Help Keep Santa Cruz Weird - CornFed (the ebook reader txt) 📗

and he has been coined the “Slow Robert” and the “Pink Umbrella Man”. It honestly was kind of a let down to discover he had already been discovered. And I, like others, couldn’t really find out anything concrete about the guy. Opinions were wide and varied as to his life, his purpose in doing this, and his sanity. As with most eccentric characters, Robert Steffan was the stuff of nicknames. That’s all you really can do when the truth about a man is hidden. I’m adding my own to the list:

“The Immortal Pink Man of Santa Cruz”

One day, when this life is all said and done, Robert will have another life ahead of him. I know what my heart wants out of the next life. I believe that the things your heart holds dear in this life will find their way over into the next. No way this beauty, this wonder, this variety, this crazy happy sad joyful life just ends with a cloud of dust, shot down in a blaze of God’s glory to be started all over again from scratch. I don’t buy into the streets of gold, the columns of pearl, and the chorus of heavenly music as the only things important in heaven. I buy into the longings of the heart. I believe eternity is a heart dump. I wonder what the longings of pink man’s heart are?

It wasn’t until we looked at the picture later and recounted those few minutes that I realized he probably looked at me in the same way I had looked at him. My “why is this man dressed in pink?” was his “why is this man trying to hug me?” We both wanted different things from our life. I really just want to hug and love the hell out of people. Pink man just wanted to walk down the street and wave and smile at everyone who happened to walk in his path.

One day up yonder, when I’m driving Betsy, my 1996 Ford F-150, down a long country dirt road with the future eternal love of my life sitting beside me, touching my leg and whispering in my ear the loveliest things a man can hear, I hope we round a corner and see the Immortal Pink Man of Santa Cruz walking towards us, shuffling his feet against the red Georgia clay, parasol in his right hand, and waving with his left.

My baby will ask me to stop the truck and find out about this pink man. But this time, instead of stopping and asking him what his deal is, I’d just wave back at him and tell my baby about the time I tried to hug the Immortal Pink Man of Santa Cruz. And that his name is Robert Steffan. And that God’s loves variety.

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Publication Date: 12-02-2009

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