Casey, Illinois, the Big Things Capital of the World

May 29, 2021June 2, 2021 / Beena / Leave a comment

Casey has been at the top of my bucket list for a several years. This is the holy land for Worlds Largest Objects. Several years ago, on tour with the band I sometimes tour manage we were routed to play a show in Indiapolis followed by a show in Saint Louis. This route takes you on I-70 directly by Casey. My opportunity had come! I told a small white lie about the amount of time it takes to drive between the two cities and added a couple hours onto our drive time to conveniently ensure that we would have enough time to stop in Casey.

On that fateful day in September, the van got a flat tire. As it turned out our jack was stuck and not fully extending and we had to call AAA to change it. Amazingly, after all of that, we still easily made it to Saint Louis in time for load in. Everyone was surprised we had still made it in time except, of course, for me, because the extra hours has been secretly planned for Casey. I was heart broken.

I figured that since Indianapolis to Saint Louis or vice versa was such a common touring route, my chance to stop in Casey would come along again in no time at all. Of course, as we all know better than ever, best laid plans don’t always work out. The band broke up. The singer began a new solo project and his label put the album release and touring on hold for a year waiting for the right opening in the market. In January we were given the exciting news that we would be on the Stadium Tour over the summer with Motley Crue, Joan Jett, Def Leppard, and Poison and the plan was made to release the record in July. The tour would take us once again through Casey.

Giant birdcage to look at the giant mailbox from

Of course, we all know what happened next. In February we learned of covid-19. By March we knew that a global pandemic was coming and things began to lock down. The tour was officially cancelled in May. What started as a few weeks of lockdown stretched into months of a new reality. Traveling seemed like a faraway dream.

In September I decided to take a trip to Casey. As a caveat, yes, I traveled during the pandemic. No, going to see oversized objects is not essential. I attempted to be as safe as possible, drove alone, was going to see outdoor attractions, stayed in entire air b&bs, brought my own cooler full of food to avoid having to go to restaurants. (there are other reasons for this for me in the midwest LOL) I took a covid test before leaving and scheduled one for when I returned before going back to work.

This tiny town has a population of about 2,700 people. Other than the railroad line running (literally) through it it doesn’t have much of an economic niche. But this tiny Midwestern town boasts 12 official World’s Largest Objects. The first attempt at a world record was the worlds largest windchime. It was built in 2011. It stands proudly downtown across the street from the Worlds Largest rocking chair

In 2015 Jim Brolin founded the big things in a small town workshop. He runs Bolin enterprises which is a local contracting company which had the contract to remove and replace many of the large wooden telephone poles along I-70 and other construction projects. With the salvaged wood and metal from construction projects he began constructing oversized objects. His large wooden clogs took the world record in 2015. The shoes are, by the way, inside an old fashioned candy store if there are any other licorice lovers out there. Every year since he has added more and more large objects to Casey’s collection.

The second was the Worlds Largest Golf Tee which is located on the local golf course- don’t worry you can walk into the gift shop and just tell them that you want to go visit the tee and its not a bad walk from the downtown super concentrated area of big things

The worlds Largest pitchfork is in front of Richards Farm Restaurant. If you don’t know much about Guinness world records, perhaps you haven’t read as much as about the battle for worlds largest chair as I have, but without a previous record holder to beat in dimensions, the worlds largest must be at least 10 times larger than the normal sized object. The largest pitchfork which is ten times larger than a regular pitchfork, received it’s world record in 2015

The Worlds Largest rocking chair, arguably Casey’s most famous big thing, dominates its intersection in downtown. It received its title in 2015, taking the crown from another rocker in neighboring Indiana. My only gripe with the big beautiful rocker is that you can’t sit in it for photo ops. I can only assume this would be a huge liability thing if someone fell off. Sigh. We can’t have anything nice.

Oh, it’s big. The World’s Largest Rocking Chair

There are some big things you definitely can get your photo op with. The worlds largest Mailbox is the big thing photo op I’ve personally been lusting for for years… yes, these are apparently the types of things I would describe myself as lusting after at this point in my life. Another caveat of holding a world record is that the item has to be functional. To use a rather specific example this means you can’t paint a grain silo to look like a nutcracker and then claim the title of worlds largest nutcracker, you must make a functioning mouthpiece that could theoretically crush an extremely large nut.

This is why Casey’s mailbox is fully functional. not only does the door on the front open and close, but its also a designated usps pick up point so you can, in fact, mail a letter from the mailbox. You can climb the stairs from the bottom and stand fully inside and if you’re me, pray that your bluetooth shutter can reach your tripod sitting in the middle of the street below to get the best photo op ever. Don’t worry though, this is small down middle America and Id imagine your iPhone is quite safe far below you on the street.

Another functioning worlds largest object in Casey is the Worlds Largest barber pole in front of, you guessed it, the small town barber. Many of the town’s large objects are meant to lead the visitor to the business they sit in front of, and it seems many businesses in Casey are in on the fun.

The nearby worlds largest teeter totter is also funtional in order to hold its title, but I sadly did not get to ride as its only rideable on Saturdays during the tourist season.

One of the newest record holders in town is the Worlds Largest Key located in front of a vintage car dealer. It is apparently an exact replica of big things creator Josh Brolins work truck key.

