Sometimes, it's hard fitting in/ 'Outstanding Balloon Man' finds a

Barry Lee Bartlett spits when he talks. He pulled out all his teeth while medicated on Thorazine in a mental hospital. He's loud and argumentative when he gets frustrated. He twitches, jerks and jumps. He makes strange noises.

As local folks spent the day after Thanksgiving wrapped in the comfort of blessings counted, Barry Lee Bartlett was alone with his Tourette's syndrome and other unexplained problems, pacing and talking and twitching in front of the downtown Greyhound bus station.

He wasn't quite sure where he was or how he ended up there. He got on the bus in Syracuse, N.Y., a few days ago, headed for home - Room 30 of the Queen City Motel in Dickinson, N.D.

In Cleveland, after passengers complained about his incessant talking and twitching, he was taken off the bus and to a psychiatric hospital, where a doctor gave him Valium and decided he posed no danger to himself or others. He's even got the discharge sheet to prove it, he said, pulling a paper from one of the pockets of his grimy coveralls.

Put back on a bus, he somehow ended up in Colorado Springs. It was the final destination listed on his ticket, but he said he's not sure why. He's never been here. He didn't want to come here. He doesn't know anyone here, and he hasn't a penny to his name.

Bartlett doesn't even have a 100-count bag of his beloved Qualitex #262 balloons, which he twists and ties into 2,674 shapes. He bills himself as the "Outstanding Balloon Man" and supplements his $440-a-month Social Security benefits by bending rubber into the likenesses of Elvis and Elmo and Clint Eastwood, most recently at the Applebee's restaurant in Dickinson.

"There are a lot of balloon men. But I'm not just a balloon man," he said. "I'm greater than that."

Bartlett scrambled to a dirty backpack and pulled out a sheaf of laminated press clippings from small newspapers across the country that tout his balloon-shaping abilities.

After a particularly violent twitch, Bartlett said balloon twisting keeps him calm. It's something he can do well. It's something he can hide behind:

"When I have my balloons, kids don't ask their moms why I'm twitching and making funny noises," he said. "They see it as an act. They see another man in me. When I make a bicyclist or Elvis or a chair out of balloons, they say 'This man isn't crazy.'"

Crazy. It's a word Bartlett has heard often. He heard it early and often from his own mother, who put him in a succession of mental institutions beginning in childhood. When he wasn't there, he was back with his mother, who would hit him in the head with pans, a boat oar and "anything I knocked over." She lives out East now and won't have anything to do with her son.

On this Thanksgiving weekend, it seems no one else will, either. His only friend, "Chicken Man," who sometimes helps him in his balloon act when he travels, lives in New York, too far to help. A dozen calls Friday by The Gazette to social service agencies turned up just two offers: a free lunch and a night's stay at the Red Cross Shelter.

Bartlett said he can't stay at shelters. He's tried when he's been down on his luck in the past. He gets beat up or thrown out because he talks too much, too loudly and often throughout the night.

None of the agencies contacted said they'd buy Bartlett a bus ticket home, although the representative of one said her agency might if he was screened by another agency first. That agency was closed for the holiday.

"I don't know how to get home," Bartlett said, inexplicably pawing through pockets of his coveralls for scraps of paper. "People don't understand Tourette's syndrome. I feel like crying. The Outstanding Balloon Man gets thanks but no thanks, not Thanksgiving."

A minute later, the Outstanding Balloon Man said, "Hey, see what I can do!" He then pulls his toothless mouth up under his nose in a drop-dead imitation of Popeye.

"I don't like to do that much," he said. "It hurts."

- Bill McKeown covers general assignments and may be reached at 636-0197 or mckeown@gazette.com

Tourette's syndrome

Symptoms of Tourette's syndrome can include twitching and involuntary verbalizations. Such speech can be loud and profane.

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