Papa’s Last Great Balloon Launch

Wooly Bully, Amen.

In true Rainbow Traveling Show style, there was much fireside sitting, heavy binge drinking, tearful goodbyes and storytelling belly-laughs at Papa Dollar’s Memorial and Wake in sunny Florida on Wednesday, February 25, 2009. With just about every one of the ‘usual suspects’ up to no good from start to finish.

Not the least of which was when the heir-apparent put my daughter Tash in charge of the blank-book in which we were all supposed to write something pithy about our old friend’s multi-storied life and times. She asked him what day it was so she could use her beautiful calligraphic skills to etch the title page, and he told her it was February 29, 2009. She (not paying attention to dates much) believed him. And now the precious family keepsake is forever dated Leap-Day in an Odd Year, something that’s never once actually occurred in the entire history of date-keeping!

But the best – better even than the formal Medicine Show eulogies – was the balloon launch, something Ras Papa was internationally infamous for. For this one it had been decided to launch Papa’s ratty old hat with the balloons. Which the 120 or so people present had to shuttle from his front porch helium tank to the mower polo field so they could be tied together into a freeform… thing. The animal balloons had sat in the sun too long, mostly exploded before they could be filled, but we did get a few. People drew or wrote things on the regular balloons with Sharpees before filling them, each with a personal note or charicature that related to Papa’s life.

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