The swizzle spoon and worlds largest 9 iron were not on display when I was there, so one could theoretically see more big things every time they returned. Casey also holds lots of large objects which don’t hold any records. This seems to mainly be because apparently they didn’t learn any of the lessons that they rest of us have about creating unrealistic expectations by constantly outdoing yourself. These include a large mousetrap, large dreidel, a giant pencil, and a yard stick. An absolutely massive pair of antlers sit in front of a car parts business on the edge of town, apparently used as a prop for something and then gifted to Casey on account of their reputation for oversized objects. Inside the store is a huge and wonderful rocking horse which is apparently so drowned out by its giant competition that no one even mentioned it to me.

One thing I hadn’t realized before coming was the that big things in Casey are actually… Jesus-y. Each one is emblazoned with a tenuously related bible verse. For example, the giant pencil says down one side “let love and faithfulness never leave you; bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart.” (Proverbs 3:3) Look, I’m just going to say it: this is kinda lame. Like I don’t want a dose of Christianity with my big things, I’m sorry. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with belonging to any religion, and I guess if Worship inspires the creation of kitschy large objects I shouldn’t complain. It’s certainly inspired some of the most incredible art in western history, I don’t think there’s anything lame about botocelli painting religious subject matter so what’s my problem you may ask? I guess I can’t fully explain it. I have spent time thinking about it. At the end of the day building a big thing to hype up god and put a bible quote on is just not the eccentric weirdo vibe you get from imagining a small town weirdo making large objects because he’s a weirdo. Mark Cline, Josh Brolin is not

Giant pencil. Bible verse on reverse side.

The worlds former largest knitting needles, which were inside a closed yarn business when I visited were simply dethroned by another larger pair. Apparently in order to prove the functionality of a pair of huge knitting needles you have to cast on and actually knit a few rows for the Guiness World Record people. This feat was apparently repeated by a UK woman and her larger needles in 2018. No word on if Casey will retaliate with a still larger pair. On the one hand I’m personally on team petty and hope they do. On the other (also petty) hand, maybe this is their just desserts for dethroning old “Big John” from his rocking chair throne. Someone apparently never told the folks in Casey the big chair etiquette where you simply build another type of chair.

The former Worlds largest knitting needles

I’ve really struggled writing this blog, and whether or not even to address my… impression of Casey. Ultimately I decided that this blog isn’t really meant to be strictly educational. It’s not meant to be a tourist travel brochure for the places I talk about. It can be those things of course. But what I really want this to also be is stories. Stories of these strange places and things and my impressions and experiences of them. Otherwise you could just read Wikipedia articles, right? And the story of Casey, Illinois for me, isn’t really the whole story unless I tell the rest of it.

I happened to travel to Casey at a very specific and very unique moment in history. The pandemic lock downs which were supposed to last a few weeks had stretched across the summer and beginning to loom over the fall. Future plans were replaced by monotonous despair. Businesses failed, goals and dreams were indefinitely put on hold, people got sick and people died. Meanwhile a chasm opened up between the people of the country over covid. You might say “over politics” but you’d likely give away which side you fell on if you did. The presidential election which felt like a lit fuse, was only a few months away.

A portion of the country, fueled by distrust, objected to lock downs, masks, and other mitigation methods. Some believed it to be an overreaction, some believed the virus and reaction to it to be an elaborate hoax, some simply valued personal freedom to abstain from participating in the measures we were told would help mitigate the spread. The situation was entirely unprecedented, and the disease previously completely unknown, so everyone found themselves in uncharted waters and everyone seemed to have different ideas on the correct way to navigate them.

I don’t want to spiral out into a political discourse here if I can possibly avoid it, but it’s no secret that the division brought into stark contrast by Covid had been building for the last several years. I felt it more keenly in Casey than I had anywhere before or since.

You may have guessed from the extensive foreshadowing I just did that the citizens of Casey and I found ourselves on two different sides of the great American chasm. Nobody in Casey wore masks. All my interactions with maskless people were polite enough, but tense in a way that it’s hard to put into words. Every house I passed sported huge make America great again signage. Many yards had signs reading simply “Pritzger sucks” apparently a backlash against the Illinois governors mask mandates and lock downs. The entire effect was a feeling of unease. Everyone I interacted with treated me what I can only call strangely, like an alien, which only heightened my feeling of suspicion that these people might not like me. Cars slowed down passing me. The owner of the hotel asked me awkward questions like if I was sure nobody else was coming out of my room, as though me being alone was simply a non possibility.

Because I have such a hard time describing any specific examples of why Casey felt so alienating and hostile to me, some people I have described it to have said I imagined it. Asked what I expected from a small town in the Midwest. This gaslighting almost convinced me not to write about this experience because I believed I might have imagined it. But I remember why it was so confusing to be treated so weirdly. Because why on earth would you build more than a dozen of the worlds largest objects and then act like someone was a weirdo for coming to see them??? Plenty of people put strange stuff on private property and do I bother them? No! There’s a lot of weird things in small towns in the Midwest, and I never slid my pepper spray in my pocket in any of those places. The day after I left Casey I went to the worlds largest ball of paint which may as well be in a town called cornfield in Indiana and the sweetest, most wonderful people greeted me there and showed me their strange pride and joy ball of paint. I didn’t imagine that being different than the place I had just left less than 24 hours before. It was different. Casey was an America I suddenly felt alien in.

