‘A capital place for giants’: Museum has village of Atlanta thinking big

For 20 years, a 19-foot-tall fiberglass “Muffler Man” cradling a hot dog has stood on Arch Street in the village of Atlanta, about 40 minutes northeast of Springfield.

The square-jawed colossus was created in California, but for more than three-and-a-half decades, it was the calling card of Hamlet Arthur “Art” Stephens, the proprietor of Bunyon’s, a drive-in restaurant in Cicero on Old Route 66 just outside of Chicago.

The colorful entrepreneur purportedly paid $1,900, or about $18,100 in today’s coin, for the statue, though it seemingly worked: hot dogs were the best-selling item at Bunyon’s.

Illinois State Museum looks to add to Route 66 collection in advance of centennial

When Stephens got out of the restaurant business in 2002, though, the Hot Dog Man found his way to Ebay.

That’s when Bill Thomas and the Route 66 Association of Illinois entered the fray.

The group didn’t want to lose the Mother Route icon, so it made a proposal to Stephens: if a community somewhere along Route 66 would display it, would Stephens permanently loan out the statue? A deal was struck.

“I’ll never forget it,” recalled Thomas. “It was my job to go to Atlanta’s then-mayor (Bill Martin). I sat down at his kitchen table, and I can remember looking at him across the table, saying, ‘Bill, how would you like a 19-foot-tall statue of a guy holding a hot dog right downtown?’ To his ever-lasting credit, he didn’t pause for more than three seconds, and said, ‘Sure, I think that sounds like a great idea.’”

Now the Hot Dog Man is about to get some neighbors.

In July, the American Giants Museum further down on Arch Street had a soft opening as a precursor to the Route 66 centennial in 2026. The museum will have a grand opening in May 2024.

The brainchild of the four-person Atlanta Betterment Fund, which includes Thomas, the museum has an Esso Tiger (“Put a tiger in your tank!”), the head of a Uniroyal Gal and vintage members of “the Burger Family,” rolled out by A&W Restaurants in the 1960s, as part of its offerings.

The property and the building − on the site of an old gas station − are owned by the Betterment Fund, but the collections inside and outside of the museum belong to Joel Baker, the leading authority, collector, and restorer of the roadside statues that were produced by the Venice, California-based International Fiberglass Co. in the 1960s and 70s as a marketing ploy for businesses.

The plan, Baker said, is to have six of the giants, including the Hot Dog Man, looking out over Atlanta’s business district, which includes a visitors center, a public library, a couple of souvenir shops, Missy’s Sweet Shoppe, and Chubby’s Bar.

One of the giants, the 21-foot-tall Snerd, an Alfred E. Newman-looking figure named for Edgar Bergan’s sidekick, Mortimer Snerd, is already in place.

While filming a YouTube video in Atlanta in 2012, Baker struck up a friendship with Thomas that led to a number of different projects.

“Over the years, we started talking about this museum idea,” Baker said in a recent phone interview from Loveland, Colorado, where he works at his day job as associate director of media for a Christian radio and television ministry. “(Atlanta) seemed like a great location to me because it’s on (an original alignment of) Route 66, and there’s already a giant in the town and it was like, why don’t we put some more in here and make this a capital place for the giants?”

‘Every story is different’

Like a sleuth, Baker combs the country tracking down leads and stories about the giants. He and his team have found them in storage units, barns, garages, and fields. Sometimes he will find only pieces: a head here or a pair of legs there.

Baker has personally identified some 253 original giants − two companies now manufacture contemporary pieces for marketing purposes − most of which are “Muffler Men,” so-called because most of them went to muffler shops around the country. Some businesses, like Bunyon’s in Chicago, paid to have the manufacturer customize the statues.

“I personally enjoy the hunt,” Baker said. “Every story is different.”

A crew Baker hired has even taken to restoring the original giants in a shop near Marion, Illinois, though they had to practically learn from scratch about fiberglass repair and sanding, Baker pointed out, because there was no “go-to person.”

‘A local landmark’

Baker was recently featured in a segment on “CBS Sunday Morning,” with crews filming at both the Giants Museum and Lauterbach Tire & Auto Service at 1569 Wabash Ave., in Springfield.

The Lauterbach Man, standing close to 20-foot-tall, has been back in Springfield since 1978, though its history goes back to 1961.

Owner Mark Lauterbach said even if people aren’t familiar with the business or where it’s located, the light goes on when he tells them to look for the giant holding an American flag.

“It’s definitely a local landmark,” Lauterbach said.

Recently, the statue got a new paint job, some detailing, and minor repairs, the first in about a decade, Lauterbach said.

Not that life has been easy on Wabash for the giant.

About 10 years ago, Lauterbach discovered a small bullet hole in the Lauterbach Man’s chest.

In 2006, a tornado that rolled through decapitated its head.

“They found The Barrel Head’s roof two doors down behind (to the north and east) with the head still in the roof,” Lauterbach recalled.

A neighbor retrieved it and brought it back to the shop where it sat in the front window for a couple of days. It then rode on a float in the St. Patrick’s Day parade, Lauterbach said, before workers from Kulavic’s Auto Body reattached it.

In most recent years, the Lauterbach Man has been part of a familiar radio ad campaign with Johnny Molson providing its bellowing tone and tagline (“Drive safely now!”)

“(The Lauterbach Man) 100% works,” Lauterbach insisted. “If I was just a building with walls and doors and windows, it’s nondescript and easy to miss, but (the statue is) definitely something to hang our hat on and utilize.”

‘It’s nostalgic’

Baker thinks nostalgia is a big part of what’s attracting visitors to sites like the American Giants Museum.

“We love the vintage cars, and we love the vintage signs, and the vintage advertising and fiberglass statues was something that came out in the early 1960s and started showing up all over the U.S.,” he said. “With all the collecting and shows, like ‘American Pickers,’ I think it all plays into enhancing the interest people have in these. It’s grown incredibly since I started.”

Almost 99% of the time, the reaction to the giants, Thomas said, “is very positive. If you’re someone who remembers them from your past or you’re a 9-year-old kid who’s never seen one before, this thing makes an impression on you.”

For Melodie Piazza of Bloomington, thrift shopping with her daughter, Madison Piazza, a student at Southern Illinois University Carbondale one recent weekend, the museum was a trip down memory lane.

“It reminded me of my childhood, growing up in the 1970s in California, especially the Mama Burger and Baby Burger from A&W,” Melodie Piazza said. “I thought it was interesting someone goes around and restores these giants and brings them back to life.”

Steve and Jamie Taggart of Prescott, Arizona, were driving their RV the length of Route 66, from Chicago to Santa Monica, Calif., with their Labradoodle Adeline when they stopped at the museum.

“It’s nostalgic,” Jamie Taggart said. “And I think (the Hot Dog Man) is pretty cool. It’s fun.”

The original Route 66 also brought Danielle Beauchamp and Katherine Fortin, both of Montreal, through Atlanta.

Fortin had a special interest in the museum because of its gas station history and the fact that the museum is trying to land a Texaco Big Friend, a 22-foot giant the company deployed across the U.S.

“My dad used to (operate) a Texaco service station in the northeast region of Quebec when I was a kid,” Fortin said. “I’ve taken some pictures here I could send to my dad so he can take a look at this and reminisce. I’m sure he’ll be delighted to see all this and have a chuckle.”

Contact Steven Spearie: 217-622-1788; sspearie@sj-r.com; X, twitter.com/@StevenSpearie.