Unorthodox street name of the week

Happy birthday, Don Knotts

Today would have been the 89th birthday of the great Don Knotts, forever remembered as one of TV's all-time funniest characters, inept small town deputy Barney Fife from "The Andy Griffith Show". Click here to read about our visits to Don's hometown of Morgantown, West Virginia, and the inspiration for Mayberry, Mount Airy, North Carolina.

I've just seen a face

 Wendover Will, West Wendover, Nevada

 The Elizabeth Montgomery "Bewitched" statue, Salem, Massachusetts

 Brad Pitt in wax, Niagara Falls, Canada

 Art Carney, Westbrook Public Library, Westbrook, Connecticut

 Bob's Big Boy, Baker, California

 Millenium Park, Chicago

 Eldo J. Coons, RV/MH Hall of Fame, Elkhart, Indiana

 The Gemini Giant, Launching Pad restaurant, Wilmington, Illinois

 Mammy's Cupboard, Natchez, Mississippi

 Harlem, Georgia, birthplace of Oliver Hardy

 Sonny Bono statue, Palm Springs, California

 The Citrus Place, Terra Ceia, Florida

Me and a painting that looks like me, Yale Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut

Moosequerade: The Big Boy moose of Manistique, Michigan

No wonder the moose is smiling -- he gets to look out at some awesome Upper Peninsula scenery...

It's not every day you see a moose dressed in red and white checkered overalls. Not every day, that is, unless you're visiting or reside in the beautiful Upper Peninsula of Michigan town of Manistique and find yourself tooling past the local Bob's Big Boy restaurant on East Lake Shore Drive. The moose is so attired because back in 1936, a Mr. Bob Wian purchased a hamburger stand in Glendale, California. His signature dish became the double-decker hamburger and one of his frequent customers was a chubby six-year-old boy in loose-fitting overalls who helped around the place in exchange for free food. Bob was so taken with the boy he named the burger after him, The Big Boy. Another customer, a movie studio animator, did a caricature of the boy wearing red and white checkered overalls that became the logo for the restaurant, now called Bob's Big Boy. Moose being a popular icon in northern Michigan, it seemed only fitting that one wearing Bob's classic overalls would welcome diners to this friendly U.P. Bob's franchise. And this moose happens to look out at some pretty spectacular scenery...sandy dunes and tall grass swaying in front of beautiful Lake Michigan.

Why I'm telling you all this is a moostery to me, though.

Molar expedition: The giant tooth of Trenton, New Jersey

Just down the road from the tooth are some fantastic sculptures of Mariachi musicians and dancers. That's an average-sized dope posing in front for a sense of scale.

In Trenton, New Jersey, just a stone's throw from the really big American Gothic statue we blogged about recently, sits another of sculptor-of-kooky-and-really-huge-subject-matter-extraordinaire Seward Johnson's kitschy roadside marvels: the world's largest tooth. Measuring in at around 15 feet tall, it sits gleaming in front of the Congoleum Company building and near the on-ramp to I-295 South, with nary a trace of tartar on it. And like he did with the American Gothic, Johnson has added a sculpture of a bemused, normal-sized couple gawking nearby, to give passersby a sense of the ridiculous scale of the tremendous tusk. How great it must be to be Seward Johnson, heir to the Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical fortune, to have the wealth and talent to dot the landscape with all your crazy creations. Just down the street is his group of enormous Mariachi musicians and dancers. Why? You need a reason? Art doesn't have to say something all the time and hurt your head. Sometimes it's nice to give bored motorists a laugh and a smile. And that's the tooth.

But wait, there's more bad puns: To Mr. Johnson, we'd like to say fangs for the memories, we're abscessed with your work, there ought to be a plaque in your honor, do you work on retainer?, we're all up in your grill, we'll be your en-dentured servants, you're like a bridge over troubled water, we've grown bicuspid to your face and we're at a floss for words, dad gummit.

Happy July 4th

God bless the eccentric USA, from sea to shining eccentricity.

I Goth You, Babe: The American Gothic sculpture of Trenton, New Jersey

 Sculptor J. Seward Johnson calls his 25-foot rendition of "American Gothic" "God Bless America".

 There's a terrific realistic sculpture of two normal-sized people across the street called "It's So Big!"

 Baby Goth back.

 Seward's sculpture has traveled around. Here it is in Chicago.

There's a renown sculptor named J. Seward Johnson who likes to work big. Really big. So when he decided to replicate Grant Wood's "American Gothic," he liberated the simple farm couple from their house backdrop and made them 25 feet tall and cast of aluminum. He also added a suitcase with travel decals from faraway places. Are the couple world travelers or is this a symbol of America's immigrant roots? You decide. A suitcase is also an appropriate addition because Mr. Johnson leases the sculpture out to different municipalities and it has traveled to several different locations, including Chicago, Indiana and Grant Wood's native Iowa. We were lucky enough to see it when it was on Chicago's Michigan Avenue back in 2009 so imagine the delight of seeing it again while passing near Trenton, New Jersey. There it sits near the Trenton train station and across from the Congoleum factory as part of the "Sculpture Along the Way" installations put on by The Sculpture Foundation. Across the street is another Johnson sculpture called "It's so big!" depicting a normal-sized man and woman gawking at the American Goths. This is a great visual effect because it gives a terrific sense of scale to the farm couple, and the regular-sized couple look extremely realistic (and a little bit randy) from a distance. Mr. Johnson is quite a hero to us eccentric roadside attraction fans, with his huge and wacky works of art that make you stand back and go "Wow!". We Goth to hand it to him.

What, me worry? The happy halfwit Muffler Man of Winslow, New Jersey

 An homage, a distant relative, or an incredible coincidence...

...you decide.

There's an old-fashioned drive-in restaurant in southern New Jersey with a great mascot out front to lure in hungry beach-goers and locals to try the pastrami cheesesteaks, homemade onion rings and custard eclairs. A 3-story former Muffler Man with a face that's a dead ringer for Mad magazine's Alfred E. Neuman proudly stands watch in front of Mr. Bill's Coney Island Drive-In on Route 73 in Winslow, just off the Atlantic City Expressway. Mr. Bill's has been a South Jersey institution for over fifty years, and offers an authentic retro vibe where Richie, Potsie and Ralph Malph would feel right at home. When the drive-in first opened, its owner, Ray, named the place after his father-in-law, Bill. It was also Ray who purchased the Muffler Mad-Man and made him Mr. Bill's' master of ceremonies, getting the attention of eccentric roadside attraction fans ever since. Categorized as "happy halfwits" by the Muffler Man aficionados at roadsideamerica.com, they are a rare mutation of the more common Paul Bunyan MMs, with similar bodies but heads of a more, shall we say, moronic nature. Which brings to mind a sage quote from Mr. Neuman himself: "It takes one to know one -- and vice versa!"