Roadside attractions are actually maybe literally more American than apple pie. I write this and I go to these places because you can only do this here in America. I actively resist the narrative thats been sold to me my entire life that only world travel makes you cultured, and there is something inherently less valuable or less sophisticated about things you can see right here. I love this America with and it’s hugeness and it’s optimism and it’s quirky weirdness. It IS great. But this other America, the one I glimpsed in Casey, left a bad taste in my mouth. And more than that it left me with a profound feeling of fear that we were so far apart, these two Americas, that we couldn’t reach each other again.

I also felt a deep resentment against COVID-19 as I left Casey, knowing I would never be back to see the big things I missed or the new ones they build. The pandemic took extremely profound things from many people- their livelihoods, loved ones, health, and I was so lucky it didn’t take those things from me. But it took much smaller things from everyone. And from me, Covid, and the division it contributed to, took the magic out of The worlds biggest collection of big things.

Dinosaur Kingdom II (Mark Cline Part 1 of ?)

September 20, 2018June 9, 2021 / Beena / Leave a comment

Dinosaur Kingdom II might be the most perfect roadside attraction. Mark Cline is both a hero of mine and a man after my own heart. Here, in the rural Virginia town named for a naturally bridge shaped rock formation that George Washington once carved his initials into, he has built an attraction which honors all of our mutual favorite things. If I had a list of my favorite kinds of roadside attractions it would probably be something like this

Dinosaurs
Fake Wild West Town
Animatronics
Mystery House
Kitch oversized objects

Well guess what y’all, Dinosaur Kingdom II has them all.

Entrance to Dinosaur Kingdom II

In a video game or a movie, sometimes a hidden clue or reference is called an Easter Egg. The very first thing I saw when I arrived at DKII was an Eastern Egg of sorts. Looking down at me from the roof of the gift shop building was a familiar face. A happy light green dragon is playing a lute up there. I know this dragon. I have seen this dragon before, but the last time that I saw him he was on the roof of a castle which once served as the entrance to the Enchanted Forest theme park abandoned in Ellicott City, Maryland.

To my father’s credit, I sent him this photo and he immediately texted back recognizing this particular dragon

The Enchanted Forest has its own blog entry of course, but much of it’s restoration effort was led by Mark Cline, who attended the park as a child, and subsequently named his studio, right down the street from the new Dinosaur Kingdom (where he can keep an eye on it) Enchanted Studios. Later in the day Mark Cline told me this story with his own mouth so the following story is 100% true:

A few years ago, while working to remove the iconic dragon from the roof of the ruined Enchanted Forest castle now abandoned in the woods behind a Petsmart, it was necessary to attempt to cut it apart. During the effort the dragon somehow caught on fire. (Mr Cline seems to have terrible luck with fire in general but my hypothesis on how this happened would be that if attempting to saw the dragon apart and hitting the metal frame created a spark, this could had easily ignited the ancient paper mâché, coating, and layers of latex paint.) And so, years after walking under the dragon’s castle gate as a child, Mark Cline the man stood on the castle roof, desperately throwing water on a literal fire breathing dragon. This means that one person in the entire history of fairytales grew up to actually become a dragon fighting knight for a moment.

The restored castle entrance to Enchanted Forest

The battle was eventually lost and the dragon burned down to its metal frame and was recreated on its original framework and returned to it’s place atop the castle. Mark Cline enjoyed this so much though, that he made a duplicate dragon for himself and plopped it atop his own castle.

You enter Dinosaur Land II through a train car. Above the door a sign explains the basic plot. What’s that you say, you didn’t know roadside attractions had plots? Well they do. The plot of Dinosaur Kingdom sheds light on a forgotten (covered up) chapter of the Civil War. It would seem that in 1864 after shelling the nearby city of Lexington, union soldiers discovered that their ground shaking assault had woken cryogenically frozen dinosaurs in the nearby caverns. They decide the reasonable thing to do would be to try to use these huge strange beasts as weapons of war against the South.

Seems legit

At the same time Dr Cline, from the future, is also in the year 1864. He was of course also in past a few times, which is actually how the dinosaurs came to be trapped in the nearby caverns, and how a time cloned replica of Stonehenge came to be nearby in the area, because time travel is crazy y’all. Trapped there and hoping for gold to finance the Southern armies, he searches for the legendary Beale treasure in the area, and getting into all sorts of other trouble with the Slimers his travels brought along.

Dr Cline who evidently has been all over time causing chaos

If the finer points of this plot escape you there is a wonderful comic book written and illustrated by Cline meant to accompany Dinosaur Kingdom II which I’m sure will make it all perfectly clear and reasonable. At any rate you’re now about to pass through a time tunnel into 1864…

Once you pass through this time tunnel you’ll find yourself in the first type of roadside attraction, a reproduction of an 1800’s town. This little homage to a faux western ghost town attraction turns my eyes into cartoon shaped hearts. The civil war era town is arranged along a small “Main Street” with businesses on either side.

Main Street

Treasures and tableaus greet you as you look inside many of the buildings. The town has an undertaker (of course), but it is immediately obvious that something has something has gone wrong here.

Dr Cline’s Slimers lurk behind windows in classic haunted house style swing bys and baby dinosaurs reap havoc in the local undertakers.

Neighborhood Undertaker’s

The street also features one building clearly tilted forward. This is the second type of roadside attraction at Dinosaur Kingdom. Just thrown in among the buildings of the fake town is a slanty mystery style house. I attempted to take a video of walking through this, feeling that I am a mystery house pro, and immediately stumbled sideways and smashed my shin into the chair on the wall your meant to sit in as an optical illusion in a Mystery House. So it’s what I would call an Advanced Mystery House.

