Tony “Monk” Cassatta may be the most famous Memphian that people here never knew.
Let me explain: Most people living here in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and beyond had heard stories about the odd little fellow that everyone called Monk. Perhaps some of you had encounters with him. But nobody really knew much, if anything about him: his real name, his background, where he lived.
So back in 1979, Memphis magazine published a profile of this interesting fellow, written by my pal Susan Turley Dynerman, and it was one heckuva interview since Monk had plenty to say, all right, but not many things that really made sense. In fact, the story was rather cryptically titled “Who Is This Man? — The Secret Life of Memphis’ Most Visible Eccentric.”
That was before I came along, you see.
His attire was as distinctive, in its own way, as my own. “You can find him bundled in four or five wool shirts on days when the blacktop is hot as a skillet,” wrote Susan. “And you can find him bent over his walking stick, an oversized baseball cap cocked on his head, a stub of a cigar protruding from his small, furrowed face, tapping on car windows.”
