Bum On Corner Used To Be Trapeze Artist, Fireman, Lizard

Story by Jacob Zlomke 

| Published Jan 26, 2010

Sherman Rodgers, a self-proclaimed “good-traveled man” and publicly perceived homeless guy, revealed last Wednesday evening to a group of three college students that he was not always just a retired investor that picks up chicks on his corner at the intersection of O Street and Centennial Mall.

“Back in the 20s, when I was about 35 years old,” Rodgers said, “I performed at circuses all over the world as a trapeze swinger. But that was before I survived a 75 foot free-fall because my ex-trapeze partner and then best friend fucked me over by not tossing me the rope. Looking back on it, he was probably a Jew.”

Rodgers told the bystanders that his stint as a circus performer lasted for about 15 years, around the time the Great Depression hit in 1930.

“In the early 30s, I met up with Duke Ellington and worked with him until we got in a fight over a woman we both loved. Or maybe it was whether or not Bombay was in the Eastern of Southern hemisphere. In any case, I punched his lights out.”

Rodgers life story then skips from the 30s to the 1980s where he reappears as a “really great fireman.”

“When I was a firefighter, there were no fire-caused deaths in the United States. Absolutely zero,” Rodgers said, “and that’s a fact I’d stake my reputation on.”

Rodgers said he had all the girls he wanted when he was a firefighter because back then women had respect for a position such as his.

“The playboy life I was leading couldn’t last though. I decided to be a lizard in 1993 so I could get away from it all. And there isn’t a day I don’t wish I could be a lizard again. One thing you probably don’t know is that lizards don’t have to pay taxes or wait in line for food. The government still thinks I’m a lizard, so I don’t pay taxes anymore.”

Rodgers said he now is saving his millions of dollars for a special girl he knows he’ll meet at his intersection where he sits every night.

“And while I wait for that to happen,” Rodgers explained, “I may as well make the world a better place by asking for change that I can give to homeless people.”