roadtrip

The Pink Elephant Mystery

/ 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!

Dinosaur World and My New Favorite Town

/ Beena / 1 Comment

If you watch Ancient Aliens you may be familiar with the concept of ley lines. These are imaginary lines which criss cross the Earth’s surface and in theory, there tend to be monolithic historical sites on the places where they intersect.  As it relates to ancient alien visitations, the theory is these lines have something to do with the electromagnetic field of the earth and were thus used for some type of navigation or energy production, and that’s part of the reason why these sites end up on these lines. I’m not sure about that part, but archeologists do agree that ritual and important sites seem to align themselves roughly along straight lines across the earths surface. Anyway, the point is if ley lines are a thing, I am almost certain a number of them converge on humble Cave City, Kentucky

FYI I had to wedge my phone in a barbed wire fence to get this photo

Cave City is of course named because the area is full of notable caves. Mammoth Cave and Horse Cave and Diamond Caves and several other interesting natural phenomena  have attracted tourists here, leading to a little town to cater to them. It must have a had a boom at some point because the area is full of closed souvenir shops and (Im told and plan to follow up on) abandoned mini golf courses and motels that have seen better days. The whole thing has the feel of a weird little beach town, where the beach somehow disappeared some years back.

A short list of strange things you will find in Cave City besides caves includes: Dinosaur World, a Wild West themed attraction called Guntown Mountain, Big Mike’s rock shop which includes an old school 1970’s mystery House, a concrete yard ornament business, a 1930’s motel that looks like a circle of tipis, and a wildlife museum full of taxidermy. If you happen to be me, this is essentially like finding the holy grail of weird towns, except there’s no drinkable coffee. Or much edible food.

for the record these are definitely tipis and not wigwams or wikiups which are domed

There are no hotels in Cave City as near as I can tell, only motels with pools full of screaming children who are for some reason still not tired after hiking in caves all day. But none of those motels matter. Only one motel maters and that is the Wigwam Motel #2. Built in the 1930’s and apparently part of a larger trend in which many Wigwam motels were built across the country through the 1950’s during the golden era of road trips and novelty motels. Only 3 of the original Wig Wam motels still stand and this is the 2nd. All three were places on the National Historic Places Register in the late 80’s, the other two are in Arizona, which to be fair, makes more sense than Kentucky.  Each Wigwam (I don’t even like typing it y’all I know) is a small hotel room which you can pull your car right up next to. It was the first moment of unabashed childlike wonder I experienced as a 32 year old adult in Cave City.

I really can’t say if the wigwam motel is in trouble. It only seemed to have one guest and while it was my intention to buy something from the gift shop in the tipi which serves as the office (and pester someone with questions) i couldn’t actually find anyone. But the grounds are landscaped and maintained and the tipis themselves look great, and freshly painted. I can tell you right now though, I would gladly chain myself to a tipi in front of a bulldozer if the Wig Wam motel was ever in danger.

lumping all native American tribes and housing styles together was way more acceptable in the 1930’s

My second moment of wonder came at the thing I originally stopped in Cave City for, Dinosaur World. Now y’all know there’s little I love more than a good roadside dinosaur. (please go back and read my post about Dinosaur Land and the golden era of roadside dinosaurs) I have also been tortured by Dinosaur World signs and the giant dinosaur that stands next to them on the route from Nashville northward multiple times now. But I am an adult and I reach my own goals! And one of them was Dinosaur World.

Just in case you couldn’t find the place from the road

There are three Dinosaur Worlds, one in Kentucky, the first one in Florida, and a third in Texas. Each boasts over 150 life sized dinosaurs spread along trails to resemble the actual animals interacting in the environment around you. This is not the crumbling, paint peeling, anatomically incorrect dinosaurs of roadside past, the first Dinosaur World was built in the late 90’s, and the Kentucky park was built five years later.

yes

yessssssssss here we go

The brainchild of a Swedish business man named Christer Svensson, all the dinosaurs for the parks were made in house and the parks are placed on popular tourists routes to and from other attractions.

