Weevil, weevil rock you: Enterprise, Alabama's Boll Weevil Monument

The local radio station, WVVL, has its headquarters overlooking the monument.

Everybody gets into the boll weevil act in Enterprise.

Enterprise's major thoroughfare is called Boll Weevil Circle, where you'll find Sears, Wal-Mart, Comfort Inn, Office Depot... you name it.

It's not often that a town feels it owes its prosperity to an insect pest, and even rarer to find one that erects a statue in the center of town in its honor, but that's what the good folks of Enterprise, Alabama did in 1919. The southeastern Yellowhammer State town was founded in 1881 and its chief crop and source of revenue was cotton. This all changed in 1915 when a devastating infestation of boll weevils destroyed the cotton crop, forcing the nearly bankrupt farmers to diversify into other crops or starve. Within a few years, the region became the top producer of peanuts in the nation and the community was saved. To memorialize this colossal act of making lemonade out of lemons, Enterprise installed a 13-foot classical-looking stone statue of a robed woman with her arms extended upward, surrounded by a circular fountain at the intersection of College and Main Streets, the heart of the town's business district. Thirty years later, a Mr. Luther Baker thought it odd that the Boll Weevil Monument didn't have a boll weevil on it, so he created a many-times larger than life version of one and put it at the top of the monument, apparently with the town's blessing. Often the victim of pranks, theft and vandalism, the original statue was removed and put in the town's nearby Depot Museum in 1998 and a polymer-resin replica was put in its place, where it still sits today. Words cannot do justice to the eccentric awesomeness of this memorial: it looks like a cross between two 1950s movies: a Biblical epic invaded by a low-budget mutant insect picture. Cars pass by nonchalantly, perhaps oblivious to how wonderful this truly is. So here's to you, Enterprise: we're bolled over by your weevil genius.

Howdy y'all: An Eccentric Roadside on the road dispatch

Heading home tomorrow after a 6-day barnstorm of Dixie. Many Southern eccentric delights to report on, so y'all come back now, y'hear?

Eccentric Roadside hits the road

One half of the Eccentric Roadside team is heading out today on a short roadtrip to the deep south: Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, all in less than a week. Look away, look away, look away Dixieland.

Splitsville: The International Banana Museum of Hesperia, California slips out of town

Sing us a song, you're the Banana Man: Ken "Bananister" Bannister

Bill Clinton was a fan

I'm guessing she goes by the nickname Chiquita.

When we visited Ken Bannister's International Banana Museum in Hesperia, California last January, little did we know we would be some of the fruity depository's last patrons before, according to the L.A. Times, Bannister sold his 17,000-item collection, lock, stock and banana peel, to a Mr. Fred Garbutt, who plans to open a new museum next to his liquor store in North Shore, on the edge of the Salton Sea. Bannister, or Bananister as he referred to himself, was something of a local legend, amassing his collection over 38 years and appearing in national magazines and on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Apparently he wasn't legendary enough for the town of Hesperia, though, who had been letting him house his collection in one of their buildings for the last four years. He was thrown out on his banana-fanna-fo-fanny and forced to store his stuff in his garage until it drove him, er, bananas and he decided to sell the whole bunch to Mr. Garbutt, who plans to add some a-peel to his liquor store by next January. So here's to Mr. Garbutt, California's new top banana: may all your endeavors be fruitful.

For sale: T. Rex, good condition, wooly mammoth, needs repair

Wall Street Journal photo

The Wall Street Journal (!) had a story about some eccentric roadside attractions up for sale due to retiring Mom and Pop owners and the changing habits of travelers. Check it out here.

Unfortunately-named roadside business of the week: The Bunghole Liquor Store of Salem, Massachusetts

"I'm going down to the Bunghole, honey. You want anything?"

They've got a funny history. Read about it here.

A sight for sorcerer's eyes: Salem, Massachusetts' "Bewitched" statue

They've taken Sam to heart in Salem with T-shirts...

...and other tributes around town.