At the end of the street, is a mill where you can feed something chained inside a building. This little piece of engineering reminds me very much of a Haunted house I used to go to on the boardwalk of Virginia Beach when I was a child. Mark Cline did at one point have a haunted house attraction (and a unrelated time machine attraction at Virginia Beach actually) which sadly was another victim of fire. Haunted House style gags and jumps make several appearances at Dinosaur Kingdom

I’m not gonna tell you what happens

At the bottom of the hill you enter the third type of attraction at Dinosaur Kingdom through a giant dinosaur bone gate of sorts. It’s an old school walk through the woods style dinosaur park. You’ve seen them on this blog before, you’re practically a pro at this by now.

The Meg

This is not just any dinosaur park though, sort of pretending to intend to teach children about what types of tri-horned dinosaurs lived in each era by way of hand painted signs. This is Mark Cline’s dinosaur park. So it’s better.

Naughty spiky boys

Walking down the wooded path brings you on a series of scenes depicting the union army struggling to control their new weapons

Making a mess

Besides the comic book which you could if you wished, read along to the scenes in the book as supplementary content, some of the tableaus in the park have QR codes which you can scan from your phone for an extra experience.

Pass this on the side of the trail

Really, make sure you have a QR reader because you don’t want to miss the videos they link to featuring Cline dramatizing some of the scenes.

Find this situation around the next bend

I don’t want to post all of Dinosaur Kingdoms secrets because I strongly desire for you to visit, but there are similar amazing, low budget, humor filled videos to accompany many of the scenes. This is of course remarkable not only because it adds to the experience but also because it bridges the gap between old and new. Here is the most classic of attractions, built by the only man still building them, in very much the same method as roadside dinosaurs have always been built, incorporating this modern media. If Millennials don’t kill the Roadside Attraction the way they apparently kill everything else, this will be their future.

The union apparently attempted to use the dinosaurs in other ways except as weapons, as evidenced by a boy milking a stegosaurus like a cow.

Can you milk reptiles?? I’m not gonna google that

One soldier apparently had the bright idea of attempting to steal dinosaur eggs to eat (times were mean during the war and they were awfully large eggs) One can imagine this didn’t go well for him.

Dinos also apparently interfered with all sorts of historical events in ways that have been shamefully kept from the American public, like attempting to steal the Gettysburg address from Abraham Lincoln!

Abe Lincoln gets the Gettysburg address stolen

And later, men herding and riding Dinos like pack animals.

Get on, lil’ doggy

Other animals seem to have given the army a bit of trouble as well. All and all things seem to have spiraled entirely out of control.

There is a QR video for this scene also I’ll leave to you to imagine

Part of the plot of Dinosaur Kingdom involves local hero Stonewall Jackson. Robert E Lee’s right hand man (no pun intended.) (I think it was his left arm anyway) was injured near the battle of Chancellorsville leading to the loss of his arm and eventually died from his wound and was buried down the road from DK II in the nearby town of Lexington.

There are apparently some things we don’t know about this chapter of history as well. You see, when Dr James Cline became trapped in this time, along with the dinosaurs he brought with him through a series of time machine related accidents, his time machine fell down the collapsing pit that the dinosaurs fell into. Shown kindness by Stonewall Jackson’s wife in his lost in time state, he attempted to fly on a dinosaur to Chancellorsville to prevent the friendly-fire wounding of Stonewall Jackson and ended up causing it instead. Filled with guilt, he had an acquaintance build him a mechanical arm machine in order to dig for the time machine, dug it up, used it to go to the future and steal a Stonewall Jackson wax figure, returned to the past at Jackson’s deathbed, knocked him out with ether, switched him for the wax figure and then took him to a military base to save his life. Are you following this? Its all perfectly clear in the comic book okay.

Honestly headdress wearing tribes weren’t native to this part of the country but considering what else is going on here it doesn’t seem like the fact to get caught up on

Dr Cline and his military inventor friend Moses Ezekiel replaced Stonewall Jackson’s amputated arm with the mechanical arm he used to dig up the buried time machine, and encouraged Jackson to use it to dig for the legendary Beale treasure which would fill the coffers of the struggling Southern army and change the course of the war. All the while Jackson must of course remain “dead” to history. Perfectly sensible. The only problem is that while digging for the Beale treasure he digs several holes down to where the dinosaurs which chased Dr Cline to this time and place at the beginning of this story are lying dormant under the ground, and in combination with heavy shelling from the battle of Lexington, he releases them. He takes shelter in a nearby church, and the union army rounds up the dinosaurs.

This church may not be a good place to hide out

Eventually the Beale treasure is found in a graveyard with a coded tombstone but as they are digging it up a giant albino dinosaur which has been chasing Dr. Cline arrives and Stonewall Jackson makes his stand against it. The creature is defeated but falls into the pit holding the treasure and the mechanical arm and the Beale treasure are lost in the process.

Cemetery where the Beale treasure was buried

Stonewall Jackson fighting with his robotic arm

In a separate battle, slimes, (pre-prehistoric ambiotic creatures also accidentally dragged here by some of Dr Clines time hopping of course) attack dinosaur riding Yankees. There’s zoo animals involved here also. Seriously, it all makes sense in the book. Chaos ensues and the dinosaurs turn on their masters, attacking the union troops.

