I gave this dude as much dignity as I could conjure up in this photo. I give him more dignity than he possesses in real (statue) life, or at least in this location, a completely bizarre setting: an apple orchard that doubles as a faux-Wizard of Oz playland for kids--which makes perfect sense because both Illinois, where this orchard is found, and Kansas, the setting for the Wizard of Oz, are adjacent to Missouri.
The place had a completely creepy vibe, man.
It was the kind of place that put me on the alert for clowns hiding in the corn waiting to abduct either me or my children. According to the information provided at the site, our Indian friend was put in storage years ago for a while, and there may be a duplicate of him somewhere else. (My memory of the details remains sketchy, as I kept looking over my shoulder while I was reading the plaque in fear of the abductor clowns.) We found him (his name apparently is "Giant Indian") through the website "Roadside America," a site dedicated to the quirky and bizarre places that blessedly populate our great land like so many stars in the sky.
This is the entrance (below). Oddly, one does not approach Mr. Giant Indian by entering the park but by walking along a fence in the parking lot and then into the orchards. The one perk of this odd entrance was I did get to walk by a bee hive and capture some nice shots, several of which I've posted before. (Who am I kidding? I've posted them all.)
Though here I tried to give Mr. Giant Indian as much dignity as I could muster, I was not so inclined at the time. As you can see he was adorned with a rather large loin cloth, and I wondered how accurate a facsimile this guy is to the real-life fourteen foot tall Indians who once roamed our lands. According to Julianne, posing here, he's not an accurate facsimile at all. Disappointingly so. Or if he is an accurate facsimile, then we must all bow our heads in silence for the plight of our poor giant castrated friends who once populated the plains of Illinois.
I half-expected that in a nearby cornfield, we'd find a fourteen foot tall sculpture of the Indian-hating sinister Andrew Jackson with oversized bloody shears in his hands.
Wow, that turned dark on a dime, didn't it?
Huh.
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12 comments:
Very nice--I really like the focus on the top shot.
ST: Thanks, bro.
First, I think you did all you could and then some for this guy.
Second, I'm pretty sure I saw this exact shot, minus Julianne, in Avatar yesterday.
JC: Thanks, yo. I must say I fear that you do not persuade me to want to see Avatar!
You did very well in adding dignity to this terrible sculpture!
It appears the sculptor knew nothing about anatomy (not just in the groin area...but the whole body).
JC - darn it!!! You beat me to my Avatar joke!! I have not seen it yet, but I was thinking James Cameron seemingly owed this sculptor - who apparently conjured this tall warrior many decades ago - about half a billion.
TK - what's all this with both feigning innocence and checkin out my man's, uh, size of weapon?? I mean what kind of report is that to give us?? "Yeah the sculptor obviously didn't care about maintaining scale...". What??? Look they put that red doily up there for a reason!! That's hardly the point of this magnificent creation, the junk in his trunk!! Or your satisfaction with it!! He is a calm denizen of a gentler time - not a plaything for your amusement!!??
...or were you simply saying that as you were climbing him, you could get no higher than his waist, due to, uh, "lack of foothold?"...
PS - I was tempted to work in some Texas joke there, or quote Steely Dan or something (they call Alabama the Crimson Tide... fill in joke here). But then I realized my #1 Jayhawks are on natl tv today against a half-suspended Tennessee team, and God forbid if we find a way to lose that game, I be in a world a hurt with y'all...
So, uh, hook em horns...
I think his feet look funny too. My archery loving children would also say that he's not standing correctly to shoot that arrow so in their opinion, he is going to miss whatever he is shooting at.
It is possible to perform castrations by removing the testicles from inside the scrotum and leaving the scrotum in place and undamaged, which gives the appearance of an intact male. So even on some of these more, shall we say, blatantly male statue pictures that have been posted on this blog before, we can't actually know that those more fortunate looking statues really are more fortunate than this fellow with the ugly loincloth.
Just something to think about.
Technoprairie--his feet are ridiculous. agreed.
s-s: that is indeed something to think about, something that i'll likely be thinking about long after i want to be done thinking about it. ewww.
Hey Andy D... good call on the no-Texas-jokes. Some prescience at work there?
And believe me, it's an honor to have snaked a punch line of yours! I think you're right about Cameron. There's no way he hasn't seen this crazy apple orchard guy.
ku. weird!
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