The big fiberglass mascots on the side of the road in my childhood? They were called "muffler men". Drjim of Every Blade Of Grass has turned up fascinating links on this piece of kitschy Americana. For some reason I found them scary when I was little, and I wasn't the slightest bit surprised when one got all animated and tried to attack somebody in Stephen King's It.
Maybe that's why they're kinda nostalgic for me now: They represent the dangers of a simpler time, and it would be nice to go back to the days when my worries were leering fiberglass mascots and the Hamburglar instead of Congress and the federal bureaucracy. For one thing, unlike Congressmen, there's no law against shooting fiberglass mascots, so long as they're your fiberglass mascots and you do it outside of city limits.
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8 comments:
Phallic.
Sometimes a giant fiberglass lumberjack is just a giant fiberglass lumberjack.
Hold on, are you saying there are restrictions on congresscritters?
Damnation. I was about to start a thread about the correct load for them. For the the record I think it's .177: because you want them to hurt and suffer before finally expiring after being hit 1500 times.
Southern Illinois, 1969. A local body shop used the shell from two fiberglass motorcycle helmets to turn "Big John" into "Dolly Parton"
Locals, less than amused, burned the new Ms Parton, whose otherwise mannish features were... actually stunningly accurate. From that moment I cannot see a "Big John" without thinking how much the facial features resemble Dolly's.
Out here the muffler guy was paired with an equally enormous Blue Ox -- Babe's Muffler Service. One or two of the muffler guys are still around, rebadged when the Babe's chain folded, but the mega-oxen are extinct.
We've still got one standing in my town, looks kinda like Howdy Doodie holding a muffler, in front of Ken's Mufflers.
We've got on still standing in Tucson outside of a hotrod shop. Its dressed up like a lumberjack and he is usually holding an axe.
He's had a giant candy cane for the last month or so.
We had one still standing outside a auto service shop here until the '06 tornado decapitated the poor guy.
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