The final battle royale

The dinos turn on their masters

Dr Cline and friends herd all the dinosaurs onto a train and he drives it off a collapsing train trestle. (DUH)

The war continued for a little while longer without the use of dinosaur super weapons or a bionically armed Stonewall Jackson, or the legendary Beale treasure.

A civil war statue that should remain standing.

Of course all history as we know, is written by the victors, and we know who won the civil war. The union was apparently so embarrassed by it’s attempt to harness the giant lizard creatures they had found, and the ensueing chaos and tragic loss of their own troops, followed by their mysterious disappearance, that they erased the entire incident from the history books.

Imagine what else we don’t know!

Abraham Lincoln, it’s said, thought the entire dinosaur incident was a dream brought on by the extreme stress of the war.

The exit out of Dinosaur Kingdom is another Easter Egg. The turnstiles that you pass through to leave Mr Cline told me, are the original turnstiles from the Enchanted Forest Park. He took them during the restoration and put them on his own attraction. It was wonderful for me to learn that his work on the Enchanted Forest was as important to him as I has suspected as I became quite obsessed with the entire story of its rescue and restoration.

King Kong originally next to the Pink Lady Diner

Outside of Dinosaur Kingdom my last perfect roadside attraction box really gets checked. Numerous large sculpture pieces face the road from outside the park’s fence. The King Kong is familiar to me as it was standing next to the Pink Lady diner 5 years ago when I last traveled to Natural Bridge in search of another piece of Mark Cline’s work- Foamhenge.

Merlin from the original Foamhenge

The large Merlin riding a stone is all that’s left of Foamhenge in the area as it’s now been moved to Centerville, Virginia, (after as we know, being accidentally time cloned here by Dr Cline) but Foamhenge is for another time. It was good to see a familiar face still trying to get the truth to the public about how Foamhenge was actually created. Mark Cline is always trying to get the truth you know, he’s practically Alex Jones.

My best guess is this is Olive Oatman??

The other sculptures here could be from any project of Mark’s. Considering how little they have to do with one another I think it might be best to leave their explanations to mystery.

I have no best guess here

You may have noticed that I mentioned speaking to Mr Cline about some of these things. He lives and keeps his studio in Natural Bridge and leads ghost tours in nearby Lexington, which I went on. He was wonderful and gracious in response to my obvious fandom.

Mr Robot

It’s hard for me to explain exactly why Mark Cline has become so heroic to me. He obviously has an extraordinary imagination and a wonderful sense of humor and is a talented artist. I think it’s more than that though. It’s the specific art that he has chosen. He is the ONLY person that I know of who is currently making new roadside attractions and working in large scale fiberglass sculpture (except arguably Dan Addicks but that’s another story). He’s the only dam in the river that threatens to sweep them all away. Not only is he helping to save the ones that are left he is building his own. I guess he’s a bit of a knight to me, too.

Mark Cline on the left

Mark Cline has a huge body of work and I’ve been to many of his attractions, so expect many more posts about him in the future.

If you’ve made it this far and would like a chance to win a Dinosaur Kingdom II Comic book subscribe to this blog and drop a comment and I’ll chose one to send one to!!

Until next time, Happy adventuring y’all!

The Pink Elephant Mystery

July 26, 2018 / Beena / Leave a comment

In this day and age it’s pretty rare to find a legitimate mystery. To be honest when I first came across this question I expected to just google it and find the answer, and was pretty scandalized when that didn’t immediately work. While digging up information on pink elephants didn’t involve much scrolling through microfiche or family records, it was still pretty fun to put in some internet detective work.

Multiple times when routing potential road trips towards the Midwest I’ve come across the same thing: large pink elephants. Recently I drove to Louisville from Atlanta and there were a whole mess of them scattered around northern Tennessee and Kentucky. Upon looking into it, I now know that they spread up into the Midwest and can be found around Indiana, Illinois, and up into Wisconsin.

BUT… WHY?

Why are there so many pink elephants? Why would so many businesses chose this as their mascot? Was it a trend at one time?

Pink elephant University Motors, West Nashville

I typed these questions with several different phrasings into google and dropped down a couple of internet black holes and found out very little. In response to the pink elephant in Northwest Nashville someone had written to the local NPR asking about the pink elephant phenomenon as they remembered seeing more of them around Tennessee when they were younger.

Nashville, TN

What I found out from this article was only that the elephant at a car dealership in Nashville is actually the second of 2 pink elephants to stand on the spot, and nobody really knows what happened to the first one or why it’s tradition to have a pink elephant there. I can only throw so much hate at that article since I’m about to write almost the same one which will ask lots of questions and answer very few.

Newspaper article showing University Motors original elephant

What they did find out was that original pink elephant at University Motors was a different elephant. They also found out who made that particular elephant. They reached out to FASTKorp out of Sparta, Wisconsin and while the company denied the current elephant is one of theirs they say that the original elephant was. It’s not currently on their website as one of their elephant designs but since they won’t answer MY emails I’ll have to take Nashville NPR’s word for it.)

This does solve the mystery of who manufactured some of the pink elephants. University Motors original elephant is a match to another elephant at another car dealership in Clarkesville, Tennessee. But is this the actual same elephant somehow moved to a different car dealership, or simply another FAST Korp elephant from the same mold? The weird toupe of hair that appears to be painted on the elephants head in the original newspaper photos suggests maybe this is another elephant but he could have simple gotten a new coat of paint, although from the looks of things, not particularly recently. As a counterpoint though, how long do elephants realistically keep the exact same pair of glasses?

