Magic and Tom Flathaug

I remembered an important lesson last week during Career Day at Webster City High School. Standing at the front of a room that was once my history classroom, when Coach Dick Tighe was my teacher, I recalled for the so-much-younger students whose attention I wanted to deserve the favorite story I had ever written.

It is the story of a man I met when I was a managing editor in New Milford, Connecticut. He was a sometime-window washer from Carnarsie who camped down by whatever waters he could get next to in a van he shared with his dog.

Here is what I wrote:

His name was Magic, and he was Tom Flathaug’s dog.

Tom Flathaug is a self-styled man. He lives in a blue Dodge van he converted into a camper about six years ago, which is about how long Tom has lived around New Milford.

He likes to park here, but there are no public campgrounds in this town. So Tom usually parks wherever he can. He parked behind the New Milford police station until they told him to move. He parked along the Housatonic on River Road until Connecticut Light and Power cracked down. He parked in the railroad station parking lot until that area was subject to a sweep.

Eventually, Tom found his way along Rocky River Road to a privately owned gravel mine.

For money, he works odd jobs. “I’m sort of a gofer. I go for whatever I can get my hands on.”

He grew up in Brooklyn without any plans. “I never put dreams together.” When he finished high school in Canarsie, he joined the Army. “Imagine this, 1969 when everybody’s trying to get out of the Vietnam thing, I’m trying to get in.” Tom’s eyesight is bad. Someone else took the eye test.

His motivation for joining the Army was the city. “I just did it more or less because I was sick of living in New York.”

Living is a subject Tom Flathaug has to confront aggressively each day. It is ironic, for many people think his lifestyle as one rife with freedom.

It does seem that way. On River Road he took his wash water from a brook, while Magic lapped a drink by his side.

Back at camp, Tom would attach a sign to his camper: “Warning: Attack dog on premises.” The sign was intended to deter vandals.

Magic, Tom boasted, was a smart dog. “Magic, how many fingers?” Tom would ask, holding up two fingers.

“Woof, woof, woof.”

Then out came the cassette. “He sings to the ‘Wabash Cannonball.'” Magic would howl.

Tom’s life seemed simple.

“A lot of people will say, ‘Gee, you’ve got it easy. You just drive here and you drive there.'”

But that’s not true.

Tom Flathaug’s day would start basically like anybody else’s, “except I can’t leave dishes in the sink, because if I’m movin’ you’ve got all this debris flying all over the place. There’s nothing like scraping last night’s mashed potatoes off the door.”

He is part of “sort of like a fraternity” of maybe a half dozen people who live in various campers in various parts of New Milford. Part of the fraternal order is to help look out for one another.

Looking out is serious business when all of your life’s belongings are in one blue Dodge van.

Not that Tom Flathaug had much. He had a cassette player, Dobro guitar and Magic.

Sherman’s Italian Festival was in full swing Aug. 10. Tom’s job was to help with the PA system. It’s a job he does a lot for local fairs.

This Sunday was not different, except that around three o’clock Tom Flathaug got “a weird feeling.”

“I sensed something happened,” he says now. His face behind thick glasses wrinkles. He hides it behind his hand.

He was working. He couldn’t leave.

It was near sunset when he finally got a ride to Rocky River Road. He walked the half mile from Route 7 to his camper.

“As soon as I topped the hill I didn’t hear Magic’s chain rattle and I knew something was wrong.”

Magic had been tethered to the van by 10 feet of web rope and another five feet of link chain. He was under the van.

Somebody had broken into the van using a rock. They took Tom’s cassette player, his Dobro guitar and they’d shot Magic.

“It’s the way I choose to live,” Tom Flathaug had said several months ago. He’d leaned back in his chair and puffed on a Viceroy.. “I’m not forced to live this way.”

That choice was Tom’s freedom. He wore it as easily as his tarnished Dobro buckle.

But anyone’s freedom has a price. For Tom, that price was Magic.

“It’s a great life if you don’t weaken to some of the pressures,” Tom had said.

Last week, Tom buried Magic in the woods.

It’s the little things that count, I told the students. They stay in your heart.

Jane Curtis is interim editor of the Daily Freeman-Journal. She was managing editor of The New Milford Times in the mid-1980s when she wrote the original piece.