The Secret Lives of Northeastern Muffler Men
They’ve been standing guard along roadsides, in front of car and boat dealerships, and atop restaurants for decades. They’ve been subjected to target practice, kidnapped by college students, and used as unofficial mile markers for military planes. They’ve been transformed into pirates, flag-waving patriots, and amusement-park bogeymen. One even foreshadowed the resurgence of Wonder Woman, ten years before she raked in millions on the silver screen.
They’re the Muffler Men of the Northeast, and nearly 75 years after they rose, with a mighty squeak, from their molds, they still serve as inspiration for travelers like me. While the largest density of Muffler Men is in the South, Northeastern Muffler Men—30 roadside goliaths strong—have arguably had more fun.
My fiberglass romance began early. As a child, I was smitten with the Snerd who grinned down on the mini golf course at Rocky Point amusement park in my home state of Rhode Island. On most visits, I begged my parents to let me to ride the Skyliner, a chair lift that glided over the park, multiple times just so I could gaze upon his freckled, jug-eared visage. I was sure his eyes, which seemed to follow me, returned my ardor.
He’s so coy. (Photo courtesy of Joel Baker.)
According to Joel Baker, founder of American Giants, the large number of amusement parks like Rocky Point—many now defunct—is a primary reason why a cluster of them became Northeastern Muffler Men, even if they didn’t start out there. “Muffler Men, Vikings, A&W Root Beer families, a host of animals—horses and bears and giraffes and all kinds of big stuff—all gravitated to these amusement parks,” Baker says.
As the parks went dark, the giants were auctioned off to other parks and to private collectors. Such was the case, I suspect, for my beloved Halfwit, who was removed in 1988 to make way for a Freefall. Rocky Point shut down six years later, and his trail went cold.
If there’s a farm somewhere for retired giants, I like to think he’s there now, nine iron in hand, benevolently contemplating all he surveys.
Muffler Men, of course, began their run in the 1960s with large companies like Texaco. Baker says, “The concentration seemed to be heavier in the Northeast, where you’d have all these ads running in the paper. It’s like, ‘Hey, come to [our] Texaco station or Phillips 66 station this weekend. You’ll find a 20-foot-tall cowboy. And if you guess the weight of the cowboy, you’ll win a prize.’”
Their heyday over, some of these giants dispersed to other states. Others languished in overstuffed garages and storage units for decades. They’ve recently begun resurfacing, especially in Massachusetts, where, Baker believes, now-adult children and grandchildren are cleaning out Dad’s or Grandma’s shed and finding a supersize surprise.
My close encounter of the Snerd kind ignited the search for new larger-than-life partners in roadside adventure—such as Southern Man, a top-hatted Texaco Big Friend. Like a sly-eyed Ricardo Montalbán dressed in head-to-toe white, he welcomed travelers off the Mass Pike to the gratefully departed Plantation Inn in Chicopee. A Muffler Man of many talents, he’d previously been an Uncle Sam at a car dealership and a pie-slinging chef for a local pizzeria. Rumor had it that Air Force planes used him as a visual marker while landing at nearby Westover Reserve Air Base. This was all before he vanished, leaving me forlorn, in the spring of 2017.
But, as a wise prophet once crooned, the heart will go on. I fell hard for the stereotypically stoic Indian Muffler Man who guarded the entrance of Benson’s Wild Animal Farm in Hudson, New Hampshire. When the park closed, he relocated just over the border to Shirley, Massachusetts, where he held court over a nightclub and, later, a used-car dealership.
In the 1990s, perhaps having given up on life in a sandy, weather-beaten parking lot, he took a digger. His arm was promptly pilfered by local high school students. (Pranks with the Northeastern Muffler Men are especially common, according to Baker, perhaps because of the large concentration of prep schools and colleges.) He eventually received a replacement arm, and a sturdier base. Today, though he’s mildewed and faded, he still salutes proudly.
When I moved to the upper Hudson Valley, on the border of the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts, I found a new hunka-hunka sunburned love. Known locally as Big Man or the Green Valley Giant, he stands outside a former farm-equipment store, on a rural road close to Jiminy Peak Mountain Resort, just ten minutes from my home.