Car Market Clarkesville, TN

I found another article that claims that the pink elephant that’s been sitting in a gas station in DeForest, Michigan since the 1960’s, was among the very first pink elephants. Made by Wisconsin local Sculptured Advertising, the first one (a no sunglasses version) was installed in front of Pink Elephant Supper Club in Marquette, IA. After this pink elephant, other pink elephants, these with sunglasses were produced for Arco gas stations in the area which all for a time, displayed pink elephants. Sculptured Advertising went on to change their name to you guessed it, FAST Korp. I haven’t managed to find any old photos of Arco’s with elephants in front of them but man, people sure did love the Noah’s Arc set of animals they used to sell.

Pink elephant in DeForest, WI claiming to be one of the first

I located this original elephant from Pink Elephant Social Club. Although the club has since closed, the top hatted elephant is still in Marquette, where they have a slightly more detailed story of it’s origins. They claim that pink was originally made for a 1964 Republican Convention in Sparta Michigan, and was normal elephant grey. Once it became homeless after the convention and drinking laws changed in Iowa, the elephant was adopted by the new club and painted pink. My only impression of the symbolism of pink elephants comes primarily from a scene in Dumbo, and is that they denote hallucination or drunkenness. So a pink elephant mascot for a bar formed under new drinking laws make perfect sense. What they have to do with gas stations or the other businesses Ive found with pink elephants, I have no idea.

The Pink Elephant Social Club

Same pink elephant now on the waterfront in Marquette Iowa

At some point in time Fast Korp was capitalizing on the pink elephant’s drink associations and also producing elephants holding martini glasses in their trunks. Rumor is some of these also had glasses. I found one of these tipsy elephants next to an antiques malls in Cross Plains, Tennessee, just over the border from Georgia. This one has been given a circus headdress paint job and lost the base of its glass. The shape of the ears and wrinkles on the legs tell me this is a FAST Korp elephant modified from the originals to accommodate the glass.

Cross Plains, Tennessee

As an aside, the FAST Korp piece of the puzzle also solves another mystery unrelated to the pink elephants and instead related to cows.

Ashburn, Georgia cow

One of my very first big things was a giant cow at a gas station in Ashburn, Georgia on the way north from Florida. Several years later I took a photo with another cow in another small town, Guthrie, Kentucky. The cow in Guthrie is wearing glasses. Upon looking at the pictures I realized that aside from the glasses and slight paint job variations, they were the same cow.

Guthrie, Kentucky

You can just throw a pair of glasses on and fool me! This cow is still among the large animal offerings on the FAST Korp website. Guess they were really into making glasses that fit their animals.

Hopkinsville, Kentucky

The reasons for the apparent explosion in popularity the pink elephant seems to have enjoyed remains a mystery. Why they ended up extending from bars to gas stations, salons, and antique stores as a favorite business mascot I don’t know. Since their glory days though, the pink elephants seem to have scattered. One remains at a desolate feeling liquor store in Hopkinsville kentucky and another resides gas station conveinence store in Guthrie, Tennessee. Like the car dealerships, nobody seems to know why exactly a pink elephant.

Guthrie, Kentucky

This isn’t even near a completely satisfying explaination for roadside elephants are all over the United States. It’s also not near a complete list. When discussing this mystery with some friends of mine, I found my friend remembered not one but two in her hometown of Springfield Illinois, one of which has now been painted green, and one that’s holding a martini glass. Do you have a Pinky in your hometown? Know anything about it’s history? Pop in the comments or email me!

The Other First Theme Park and the Saving of the Enchanted Forest

April 14, 2018April 14, 2018 / Beena / Leave a comment

In 1950 there was no such thing as a theme park. Those words in that combination wouldn’t have made any sense to you if you heard them because the concept didn’t exist. All the same, two people on two different coasts were about to invent them. The baby boom at the time was in it’s infancy (yes, pun intended) and maybe the birth of the theme park can be attributed to simple business acumen. After all, the largest generation of children were being born to the most affluent middle class in United States history. This made family friendly activities a potential goldmine. (Also in the 1950’s the good people over in Rock City built their own fairy tale caverns and the original Goofy Golf opened)

It’s a little more fun, and maybe more wholesome feeling, to attribute the invention of the theme park to the phenomenon called Simultaneous Discovery. It seems, sometimes in spite of astronomical odds, that people sometimes make discoveries or inventions totally independently of each other at the same time. I’ve personally experienced this sometimes awkward phenomenon in the arts community. Of course we all share certain societal experiences and are exposed to some of the same stimuli and multiple people are bound to react to that or be inspired by in in similar ways. This is so much easier to explain away in our current media saturated, hyper stimulating, hyper connected world, but it’s a lot harder to explain how Edison and Tesla conceived of using electricity before, well, widespread electricity.

Whatever planetary alignments led to it, while Walt Disney was in California conceiving and planning Disney Land, Howard Harrison was in Maryland inventing an immersive children’s landscape where their favorite storybook characters came to life; The Enchanted Forest. The park opened in 1955, just months after Disney’s Park opened it’s doors on the West Coast.

