Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Route 66 wasn’t just the main artery between Chicago and Los Angeles fifty years ago, it was an American rite of passage in and of itself. American families would shuttle back and forth on the “mother road” across half the country, stopping periodically in places like Placenta, New Mexico or Methshack, Arizona to eat at art deco diners and take snapshots of statues made out artillery shells, or the World’s Largest Boll Weevil.
One of the most iconic stops on Route 66 is Catoosa’s Blue Whale. Catoosa, as you will recall, is the most inland port in the United States. If you look at a map of America, Oklahoma is the medium-sized state in the middle shaped like a pot. It’s nowhere near an ocean. Yet navigable rivers combined with impressive engineering skills link it to the Mississippi via the Verdigris River, and ultimately to the Gulf of Mexico. If pirates wanted to, they could probably plunder bewildered, unsuspecting towns in America’s heartland before inevitably getting gunned down by unamused cowboys.
Not only is the Blue Whale a visual masterpiece, it is the culmination of perhaps the greatest love story in Oklahoma, and therefore the world. It was built by Hugh Davis, an animal enthusiast who lived in the area and eventually opened an alligator farm at the behest of his wife, Zelta. Hugh and Zelta lived that rapturous, erotic dream which is to be a married couple raising large carnivorous reptiles in a pond behind their house. In the 1970’s Hugh, a doting husband, observed that Zeta enjoyed collecting whale figurines. So as a surprise anniversary present he erected this monstrous resin whale for her. (Remember, wedding anniversary gifts go: platinum, silver, diamond, and resin aquatic mammal.)
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Eventually the Catoosa Blue Whale expanded from a family swimmin’ hole into a popular roadside destination for tourists on Route 66. It fell into disrepair in the 1990’s, but the community recently renovated it, so the whale is once more open to visitors. The historical marker outside notes that the location is near to the former “Fort Spunky,” and references the politically correct “War Between the States.” As Paige and I posed for pictures we heard the not-so-distant pop of a .22 rifle on the horizon several times, presumably for hunting purposes but possibly for settling a domestic dispute. We took several pictures with or in the Blue Whale, prompting me to refer to her as a “whale model,” but retrospectively I can see how the term might be misconstrued.
From there Paige and I continued along Route 66, cruising through successive small towns and endless farms. My father grew up in a small agricultural town, and presumably felt guilty about leaving it, because when I was a kid he spent a lot of time subjecting me to pop quizzes about what sorts of cows we were passing by in our car. (Dad also refused to entertain any music in his automobile besides oldies or military marches until I was seventeen years old. As you can imagine, our car trips of fervent bovine identification and eight-hour John Philips Sousa compilations cultivated all sorts of interesting personality traits.) So I tried to impress Paige periodically with my extensive knowledge of cows.
“That’s a Hereford,” I’d announce expertly, pointing towards a reddish brown cow. “They used to be more popular, but I heard somewhere that ranchers are moving towards Limousine hybrids because they fair better in the heat.” Paige digested this information silently. Several minutes passed. “That’s an Angus,” I’d say, pointing to several black cows chewing cud near a fence.
“What’s so great about Angus burgers?” asked Paige. “I mean, they’re all just cows, right?”
I concur with Paige, and suspect the allure of Angus beef is mostly good marketing. It’s not like Angus is bred specifically to taste delicious, whereas we’ve cultivated other breeds of cow to sniff out fugitives or rescue alpine skiers or something.
Eventually we made it to Stroud, which you should try and visit tomorrow. If you skirt past Stroud on the main highway, it’s a stubby blip on the map which has obviously seen better days. It used to have a large outlet mall, but this was obliterated by a tornado in 1999, and its site remains a big slab of undeveloped cement. However if you go through Stroud via nearby Route 66, you cruise down its Main Street and take in a far more impressive burg.
Clik here to view.
Here, for instance, is a light-up neon sign directing you to an ATM. See how utterly thrilled the guy in neon is? It seems to indicate that when people in Stroud heard about “ATM machines” they could scarcely believe the concept. I have no idea how people got cash prior to debit cards. I think they bartered in gold bullion and chickens or something. So imagine their great excitement to discover what amounted to a slot machine which couldn’t possibly backfire. I like to think that the denizens of Stroud erected this glittering sign to brag about their amazing Automatic Transaction Machine, prompting visitors from other counties to pile into jalopies and putter over to Stroud, where they would wait in a long, windy line of astonished people nervously fumbling with their wallets behind the bank.
Clik here to view.
This optimistic signage is contrasted with a mural of Stroud, which is markedly creepy. Observe the expression of the black-and-white pioneers. In old-timey photographs nobody smiled because the flash took several minutes, and also because of rampant polio. But this is a mural. Which, for some reason, they’ve rendered in black and white anyway, with a lot of emotionally neutral people who appear to be standing around the painter in an eerily quiet manner. As if planning something.
Paige and I stopped and turned the car around not once but three times in Stroud. First to take a picture of the glorious ATM sign, then to swing back to look at the creepy mural, and a final loop to behold this guy’s yard:
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
I plan to return to Stroud specifically to shake the hand of whoever set up this mesmerizing roadside art exhibit. The middle of the United States has a penchant for lawn ornaments, which tend to alternate between various species of lawn gnomes, pinwheels or elegant pink flamingos. This guy built an entire spaceship in his front yard! Observe the friendly green alien greeting passing motorists, and the cheeky Storm Trooper helmet affixed to a deer skull on the exit ramp. A few feet away patriotic dolls stand near a flag, seemingly saying, “Come into our lawn and play with us– forever and ever and ever and ever.”
Clik here to view.
As we reluctantly departed Stroud we observed a sign at the local high school touting, “Go Stroud! Beat Chandler!” and found ourselves wholly rooting for the plucky village which had captured our hearts. [Note: I just checked the official website, and the Stroud Tigers clobbered the Chandler Lions 28-6.]
Chandler, incidentally, doesn’t have any lawn UFOs at all. It has an ATM, but there’s no neon sign alerting you to its presence, and I suspect the locals take its convenience for granted. The neatest thing about Chandler is that the county jail still issues striped black-and-white uniforms to prisoners. Which I am all in favor of, because I wholly endorse any policy which conforms Real Life more closely to cartoons.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
A few days later Royce and I made a miniature road trip to Lexington, Oklahoma to check out the VW-Spider. The sculpture is a volts-wagon painted to look like a Black Widow with googly red eyes. It’s situated in a field next to a church, and has no apparent explanation whatsoever. While smaller than the Catoosa Blue Whale, I am going to rank it as an equal roadside attraction, as it has an uncanny resemblance to a B-grade 1950’s science fiction film. If you are ever motoring through central Oklahoma, you’re doing yourself a great disservice if you don’t stop to picnic under the watchful eyes of this terrifying five-seater arachnid.
 Andrew Heaton is a writer and standup comedian in New York City. If this post made you laugh or think, kindly "like" it on Facebook.