There are trainwrecks, and then there are
trainwrecks. Whatever that means. Some you just hafta watch, and some you see coming from such a long way off that you get to watch for quite a while. One local trainwreck finally ended, fairly predictably, this past week on a street in an otherwise quiet neighborhood, where one man had made it his life's work/obsession to protect his property and family from, well, almost anyone who happened to walk, bike, or drive by. His name was Glenn Lewis, though nearly everyone familiar with the story called him Crazy Larry.
I had no knowledge of Crazy Larry until several years ago, when students in my first urban legends class began talking about him. We were discussing legend ostension (the acting out of legends, to varying degrees), and legend-tripping (that largely ritual practice of venturing to some location where "things happen," so those things can happen to you and your pals), and across the classroom, many of the 50+ students chimed in with similar comments of a popular local legend/site. Most who went to local high schools were either Crazy-Larry-legend-trip survivors, or had at least heard one of the numerous stories about him. After 8 iterations of this same class, I've now heard the stories repeated by a couple hundred students.
While lots, if not most, of such stories are only loosely based on fact, if at all (like the "old insane asylum" down on Edith, where, if you stand in just the right spot, you can hear the screams from the residents who burned to death in the tragic fire many years ago... ...but it's actually a former small nursing home, vacant and decaying for many years, and now the site of frequent vandalism, fires, etc.), the legend about C.L. was, in large part, true.
The legend: drive by a particular house on Marilyn Ave. up in the heights, day or night, and the crazy guy who lives there (Crazy Larry, also occasionally known as Marilyn Man) will run out hollering at you, maybe brandishing a weapon, perhaps banging on your car with a bat or large flashlight. Live through it, and you have bragging rights, possibly some dents or broken windows, and a common bond with young people all over the city.
OK, so this legend's true (or this much of it). Why did he do it? Well, mental health is clearly the main issue, but that's too easy, and makes for an awfully short story. In the need to explain things like this in a more interesting way, elaborate back-stories develop. The 2 main themes I've heard from students in my UL classes over the years are 1) that he's a Vietnam vet who came home traumatized and has never been normal again, and 2) that years ago his teenage daughter was abducted or raped or murdered (or murdered and dismembered, etc.) by some adolescent male who picked her up at the house for a date. In the first story, anyone could be the target of his obsessive surveillance and threatening behavior, if they came too close to his bunker. In the second, teenage boys became the suspects, arriving in cars to harm his family.
The reality was that anyone was fair game, though adolescents were the most likely to seek out the experience. His obsession escalated over time from yelling and approaching cars that passed too slowly...to roadblocks...to spotlights...to video cameras installed in peepholes in the garage door and windows. People in the neighborhood were afraid to let their kids walk by his house on their way to the nearby elementary school, assuming he might one day snap beyond his usual, and mow the kids down with an automatic weapon.
Last weekend, one of C.L.'s teen-boy suspects mowed him down with a truck, apparently after he ran out to yell at the kid and pound on the hood. The initial news accounts portrayed a hero who would protect his family and neighbors to the death against the "turf war" with neighborhood teens. I have no idea what really happened, or how much prior mutual harrassment might have occurred between C.L and teen-boy, but I do know that this process, minus the running over of Crazy Larry, and his subsequent death, played out hundreds (thousands?) of times over the last 10-15 years (maybe 20, by some counts). Was it wise or fair for people to drive by to see if they could provoke the crazy person? Probably not. But the surveillance obsession was clearly a lifestyle choice for C.L. It was working for him quite well, and moving elsewhere or letting the process fade away was apparently not as rewarding. A man's gotta live for something.
Now he can live on in even greater legend status, and the media can claim a hero has been lost, rather than using the opporunity to discuss, oh, I don't know,
mental health, maybe. And teen-boy is charged with murder. As I said, it was destined to end badly.