Harrison’s idea had seemed so far fetched at the time that no banks would agree to finance the project and the family financed the park on their own by selling the motel they owned. They enlisted the help of Baltimore based artist Howard Adler and his studio who’s experience had been primarily in Department Store windows to create something that essentially had never been done before. A man in the palatte business who had bought most of the lumber when the land for the park had been cleared, Joey Selby, ended up becoming the manager and one of the primary attraction designers over much of the park’s life. There is no such thing as having job experience for a job that’s never been done before.

a fence of dancing gingerbread men surrounded the original park visible from the road

The dreamed up, self made and self financed park found immediate success. The parking lot was expanded in the very first year. Snackbars and giftshops were added. Enchanted Forest continued to expand adding attractions and facilities for the next 20 years. The park saw steady decline in visitors in the 80’s when larger, more commercial park Kings Dominion opened in neighboring Virginia and video games and technology began to make the charming park seem quaint and obsolete. Enchanted Forest closed it’s doors after the 1987 season and was sold to developers in 1989. The site was further damaged by fire in 1990.

A shopping center was built on the site in the 90’s. in acknowledgement of the sacred ground it sat upon it originally sat next to the in tact castle gate, and the original Old King Cole from Enchanted Forests roadside still beckons people atop the sign.

the current shopping center sign featuring Old King Cole

The shopping center mainly covers what had been the parking lot and the living quarters of employees of the park. The attractions remained and languished in the woods seemingly forgotten.

photo from Atlas Obscura of the abandoned Three Bears House

Childhood is difficult to forget though. (and lord knows nobody remembers their idyllic childhoods better than baby boomers) They are their own type of fairytale story in a way, because back then we were all princesses and heroes waiting to live happily ever after. And so, people remembered the Enchanted Forest, but as time went on it seemed that the disintegrating buildings would soon pass into legend and the park would become a story itself.

In 2004 Cinderella’s pumpkin coach was rescued from behind petsmart and rehabilitated for a charity auction. Shortly after it wound up on Ebay and its sale and relocation to nearby Clark’s Elioak Farm was negotiated. This began real heroes work. It more than 10 years for everything that could be removed from the Enchanted Forest to be removed, moved, and lovingly restored to the glory occupied in children’s memories. The largest structures like the mountain and Cinderellas Castle were left behind, and some pieces no longer serve their original purpose as rides, but most of the parks pieces were saved

The Prince trying the glass slipper on Cinderella was originally inside the Cinderella’s castle attraction

I spent an hour on google earth trying to tell if i could see cinderella castle on satellite

Although Elioaks Farm doesn’t wish to recreate Enchanted Forest and only to preserve and display the rescued elements, I do. I’m going to attempt to post my photos from my recent trip to the farm in the order in which you would have experienced them at the original park. Unfortunately I never got to visit the Forest (thanks for nothing mom and dad) so this approximation is entirely based off of a cartoon vintage park map.

The entrance to the Enchanted Forest, as if it could have been any other way, was a castle. a pretty proper castle too, which had a moat and drawbridge.

the facade of the original gate castle. Rapunzel hangs her hair off of the tower and an unnamed dragon plays the lute.

Once inside the original gate visitors would see a Sleeping Beauty tableau of the princess asleep in her bed and the prince only moments from waking her from her sleep

Just for the record, if you see a sleeping stranger, don’t kiss them.

Let’s imagine that you turn right once you enter the park. You’ll enter the original portion of the park which Ive been calling bedtime story lane in my notes. Many recognizable characters are around, the oldest in the park.

The dish and spoon have an interspecies love affair

Miss Moffet’s Spider now resides under the rainbow bridge which was originally near the park’s center

The original figures were made like any paper mâché figure on a frame of wood or metal, then covered with paper mâché. They were then coated with a fabric called Celastic which dries hard and waterproof. Oil based paints also helped protect them from the elements and many tiny fingers.

Little Red Riding Hood’s grandmother’s house. Many attractions told stories when you called from a phone or stepped on certain areas. The original door had shamrock shaped windows all the way down the bottom so small children could look in from any height.

Larger attractions were built on site instead of in the Alder Baltimore studio. Some pieces were coated with or incorperated cement for weight. Fiberglass didn’t come to the forest until the 1960’s.

The old woman’s shoe had to be cut in half horizontally to be moved from the originally location

Many nursery rhymes that we’ve come to think of as wholesome stories seem to be a result of them softening in our memory. The old woman in the shoe rhyme was originally

There was an old woman who lived in a shoe.

She had so many children, she didn’t know what to do.

She gave them some broth without any bread;

And whipped them all soundly and put them to bed.

…Jeez, old woman.

Peters house is now part of a woods maze on the farm leading to various attractions

Peter Pumpkin Eater’s rhyme is also more problematic than I remember.

Peter, Peter pumpkin eater,
Had a wife but couldn’t keep her;
He put her in a pumpkin shell
And there he kept her very well.

Towards the top of this avenue of story book characters rested the home of Goldilocks and the three bears. This is the structure from Atlas obscura crumbling in the woods and the one on the farm you can get the best look inside of because of its multiple doors. In its original state it would have been fully wall through and the papa outside would have told the story as you sat in his lap.

The new and improved Three Bears house.

My Dad pops in on the Three Bears

Bears mount hunters over their fireplaces

Goldilocks wakes up in Baby Bear’s room

Enchanted Forest had no thrill rides in it’s entire run. Coney Island and other similar amusement parks were popular by the time it was built, so there was certainly precedent, but the park remained entirely child friendly. Mother goose was the parks first motorized ride. Over time they added the attractions which populated the rear section of the park including Ali Babas arabian nights mountain structure, a go cart track for tiny antique cars, and a train of teacups which took riders through a subterranean Alice in Wonderland experience.

