Article
and Video Courtesy of
Channel
9 WFTV.COM, Orlando
Published
March 13, 2010
|
Watch
VIDEO
|
VOLUSIA
COUNTY, Fla. -- A man hung women's
underwear all over his yard and painted a witch on his $300,000 home. The
man who owns the house calls himself "Prince Mongo."
WFTV
went to his home on Venetian Way to find out why he's
doing it.
All
of this is apparently the result of a fight. Robert
"Prince Mongo" Hodges used to have a deck on the
side of the house, but he was forced to tear it down and
blames neighbors and county officials. Hodges calls what
he has done art and even communicates with his home
planet.
"Everyone
wants to go to my planet. They're sick |
|
|
of
what’s going on on Earth. The Earth is going to be destroyed," he
told WFTV.
With
his descriptions of another planet, his outlandish outfits and occasional
outbursts, it's tempting to ignore Robert "Prince Mongo" Hodges.
But it's impossible to ignore his home and what it has done to his
neighborhood.
Surrounded
in underwear, odd decorations and outlandish paint, it has
started to draw crowds of sightseers and has angered
neighbors.
"They
kind of started a war with me. And, after they started the
war, I'm like anybody else, I just had to defend
myself," he said.
Mongo,
as he likes to be called, blames his neighbors for forcing
him to tear out a deck he didn't have a permit for.
"They
don't understand that other people have to live on Earth
with them and they just want to rule and govern,"
Mongo said. |
|
|
So
he started to be artistic, he said, not to antagonize, but to communicate.
Since he started receiving code violations from Volusia County, he's put
them on a stake and said he will fight them.
"The
people running the government here, they're very politicized. They don't
act according to the law," he said.
Mongo
has fought government before in Tennessee and demonstrated he has the
money for long court battles. Volusia County is still adding up his fines,
but has no legal recourse right now, outside the code violations, to force
Mongo to restore his home's condition.
"I've
been getting an awful lot of compliments about fighting for the rights
that we have," Mongo said.
Prince
Mongo said he may even consider running for office, like he's done several
times in Tennessee.
Neighbors:
Man's Home Decor Nuisance For Community
|