Christine Noble-Drosehn, a music teacher who has lived in the Berkshires her entire life, says, “I remember him vividly as a child.” Her father frequented the store for tractor parts, and she’d tag along to say hello to Big Man. She recalls that he once held a human-size pitchfork—“It looked more like a fork than a pitchfork”—and that he was repainted in 2017.
But Noble-Drosehn was surprised to learn he’d led a life of adventure. Kathy Whitman, daughter of owners Donald and Judy Whitman, wrote on RoadsideAmerica.com that he’d been used for target practice and was once spirited away in the night by college students. He’d even spent some time at the up-the-road nudist camp. (Don’t ask. He doesn’t kiss and tell.) Though the Whitmans have long since retired and closed up shop, Big Man—blue cap, red bowtie, silver belt, and all—still stares out at the Berkshire Hills with an enigmatic smirk.
In search of more of the tall, silent, and handsomely shiny, I went to the place we all go in search of deep truths and interpersonal connection: the Internet. Here I’ve found scores of Northeastern Muffler Men and their brethren, from lumberjacks to carpet-shilling Vikings and creatures of the night.
Based on this intel, I made a special detour in the Catskills to stand between the patchwork-jeans-clad ankles of the tie-dyed, beanie-sporting Hippie, a strapping specimen imported from a rooftop in Albany. Originally a Paul Bunyan, he likely spent time at Connecticut’s Danbury Fair, a combination carnival and agricultural exhibition, before getting in touch with his kumbaya side at Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, near the site of the legendary Woodstock music festival.
This year, I’ve got a whole new Muffler Man agenda. I plan to visit Nitro Girl, a New Jersey Uniroyal Gal with feminist ambitions. Though she’s always resided at Werbany Tire Town, she ditched her original bikini first for a Jackie O skirt set, and later for full-on superhero duds, including tall white boots and a sleek, flight-ready suit. She still retains her impeccably flipped brunet pageboy, now decorated with a star-studded headband.
I’m also planning to road-trip to the Jolly Roger Amusement Park in Ocean City, Maryland, to see the Buccaneer. A fashion plate to rival Nitro Girl, he has changed costumes at least three times, and has been spotted with and without his favorite accessory, a curved-blade cutlass.
And then there are the monsters. I’m haunted by the disembodied head with yellow eyes and a widow’s peak who once dared me to try the Dracula’s Domain haunted hayride in Jackson, New Jersey.
Vickie Vinciguerra, whose parents, Mary Ann and Tony, ran the attraction, reports that her father admired the giants so much, he purchased multiples: three heads and a Snerd, whom they’ve dubbed Mamoo, or “big lug” in Italian. Though provenance, as they say in the fine-art world, can be difficult to trace, Vinciguerra believes all four came from casino auctions on the Atlantic City boardwalk in the 1970s. “He just liked them,” she says of her father’s spontaneous purchasing decision. “He didn’t have specific plans at first, but knew they could be used for something.”
My final stop will be Middletown, Delaware, to visit Frank, the bloody-ax-wielding “scream park” mascot of Frightland. Though he looks vintage, he’s actually a newbie lovingly recreated from historical research photos. A “Frightland twist on an American icon,” according to marketing manager Kyle McMahon, Frank was built four years ago from carved foam blocks and covered in a special paint that dries to surfboard-level hardness. This flat-topped lady-killer donned a mask and a “Practice social distancing” sign during the pandemic, presumably to keep visitors alive long enough to have a whack at them.
New Muffler Men like Frank have increased in number over the past five years, according to Baker. “Now you have a lot of say over what it looks like, the hand positioning,” he says. “You can really tailor it to whatever your business is or attraction is.”
New or old, Northeastern Muffler Men beckon from the roadside, waiting to share their secrets. Now every time I pass Big Guy, I slow down, drawn to the quirk of his brow and knowing smile. “Come over,” he seems to say with one hand. “And stay awhile,” suggests the other.
