Bigfoot And The Dinosaurs: Past Pals?

January 5, 2009

Most year-end Top Ten Lists are predictable. But item number six in the Mineral Wells Index’s roundup of 2008 caught our attention:

“One day during the summer, former Mineral Wells resident Alvis Delk … said he and his close friend, James Bishop, had recovered a piece of limestone near Glen Rose that, upon recent cleaning, revealed footprints of a human and a dinosaur, and that the prints intersected.”

The newspaper correctly points out that the overlapping prints “would overturn some very principal theories of evolution.” It goes on to say that Delk sold the stone to Carl Baugh, director of the nearby Creation Evidence Museum, who took the rock to two different hospitals for CAT scans and sent slices to an unnamed lab for analysis. Said Baugh: “We will continue working until the total truth is demonstrated.”

The newspaper fails to mention the size of the footprints, but Carl Baugh’s interest over the years has been on giant footprints — this being consistent with his literal reading of the biblical book of Genesis. Has Baugh stepped into something much more interesting than dinosaurs and humans? Maybe he should scan these footprints as well….

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Roadside News: Jan. 5, 2009

January 5, 2009

• Synthetic Interviews Are Here!: Would you like to talk with Abe Lincoln at a tourist attraction this year? “Although the country’s 16th president has been dead for 143 years, Synthetic Interview technology makes it possible.” We’d much rather talk with the late Max Nordeen, although the amount of processing power needed to contain everything that was in Max’s head would cause a system meltdown.

• Shoe Freeway: Thousands of assorted shoes have mysteriously appeared in a Miami freeway. Was it caused by the spooky forces of forteana, or a truck that nobody saw, or have we witnessed the birth of a flash mob variant of the shoe tree?

• Dead Country Singer Statue: Grass-roots fundraising is underway to build a “staggeringly large” 17-foot-tall sculpture of dead country singer Chris LeDoux, riding a bucking bronco atop a big guitar, in his home town of Kaycee, Wyoming.

• Puny Humans, Give Us All of Earth’s Bronze: Fake bronze plaques made of fake stone are now being used to thwart metal thieves. Ever since Daniel Boone and his lucky nose was stolen, we’ve been wondering — will this mark the beginning of the end for statue rubbing? Or will that activity now be confined to indoor statues?

• Life Span Ends for Highway Spanner: The designer of the interstate-spanning Great Platte River Road Archway Monument, “one of the bright lights in our architectural community,” has exited life’s interstate.

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Texas Gets Another Giant Armadillo

January 3, 2009

A 30-foot-long armadillo, which for the last few years has occupied a rich person’s lawn in Vermont, has returned to Texas.

The homecoming was a bit of Lone Star serendipity. Tom Perini runs the Perini Ranch steak house in Buffalo Gap, Texas, which caters elite private parties around the world (George W. Bush is one of his clients). This past fall he was invited to Vermont by a woman who had purchased the armadillo from a Texan sculptor a half-dozen years ago. The woman named the creature “Barbadilla,” after herself, and put it in a manicured meadow.

“Folks out there had thought it was some kind of prehistoric something,” Tom told us. “She just told me to, ‘Come up with your trucks and pick it up.’ She wanted me to take this back to Texas where it belongs.”

The one condition given by the woman was that the statue keep its “Barbadilla” necklace and name.

Unlike this demon-possessed giant in Houston, Barbadilla is true to life, although enlarged to a scale roughly 12 times normal size. It’s made of “old tank steel,” according to Tom, who is impressed by the amount of care that the sculptor put into it. “It’s not just a tank with a tail and a head.” Tom equates Barbadilla to the size of an Airstream travel trailer.

“We originally though we’d just turn it upside down, because that’s the way most people in Texas see armadillos,” Tom told us. But some people who’ve seen Barbadilla on the Perini Ranch have thought that it’s just a giant bar-be-que for the steak house. Tom now plans to donate it to Buffalo Gap to be displayed in a local park next to the highway.