Mother Goose. The chocolate Easter egg behind was originally on the other side of the park and houses live rabbits for petting. It’s now full of stuffed rabbits, but there are rabbits at Clark’s Elioak Farm

Mother Goose, pulled the swan, and the ugly duckling in a motorized ride with benches and wheels

figures saved from the Alice in Wonderland Ride and Robin Hood figures that adorned the chandelier in the gift shop barn

On the lake in the rear of the property was Mount Vesuvius and Robinson Crusoes Island with a boat to take you around the lake and through the mountain. A jungle safari ride took up the back left corner of the property, which apparently involved a jeep track and choreographed animatronic safari animals leaping at the safari riders. I spend quite some time studying the satellite view of the shopping center to try to see evidence of the safari park in the woods off the lake. None of its elements seem to have been saved and I just find the concept of an animatronic safari ride instead of a roadside safari with real animals when they certainly could have gone that route to be wonderful and moral and sweet.

this kind of terrifying boat was named Little Toot and took visitors from the shore to Robinson Crusoe’s Island

In the center of the whole park was Cinderella’s castle. Built in 1967, the ride carried park goers to the castle by way of Cinderella’s pumpkin coach pulled by a team of 6 motorized white mice. The interior of the castle was filled with tableaus from the story of Cinderella. Cinderella’s castle is apparently still in the woods along with the nearby chapel and the Gingerbread house that was used for birthday parties. These were structures I strained my eyes for on google earth.

This giant fake birthday cake was rescued from the Gingerbread House

Adjacent to Cinderellas castle was another small pond inhabited by three men in a tub and Willy The Whale. In his original iteration apparently you could tickle Willy under the chin and he would giggle. At the back of his throat was a window so you should a bearded fishing Jonah in his gullet. The story of Jonah and the whale is not of course, a fairy tale in the traditional sense, all though I guess that depends some on what you believe, but the story of his reconstruction is a bit of one, as he was repaired by Mark Cline.

if you tickled Willy under the chin he would laugh. He’s a friendly man eating whale.

Jonah fishing in Willy’s belly

Mark Cline is sort of the dude in the world of roadside attractions. He’s one of the only currently working large scale fiberglass artists, and works for set companies and amusement parks. He also built the Lady of the Lake in Alabama and Foamhenge and many wonderful roadside attractions around Natural Bridge, Virginia. Mark Cline, having grown up in neighboring Virginia, visited the Enchanted Forest as a child. One can only imagine that this experience influenced his eventual career path, and his studio in Natural Bridge was called Enchanted Studios. When the pieces rescued from Enchanted Forest needed rehabilitation, they called the expert, hometown hero, Mark Cline. Many of the figures he repaired he did from memory and his own family photos from childhood trips to the park. A paper at the time called him a knight that had returned from a quest to save the kingdom that had spawned him and since fallen into ruin.

Honestly the whole anthropomorphic egg thing has always been weird

By this time in your imaginary walking tour of the park you would have looped around to be walking back towards the front of the park through the original storybook characters. Humpty Dumpty’s wall was the original back boundary of the park. next to him was Jack’s enormous beanstalk.

Jack’s beanstalk was made from a telephone pole

Next to the beanstalk was the crooked house of the crooked man. I’m not sure how much longer nursery rhymes will even be a part of our society, and apparently this particular one didn’t make it’s way to me because I had to look it up. In case you also are unfamiliar with the crooked man rhyme it goes like this

There was a crooked man, and he walked a crooked mile,

He found a crooked sixpence against a crooked stile;

He bought a crooked cat which caught a crooked mouse,

And they all lived together in a little crooked house.

apparently several carpenters walked off the job during the building of the crooked house because they claimed it was physically impossible

To your left you’d see the cocky hare sleeping through the tortoise winning his race. Further down the path you’d see the easter bunny’s house housing live rabbits, and the houses of the three little pigs.

there was only one existing photo of the tortoise that Mark Cline used to rebuild him

the big bad wolf attempts to blow down the sturdy brick house after successfully blowing down the one of sticks

At the bottom of the path leading back out through the castle gate was the Merry Miller’s House.

the Merry Miller in his house. He used to tell his story to passerby’s. Many children described his voice as frightening.

The last attraction was the Jack and Jill and the wishing well.

the park donated coins thrown in the wishing well to charity

Now you’ve concluded your walking tour of the saved pieces of the Enchanted Forest. You may have noticed this was the longest and most involved post I’ve ever made. Writing it involved research and time. I’ve been considering what it is about this place and this story that has enamored me so much, that I felt I had to say so much about it. Some of it is the story of the Enchanted Forest Park itself, and how extraordinary the desire to make children happy much have been that it would you to think up and build a theme park. It’s heartwarming.

It’s not just the story of the park though, it’s also the story of the park’s second chance at life. I think that story of the Enchanted Forest fulfills this secret desire many of us feel to somehow go back to our childhoods. We feel tempted to recapture the simplicity and innocence of it. It speaks to the feeling of regret that we didn’t appreciate it as much as we should have when he had it, because no one does. The people at Clark’s Elioak farm and everyone who worked on the relocation project did what we all dream of. They reached back into their childhoods and literally plucked wholesome innocent joyful memories from it, cleaned off the damage and the grime of years of exposure to the stresses of the world, and made them new and innocent again. Bright and whole and just as they remembered them. It’s an extremely, and deeply satisfying story. It’s… a fairy tale.

and they lived happily ever after