I eventually took it on myself to follow Kenny with a microcassette tape recorder, keeping a step behind as he skipped along the boardwalk and streets of this upscale town, shouting at passing beachgoers and pedestrians, "Wake up! Wake up! Time is short. When you die, you won't even see the dark." With his demeanor reminiscent of a disoriented Biblical prophet, Kenny was the message no less than his words.
People who have read the original book have often asked," Well, what do you think? Is he just a mentally troubled Vietnam ex-G.I. or could he be some sort of an embodied herald or an emissary from another dimension? As a matter of fact, I myself have continued to wonder: who is this Kenny anyway? I can never forget the time I watched him skip away into the night after one of our recorded interviews at my one-room oceanside abode, and saw huge sparks racing along the high-tension wires between the utility poles he had just passed. Another challenging mystery concerns the photos I had attempted to take, one of which made him look as if enclosed within a shroud, and another one was likewise inexplicably distorted. [Both photos are among those featured in the book]. Curiously, Kenny's mother, shortly before her death, revealed to her son that she had a similarly distorting experience when she looked into a mirror a few days before giving him birth.
Here's another assessment from an observer in Kenny's hometown of Savannah, Georgia, Carl Fleischaker:
"The first time I saw Kenny was from a car. Normally, I would have seen just another long-haired hippie-type walking down the street, carrying a bicycle wheel. He had a kind of a scowl on his face -- not too unusual a sight. But as I was driving by, it flashed on my mind that this was no hippie but a modern-day prophet, a seasoned avatar carrying the wheel of life and determined to bestow wisdom on the world. I am a relatively straight sort of a guy, and I don't usually see prophets and avatars. I have a degree in psychology, I sell real estate, I keep my lawn cut and the pool clean, and I voted for Ronald Reagan twice. But all the same, I felt compelled to pull over and check this guy out."
May I invite you to check this guy out yourself?