Do you have lousy neighbours? Some people might have it worse than others... (my bolding...)
http://www.fosters.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090611/GJNEWS_01/706119780Rochester man flies Nazi flag after dispute over leaf-blowing
ROCHESTER — Any World War II veterans visiting Chestnut Hill
Mobile Home Park should prepare themselves for a shock — a Nazi swastika is fluttering defiantly from a flagpole on Riley Street.
The homeowner, Erlon Johnson, has several poles in his front yard, and displays a Support Our Troops flag and a Stars and Stripes, on either side of the flag of the Third Reich that, to many Americans, still gives great offense.
Johnson, 75, says he was in the Korean conflict, asserts he is patriotic and that the Nazi flag is not intended as an insult to the armed forces, but rather, is intended to irk a neighbor with whom he had a leaf-blowing dispute
two years ago.
"I sent off to North Carolina and got a lot of flags," Johnson told the Rochester Times last week. "If there was an Osama bin Laden flag I would fly that."
Asked, last Thursday, if he would be flying the Swastika on D-Day (two days hence) — a day when many American and Allied troops lost their lives storming the Nazi flag on the beaches of Normandy, Johnson said he was unaware D-Day was coming up and would substitute the flag on that day. On Saturday, June 6, Johnson was flying the Confederate Flag in place of the Swastika — the controversial German flag was hoisted back up his pole this week.
Included in Johnson's flag collection, and flown on occasion to bug the neighbors are a Skull and Crossbones and a Hammer and Sickle.
"I was flying the Confederate Flag one time when a guy came by
selling meat off the back of a truck. He saluted it," recalled Johnson.
Neighbors from Riley Street, despite their contacting the Rochester Times three times recently about Johnson's flags, were unwilling to speak on the record.
Park Manager Kevin Grondin was unavailable for comment.
However, World War II and Korean conflict veteran, Lt. Col. "Mac" McLean, USMC (Ret.) pointed out, during a visit to Rochester this week, "It is his democratic right to fly it, but others have the right to protest its presence, too."