Alan

Bob

Aaron

Joe and Lucy from down the street

Considering that Jurassic Park came out in 1993 and hyper realistic dinosaurs were entirely possible to make, the dinos here are not without their old school charm. They are all made the old school way, with a base of polystyrene foam, a fiberglass shell, and then a putty to add skin texture and painted.  New dinosaurs are added each year and they’re all well maintained and have information signs next to each species.

family of Stegs

stop yelling

flying dinos

The most incredible thing about Dinosaur World though is that it’s not simply a collection of dinosaur sculptures displayed together. Flying dinosaurs hang from trees, glimpses of dinosaurs can be seen through the foliage, families of dinosaurs graze not seeming to know a predator lurks in the trees nearby.

This was my second moment of giddy wonder in Cave City. Walking around a bend in a trail and seeing what the world might have been like living among the dinosaurs. You know the scene in Jurassic Park where Laura Dern has her head physically turned for her so she will see the dinosaurs in front of her and the face she makes? I think I made the same face. It is as close as you can probably get to experiencing seeing dinosaurs in their natural habitat. I also had the thought that I wished I had a child with me, so that i could play my reaction off as being happy for them, instead of happy for myself.

haircuts very nice

as you can see my favorite thing is families of dinosaurs

momma and baby

I don’t know what you’re eating but its terrifying

take a moment to imagine the sound these animals would make because is it “meep”?

Dinosaur World also features a Mammoth Garden, which all suspiciously resemble a trademarked character from a certain Pixar film, but they are kind enough not to make the Mammoths interact with the dinosaurs.

y’all ever taken a selfie with a baby mammoth?

They also have a trail out to the side of interstate 65 which allows you to take a picture with the dinosaur that has been torturing me from the side of the highway for years. Theres some other (even more) child friendly activities to do at Dinosaur World besides the Dino trail like a fossil dig, a playground, and a small museum if you do happen to actually be there with children.

These are not the only Dinosaurs in Cave City though. Of course.

On the road to Mammoth Cave is Big Mike’s Gift Shop. They sell primarily rocks  if that’s your thing, ranging from small $5 chunks of pyrite to huge beautiful mineral specimens in the hundreds of dollar range. Across the parking lot the gift shop sells more traditional souvenirs like postcards and mugs and mood rings, and a non functioning animatronic chip seller.

ever meet someone and feel like you’ve met them before?

In front of the rock shop and visible on the way back towards town from Mammoth Cave is big Mo.  A huge aquatic reptile with strange yellow plastic eyes and a gaping toothed mouth. Scientifically speaking aquatic reptiles that lived in the time of dinosaurs are not technically called dinosaurs as that term only applies to the species which evolved to hunt on legs on land, butttt if you’re not a scientist, Big Mo is a dinosaur. Maybe a Mosasaurus, which led to his name being Mo.

Big Mo

As if all this wasn’t enough, next to the souvenir shop is Big Mike’s Mystery House. If you’ve never been in a Mystery house they are all fairly similar. They are built to resemble a normal structure from the outside and because of the angles of the floors and walls, everything seems to work very strangely on the inside. For example you can stand on the edge of a table straight up and you appear to be doing a dramatic Michael Jackson style lean off the edge.

I purchased a ticket to tour the Mystery house and this must have seemed a little uncomfortable for the high school age tour guide because they made an announcement over the store intercom asking if there was anyone else in the shop who wanted to tour the Mystery House at that time, and a family sent their children with me, who also seemed to think that a person alone coming with them was quite strange.

if you switch places at the end of this room your height appears to dramatically change

theres a random alien in here

The actual optical illusion portions of the house are quite good, and pool balls appearing to roll upwards gave me my third moment of wide eyed excitement in Cave City, even fully understanding the way that a Mystery House works. Maybe there is a little mystery magic in there because aside from peoples height appearing to change as they moved around a room, it’s also a time machine. A Mystery house is little trip back to 70’s psychedelia and a time when children could be entertained by something as wholesome as an optical illusion and a hall of mirrors, and apparently, so can I.

That’s all I managed to do in the afternoon I had in Cave City, but I plan to return soon and do more, including perhaps, the actual caves. If this posting read like an advertisement for a random town, maybe it is. This is a little place of power, but it’s also clearly struggling. This is a tourism town, from when tourism included a lot more road trips, and the only thing that will keep it going is tourists. So maybe next time you’re on the road between Nashville and Louisville consider stopping.  See if you feel some electromagnetic energies.

I basically take a variation on this photo at every dinosaur attraction

Long live Cave City