The Price is White: The Big White Guy of Chicopee, Massachusetts sold at auction

For the past several decades, a friendly 30-foot fiberglass dude wearing a handsome white suit and hat has been a fixture around the greater Springfield, Massachusetts area, and since 1999 he has greeted motorists from his perch off the Massachusetts Turpike's Exit 6 off-ramp in front of the Plantation Inn in Chicopee. Back in 1970, a Mr. Mario Cantalini bought the Big White Guy, also known as Plantation Man or Southern Man (but not the Neil Young "Southern Man"), from a Framingham, Mass. pizza restaurant and converted him into an Uncle Sam for his Springfield Ford dealership. Then, in 1999, after he sold his dealership, he gave the big dude a monochromatic wardrobe makeover and moved him in front of  his new business, the Plantation Inn in Chicopee. Mr. Cantalini passed away last year at age 94, and now his relatives have closed the Inn and put the property, Big White Guy and all, up for auction last November. They didn't get their asking price for the Inn, but Big White Guy was sold for $11,500 to a Mr. Charlie Arment, Jr., a local businessman who bought the dude on behalf of a group of partners who plan to keep the statue somewhere in the greater Springfield area.

Good on you, Mr. Arment, for having your heart in the White place, being in the White place at the White time and doing the White thing by keeping Big White Guy local. You deserve a big hand.

Check out my source for all this great info here.

Shanks for the memories: Hilltop Steakhouse of Saugus, Massachusetts headed for the last round-up

It is with great sadness that we report that the Hilltop Steakhouse of Saugus, Massachusetts, a 52-year-old mainstay of eccentric roadside restaurant awesomeness, will be closing its coral doors for the last time on Sunday, October 20. We love this place for its throwback appeal to a time when you just couldn't eat enough meat, carbs and more meat. You even got a place mat to show you what part of the cow you were about to ingest. But the best Hilltop had to offer was it's Texas-sized 50-foot neon cactus sign, letting all passersby on Route 1 know they're in the presence of eccentric roadside dining greatness. So long Hilltop...you'll always be prime in our book. Read our earlier post here.

The main drag: Scenes from Commercial Street, Provincetown, Massachusetts

At the very tip of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, sits the utterly unique destination known as Provincetown or P-town. In season, the population balloons from 3,000 to 60,000 -- mostly tourists who want to bask in its picturesque, coastal early 1600s New England settlement aura, combined with a funky, hedonistic, let-your-freak-flag-fly anything-goes ambiance. My family spent many a pleasant summer vacation in P-town and I always got a kick out of watching the square-as-can-be tourists mixing politely with the eye-popping "there's something you don't see everyday" locals. While the whole area is fun and beautiful, Commercial Street is the place to be. It's cam-P, hap-P, and laid back like a hip-P (you know, P as in P-town...get it?).

Dead of Nite:The Nite Owl diner of Fall River, Massachusetts

There's a cute-as-a-button diner in the working class city of Fall River, Massachusetts that's been sitting unused for an astounding 11 years. Diner aficionados will tell you The Nite Owl, on Pleasant Street, is a custom-built DeRaffle model dating back to 1956. It replaced a smaller Worcester Lunch Car (#786 if you're keeping score) that was on the same property perhaps since 1945 (thanks, Larry Cultrera). There's a photo here of the two side by side (along with a really great article about diner historian Richard Gutman). And the great photo realist painter John Baeder painted the Nite Owl in 1991 (looky here). One pictures some of the clientele over the years...Owl Pacino, Owl Gore, Owl Roker, the Rev.Owl Sharpton, Muhammed Owli, The Who. How sad that this comfy place went out of business, yet encouraging that it hasn't been demolished. Any Quixotic diner fans out there ready to give it a go and take it over? That would be a real hoot.

No more calls, we have a wiener: The Wienermobile makes a stop in Seekonk, Massachusetts

 What's that off in the distance? Could it be...

 It is!

They give out free postcards that you can send to envious loved-ones, and mail right there on the spot, postage paid!

Allow me to be frank: I relish the Wienermobile. Okay, now that we've got the pun formalities out of the way, here's the skinny (sorry, I can't help it): the Oscar Meyer Wienermobile made an appearance in Seekonk, Massachusetts last Saturday as part of its Price Rite grocery store tour through Rhode Island and Massachusetts. It's not every day you see one of the true icons of eccentric mimetic roadside vehicles parked among the Corollas and Accords of suburbia, but there it was, all red and yellow and bulbous, with its gull-wing door wide open inviting all to take a peek at the plush wiener interior. Some of Oscar's dedicated wiener recruits, known as Hotdoggers, were there braving the 20-degree winds to offer photo ops, free whistles and your own copy of the sheet music for both the Wiener Jingle ("Oh, I wish I were an Oscar Meyer wiener") and the Bologna Song ("My bologna has a first name, it's O-S-C-A-R"). It's not the first time we've seen the W-M in the, er, flesh (check out this post) but it still boggles and amazes, and is a real crowd pleaser, with its smiling front and chassis reminiscent of the Monkeemobile. Two suggestions for the Oscar Meyer marketers: 1. a dachshund, in a hot dog costume and perhaps named Little Oscar to serve as a canine mascot, because who wouldn't love that, and, 2. an actual wiener-shaped hot dog cart, selling, you know, hot dogs. If you put these ideas in action, I'd take that as a supreme condiment.

Milk route: The milk bottle/can/bucket buildings of Southeastern Massachusetts

There's a 15-or-so-mile stretch in southeastern Massachusetts that could be called the epicenter of dairy-related mimetic architecture.  Salvador's, in South Dartmouth, is an ice cream parlor that's in the shape of a 30-foot milk can that dates back to 1936. It's been spectacularly renovated in recent years, complete with life-sized cow sculpture atop its roof. A mere two miles away in Dartmouth is the 20-foot Gulf Hill Dairy Ice Cream bucket. It's from 1929 and was lovingly restored and reopened in 2008 as Oxford Creamery At The Bucket after being shuttered for more than 20 years. It was moved from its original location to a lovely waterfront spot in Apponagansett Park, where they serve food, beverages and ice cream seasonally. Thirteen miles north in New Bedford sits G & S Pizza. They took over a beloved local landmark in 2006 that was originally Frate's Dairy, an ice cream parlor from the 1930s with a 52-foot milk bottle, and have been serving ice cream, pizza and other fine edibles ever since. The bottle is in superior condition, and was white and gleaming against the blue sky when we were there recently. We've also had the pleasure of visiting The Milk Bottle Restaurant, 24 miles away in Raynham, Mass., which was the sister milk building that Frate's built back in the '30s. And we hear there's another big milk bottle in Boston, but we'll have to save that for another trip.

So be on the lookout for these special places and join in the commerad-dairy. You wouldn't want them to slip pastyoureyes. I won't udder another word.

Keeping up with the tines: The giant fork in the road of Westport, Massachusetts

The great Yogi Berra was really on to something when he said "When you come to a fork in the road, take it", at least for us eccentric roadside attraction fans. We live by those words so much, in fact, we put them on our masthead. Some folks have taken to putting up some literal interpretations of these sage words. We came across an awesome example in Rock City, New York a while back and have now been delighted a second time with another fine example of roadside whimsy at the intersection of Old Harbor and River Roads in Westport, Massachusetts. This one is especially awesome because it's in an incredibly lovely neighborhood, with expensive homes overlooking a marshy waterfront sound. Nice to see that well-moneyed folks appreciate a terrible pun just as much as us peasants. Thanks, Westport, and may the forks be with you.