By Linda Godfrey and Rick Hendricks of Weird Wisconsin
"Yow! Are you one of those giant, wheeled beings from th' Planet Wisconsin?" – Zippy the Pinhead, Zippy Comics Annual 2001 ©Bill Griffith
Every comics fan knows Zippy the Pinhead, Bill Griffith’s clownish yet philosophical character. Each year Griffith puts out a collection of the year’s comics, and for those of us from Wisconsin, the 2001 Annual will always be special. On the cover with Zippy are cartoon drawings of giant, fiberglass, roadside attractions, all made in Wisconsin. There is the Octopus Carwash from Madison, the Bicycle Man of Sparta, and even apocalyptic-looking drawings of downed and decaying statues lying around the grounds of FASTcorp in Sparta, where the gargantuan lawn art items are spawned in great, mucilaginous pods (or molds, if you must be technical).
I arrived at the FASTcorp grounds on a blistering Sunday afternoon. You can't miss the statue of E.T next to the fourteen-foot Viking as you head into town on Route 21. Giant replicas of everything imaginable are strewn around the building in various stages of finish...some bright and shiny and ready to be trucked off, some waiting for a coat of paint and a gob of lacquer, and others languishing, forgotten, against the side of the building. Evergreen-ringed fields behind the metal pole building serve as a fiberglass boneyard that stretches for acres. There lies.a 6-feet tall Honey Bear with stomach wide open down the middle, while nearby a shark's head pushes up through the sod, angry teeth bristling over its empty maw. An oversized ice cream cone nestles against the forest backdrop like a dilapidated dome home. It's a landscape from another planet.
There's a sign that welcomes visitors to walk around and take pictures, but warns against touching, climbing, or otherwise desecrating the massive artworks. If it isn't Sunday, you can go inside and buy a catalog for $5.
I ran out of film and had to buy more at the local Wal-Mart, where I asked the young clerk if she knew anyone who had purchased FASTcorp statues for private use. She said no, looking at me as if I had asked whether she enjoyed placing occupied hornet's nests on her head—but then she remembered something. Her high school class had received one free last year for its homecoming float, because one of her friends worked there. They managed to score a big foam tornado, which was positioned as if it were tearing apart mannequins dressed as the enemy team. "The theme was, 'Let's Rip 'Em,'" she explained.
One statue has made its way to a permanent spot in the bicycle trail park in Sparta. It’s a well-dressed gent seated high atop an old-fashioned bicycle. In the Zippy comic strip, Zippy has a conversation with this fellow. "I don't know why, Wheelman, but you fill me with a deep sense of ironic detachment," says Zippy wistfully.Not me. I felt a sense of ironic attachment. These are the icons of the urban environment we've all grown up in, after all, and their instantly recognizable forms are somehow comforting. I reluctantly concluded I could not fit any of them in my car trunk even if I could have afforded one, and left the big creatures to comfort one another in their mutual strangeness.
 |
SPARTA’S FASTCORP: BIRTHPLACE OF ROADSIDE GIANTS