Floyd Bridges
Floyd Bridges had a dream. He wanted to bring the happy sounds of the banjo
to the underwater world. His dream had to wait until after his service in
the War Between the States, or as he called it, the Swivel War, as he changed
sides so often that even he is unsure of where he was born.
As soon as the then Colonel Floyd Bridges (to the North) / General Jebediah
Bridges (to the South) mustered out he set out to achieve his dream and put
together the oft-maligned "Mr. Bridges' Antebellum Submarine Banjo Band";
he set up a series of concert dates at both lakeside and seaside resorts.
It was a short-lived experiment as they soon discovered that no one could
hear them. This led to what the tabloids called the disastrous "South
Beach Sizzle", a debacle in which most of the band died in an attempt
to electrify their instruments. Floyd escaped physically unharmed but it was
many years before he could bathe again.
While performing as the Filthy Minstrel, Floyd got into a bar fight with John
Philip Sousa and a couple of mummers about hamburgers and whether they had
more ham in them than he did. He lost. The lengthy hospital stay gave him
time to reflect on his life, and he came to enjoy the daily sponge baths provided
by the busty young nurses in their hot, tight, sweaty little striped outfits
and (uhhhh. . . never mind). . .
Determined to succeed, and turned off to meat by the callous Sousa, Floyd's
next band, "Colonel Floyd's Scrozak
Mountain Serenaders" had a minor hit with the early vegan song "Cattle
Hymn of the Republic". It would be the high point of his career, although
he continued to perform with the band until they got sick of his repeated
attempts to submerge them.
Floyd is currently employed as a "pearl diver" at the Home for the
Obsessively Quaint. He still hopes to make a comeback and gets very secretive
when asked about his rumored audible aqua banjo. He insists there is no connection
between his experiments and local mass fish kills.
When asked about Lamont Bridges, Floyd would only say, "Dead? Poets don't
die."