“Buffalo Gap is a little bitty town of about 460 people,” according to Tom. “Ask anybody where the big armadillo is, and they’ll know it.”

[Note: There are at least two more giant armadillo sculptures in Texas -- we've seen one north of San Antonio at the entrance of a flea market, and one in Arlington in 2002.]

Sections: Attraction News, Statues
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Roadside News: Jan. 2, 2009

January 2, 2009

• Vegas Goodbye to 2008: Two Las Vegas attraction landmarks — an Arc de Triomphe and a volcano — were used as New Year’s Eve props by rival daredevils. The son of Evel bested the volcano.

• Last Wave for Santa Cruz Surfing Museum?: Dudes and dudettes are trying to save the Santa Cruz Surfing Museum, Santa Cruz, California. Their efforts aren’t being helped, however, by a greedy grandson of an original Santa Cruz Surf Club member — and it’s just getting uglier.

• Rock Parks: Loser Concept?: The 2008 bankruptcy of Hard Rock Park in South Carolina does not bode well for a planned rock ‘n’ roll theme park in the Arizona desert.

• Be Prepared for Scout Giant: A 15-year-old Boy Scout is raising money to build a really big Boy Scout statue as his Eagle Scout project. It will certainly be a more majestic monument to scouting than the somewhat embarrassing Boy Scout Memorial in Washington, DC.

• Waiting in Vane: The grand return of the World’s Largest Weather Vane, Monatgue, Michigan, is being delayed by the weather.

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Pocket Change Can Add Up To Big Bucks

January 1, 2009

Nebraska’s “Chimney Rock” has reaped attendance benefits from being on the back of a quarter, according to the Scottsbluff Star-Herald (Although the coin didn’t call the rock by its original name). This kind of free advertising was surprisingly absent from the recent “50 States Quarter Program” — but now the states have a second chance.

“America’s Beautiful National Parks Quarter Dollar Act” was signed into law at the end of 2008, and will reportedly spare us from having to see an eagle on the back of our quarters until 2021. Despite its title, each state doesn’t have to choose a Park for the back of its quarter; it can choose a National Historic Landmark or a Site or a District.

We did some checking, and found that a surprising number of Roadside-caliber attractions actually have National Historic designations. Here are a dozen suggestions (and there are many more).

Arizona: Titan Missile Museum

California: Fresno Sanitary Landfill

Indiana: New Harmony (Footprints of the Archangel Gabriel)

Louisiana: State Capitol (Death Spot of Huey Long)

Massachusetts: The Ether Dome

Missouri: Patee House (big twine ball or murder weapon display)

Nebraska: Boys Town (World’s Largest Ball of Stamps)

New Jersey: Lucy the Elephant

New Mexico: Trinity, atom bomb explosion site

Tennessee: Graceland

Utah: The Biggest Pit in the World at the Kennecott Copper Mine

Vermont: Ticonderoga, big ship on a lawn

We urge all Roadside fans to make their voices heard. Feel free to comment below and suggest what landmark best represents your unique state. Let’s get those quarters rolling in!

Sections: Attraction News, Rants
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Roadside News: Dec. 31, 2008

December 31, 2008

• Big Bopper’s Casket: The casket of long-dead rocker The Big Bopper, currently on display at the Texas Musicians Museum, is going up for auction on eBay. But an even deader economy may kill the sale. Recent attempts to auction off the Elvis is Alive! Museum and the giant Styrofoam Liberty have resulted in 0 bids.

• Surfer Dude Nude - Not!: After 17 years, Ocean City, California, is going to get a surfer dude statue — but only after its sponsors promised not to make him nude. If they had just made him look like a nerd, the clothes would have been supplied.

• The Red Badge of Shopping: Anoka, Minnesota, wants to honor the first Civil War Union volunteer with a shopping plaza. We hope that this marks the revival of a fondly remembered art form.

• Kids Bathe Lincoln: School kids have collected 300,000 pennies to give Idaho’s Lincoln statue a bath. Pennies and Abe Lincoln attractions have had a long and obvious history.

Sections: Roadside News
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