so many friends; but I have a lot of them," he commented.
In 1976 Blinky's colorful career was cut short by a disease which proved to be incurable; but true to tradition, he jested to the end. A few days before he died in April 1978, he was heard to joke about death.
Hundreds came to pay their last respects to the clown who had become a local legend. His body lay in state, clothed (at his own request) in his favorite Blinky The Clown outfit.
This amazing little entertainer — "the man with a rhyme every time" — wrote this epitaph to be engraved on his tombstone:
Here lies Blinky the Clown
He don't know whether
He's going up or down.
All he knows is,
He's got to leave town.
Of poor little Blinky (he was only 5 foot 3) as of many another comedian—(and of many that laugh at them), it may be said:
Reader, do you?