DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- There is only one true plastic lawn flamingo and that is the Don Featherstone-Union Products lawn flamingo.
This is not a yard-decoration opinion. This is a cultural fact.
So Americans -- and particularly Floridians -- should take a moment for sad reflection now that Union Products prepares to shutter the Leominster, Mass., plant that has hatched some 20 million of these iconic birds. The company has announced it will close the plant Nov. 1 and already has completed its last batch of polypropylene flamingos.
The durable yard bird was downed by pressures familiar to the nation's manufacturers. The cost of plastic resin has doubled over the past couple of years. The cost of electricity has soared.
And it will sadden you to know that there are many Americans out there who have no qualms about buying inferior, Chinese-made yard flamingos, made out of thinner plastic with less surface detail.
You know who you are.
I suspect, too, the toxic effects of homeowner association edicts ate into sales over time. Featherstone was once moved to put out blue flamingos designed solely to get around rules prohibiting pink flamingos from front lawns. You have to appreciate a company that lends a hand to homeowner-association outlaws.
The iconic, American-made plastic yard flamingo was designed by Featherstone, the retired president of Union Products. When he was just out of college, Featherstone drew on his sculpting and art background to style the shapely bird from models in National Geographic photos. It was introduced to a world that in 1957 did not yet know how greatly it needed cheerful plastic yard birds.
If you have one, turn it over and you probably will see Featherstone's signature in raised cursive letters on the belly of the bird. This distinguishes authentic flamingos from its vulgar imitators.
When the company redid its molds five years ago, it eliminated the signature, which, as you can well imagine, raised an uproar among flamingo purists.
Union Products relented and restored the name that has been synonymous with fine flamingo art for almost a half century.
In other locales, a plastic pink flamingo is merely cheerfully kitschy. In Florida, it is more. It's an evocation of regional identity. It represents the Florida way of being both amused and flattered by other people's misguided ideas about the place we live. A mocking embrace of the stereotypes other people have about Florida.
I had a friend who used to give a Union Products pink plastic lawn flamingo as a going-away present to anyone he knew who was moving south of Volusia County, Fla. The idea was that if you're going to live in South Florida, you needed to be in harmony with The South Florida Way. And pink plastic yard flamingo ownership was an excellent first step. (And if you moved north of Florida, you didn't get anything. The heck with you.)
But life, commerce and culture move on.
Somebody else will no doubt buy Union Products molds and designs and make them somewhere else.
The public will always demand some kind of yard flamingo. And somewhere in the Pacific, Asian container ships flying Nigerian flags already are moving pallets full of new plastic molded flamingos to the North American market.
But somehow it won't be the same.
Mark Lane is a columnist for The Daytona Beach (Fla.) News-Journal. He may be reached at mark.lane(at)news-jrnl.com.