A pretty witch marries a jumpy, mortal adman. They live in either suburban Connecticut or New York state (depending on the episode) where she keeps house and has to hide her true identity from prying neighbors. Her disapproving mother and colorful relatives interfere and make the adman even more jumpy. The mother turns the husband into a frog (or worse) and the witch twitches and her nose turns him back. Hilarity ensues. That just about sums up the 1964-72 TV sitcom "Bewitched," starring Elizabeth Montgomery as Samantha, Dicks York and Sargent as Sam's husband Darren, and Agnes Moorhead as Sam's mother Endora. It came from that glorious 1960s TV era when every sitcom had to have a gimmick: The Munsters were monsters, I Dream of Jeanie was a genie, and Patty Duke had an identical cousin. It also had a breezy theme song and fun animated opening credits. When the TVLand network started erecting statues of characters from their stable of classic sitcoms in different parts of the country, they saw fit to a create a likeness of Samantha sitting on her broom in a moon crescent as she is depicted in the show's opening. But where to put the sorceress sculpture? Salem, Massuchusetts, with its storied, witchy past (and its use as a location on the show a couple of times), seemed like a (super) natural location. After a bit of controversy and protest from some of the townfolk who thought it was insensitive to put a TV sitcom statue on the very sight where 19 innocent people were executed in 1692, the TVLand people smoothed things over and dedicated their magical memorial in 2005. It's charming and enchanting any witch way you look at it.

Booming business: North Stonington, Connecticut's "Three-Finger" Eddie's

Except for the "Live free or die" state of New Hampshire, fireworks stores have been a rare commodity in the northeast, so when a defunct gas station was converted into a black powder emporium in southeastern Connecticut on the Rhode Island state line, we had to stop and check it out. Unfortunately, it was a few weeks after the fourth of July and the place had already gone, er, bust, but they still had their sign up and a truck parked out front with their spectacularly tasteless name emblazoned on them. Was this place really called "Three-Finger" Eddie's? Really? Yes, yes it was. This reminded me of the fact that a name alluding to accidents or mental illness seems to be a requirement of most retail explosives outlets. An internet search won't turn up any Harvard Educated Mike's or Better Safe Than Sorry Betty's, but you will find Krazy Kaplan's, Crazy Carl, Crazy Herb's, Dizzy Dean, Wild Bill's, Wild Wilma's, Fireworks Frenzy, Pyromaniac Fireworks, and Angelo's Fireworks and Sno-Cones. For sheer tacky fire-power, though, "Three-Finger" Eddie's still has them beat by a sky-high mile. When a customer pays good cash money for retail pyrotechnics, he wants to know he'll potentially lose a digit or two.

The New York Tines: Rock City, New York's fork in the road

We're very fond of the Yogi Berra quote "When you come to a fork in the road, take it"... so much so that it's up there above the big concrete potato on our masthead. So you can imagine what a thrill it was to see a 31-foot piece of tined cutlery at the grassy intersection of routes 308 and 199 in the little Duchess County, New York hamlet of Rock City, near Rheinbeck, where Chelsea Clinton just got married. Local entrepreneur Stephen Schreiber erected the big utensil out of scrap steel back in 2000 as a fun art project and to bring attention to the town. And bring attention it does, even appearing in a cartoon panel of Ripley's Believe It Or Not! "I did it as a goof," Schreiber told the Poughkeepsie Journal. "I didn't think they would let me leave it there. Nobody has said anything." Kudos to Schreiber for coming up with the funky forky idea and to Rock City for being cool enough to get the joke. May the forks be with you.

Hyde Park, New York: Everything's coming up Roosevelt

The Hyde Park Brewing Company cleverly took a liberty with FDR's cigarette holder by changing it into a spring of grain.

Located on the beautiful Hudson River in southeastern New York State, Hyde Park is a charming little town and most famous for being the lifelong home of President Franklin Roosevelt. He was born at the family estate, Springwood, and he is buried there, along with his wife Eleanor and dog Fala. The FDR home is a National Historic Site and well worth seeing, and the town revels in all its Rooseveltness. All around are signs reminding you that our 32nd president was from here, especially in the form of his famous bespeckled cigarette holder-clenching profile. Smokers aren't celebrated much any more, so it's interesting to see so many FDRs puffing away on aristocratic appliances. Happy days are here again.