Friday, September 21, 2012

The Legend of Captain Bubblegum

Longtime reader and frequent commenter Smurf's Inc, also known as Wurstside Warrrior, raised the specter of the notorious Captain Bubblegum way back in 2008. Yet we never really got the full story on this Flint legend. There was talk of attacks via mopeds and horror films, but no real information. Here's some background from Smurf's Inc:
I first became aware of Capt. Bubblegum sometime during the early 80s while attending Walker School (or was it Walker Learning Center?) One morning as the buses arrived from all over the city, the kids who arrived on bus #212 from the northwest side were terrified. Scared silly. Hysterical. They reported that a man wearing a superhero outfit had chased them. If memory serves me he struck at both Pierson and Selby. After our teacher interrogated the students it turned out that others had experienced run-ins with this character before. 
Fast forward 8 or 9 years. An outlandishly dressed street person appears on the corner of Ann Arbor and Court St. He doesn't move for weeks. Sitting on a milk crate he is christened Capt. Bubblegumhead... or was he. I assumed this was just some stupid name my friends came up with until...
1994 finds me working at Al Kessel's Al E. Oops Soul Food Cafe. Yeah, I know, that is a story in and of itself. Anyway, one of my fellow dishwashers is a Black Muslim kid by the name of Termikius.
 
Termikius was a fixture for years at Pierson and Clio hawking copies of Farrakhan's Final Call newspaper. Uhhhh so, one day he regaled me with a story, the confirmation of the existence of Capt. Bubblegum. A few years previous he and two buddies were pursued by a guy on a moped screaming "I'm gonna kill you". Termikius wasn't ashamed to say that he and his pals were in a state of total horror. After all, they were being hunted down by Capt. Bubblegum!!! WTF?!? I implored him to tell me more. Another co-worker chimed in as well. This superhero gone bad was a well-known freakazoid on the north side. Allegedly he never actually caught his prey, but if he did would we ever really know?
So let's solve this mystery. Anyone have some reliable info on Captain Bubblegum?


3 comments:

  1. I attended Pierson in the 80's and was raised by my godmother in Selby neighborhood and there was a real " Captain Bubblegum". He chased my friend home one time while she was walking from Selby. I believe he was someone who suffered from mental illness. And to my understanding, he recently passed away.

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  2. There is a captain bubblegum i seen him not to long ago he been around since the 70''s he use to chase kids that talk about him. he use to carry lots of keys and would say he had keys to there house.

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  3. He was absolutely real. He stalked me and my sister back in 1985 to 1990. Still traumatized. He was a sick pervert. He had Bubblegum wrappers attached to his jumpsuit and he used to follow, chase and even worse things. I'll never forget his tail. Not a legend it's real. Born and raised in Flint for 18years. He started stalking me on Wisner which off Pierson and Clio Rd and then in Civic Park neighborhood Humboldt street. I hope he's dead because he killed my youth and some of the fear I had as a child has carried over into my adulthood. Still very fearful of men.

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Thanks for commenting. I moderate comments, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. You might enjoy my book about Flint called "Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City," a Michigan Notable Book for 2014 and a finalist for the 33rd Annual Northern California Book Award for Creative NonFiction. Filmmaker Michael Moore described Teardown as "a brilliant chronicle of the Mad Maxization of a once-great American city." More information about Teardown is available at www.teardownbook.com.