The last time anyone had seen Flat-Earth Fred was in September, on the autumnal equinox.
It's remarkable how people can show concern for someone they have habitually ridiculed. Right, right.” None of us had the faintest inkling that Fred Flanders was loaded, had bags of cash in a half-dozen banks, or that he'd established a trust to pay the taxes on his farm in perpetuity.but he did.
When he went to the other side, as he put it, he would continue ownership he would maintain control. He swore to anyone who would listen that the State would never get his land, that they already owned too much and didn’t know what to do with it. He hated the State of New York, hated the concept of the Forest Preserve (though he said he loved the forest), hated the Forever Wild Clause of the State Constitution. His certainty was unshakable his evidence-to which none of us were privy-incontrovertible.Īnother thing about Fred. But the thing about Fred, he didn't merely believe he was right-he knew he was right. Well, we round-earthers were thinking the same about him. When he came to Saranac Lake, news of his arrival spread like measles, and the next thing you knew, there'd be a pack of kids dogging him down Main Street, taunting him, chanting, “Flat-Earth Fred Flat-Earth Fred how they gonna bury you when you're dead?” He'd cut his eyes at us, wearing a look of withering disdain, not just for his adolescent tormentors but for all of us round-earthers, poor deluded bastards. One could also say he was seriously cracked. One could say he was a recluse, making, as he did, an appearance in town four times a year, sitting high on a lumber wagon pulled by a matched pair of black Percherons, a brace of beagles baying from the back. It's too hard untie my tongue afterwards.įred lived far off the grid, a mile and a half from the nearest pavement, hunkering down on an old farmstead at the foot of the Alder Brook Mountains.
Don't ask me to say Flat-Earth Fred Flanders.
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