The last road trip I took with my father, in 2018, went west to east across the northern counties of Wisconsin. It began in Rice Lake. On the main drag of Rice Lake’s flat, treeless downtown there is a bright yellow and red pawn shop with a large, fiberglass gorilla on the roof. My dad glanced at it from the car and said, “I think that was made in Sparta.”
Sparta is a town of 5,000 about three hours due south of Rice Lake. My father grew up there. His father (my grandfather, Odin) operated a Badger Paint store downtown. There’s not much to Sparta. It’s a pretty, picture-perfect small American town with a small river running through it and a main street that hasn’t changed much, architecturally, in a century. It calls itself “The Bicycling Capital of America”; the well-loved Elroy-Sparta Bike Trail, opened in 1967, is nearby.
But a better claim to fame might be “The Fiberglass Animal Capital of America.”
Just outside of town is a company called FAST Fiberglass. It consists of a few buildings, some industrial in character, some obviously old farm structures. Within these buildings are forged and painted enormous glossy fiberglass figures of all shapes and sizes. The molds for these figures spend their days and nights resting in a large grassy field near the buildings. The field is colloquially called the Fiberglass Mold Graveyard.
There are hundreds of different molds lying in the graveyard. There are Santas and snowmen; dinosaurs, dragons and teddy bears; frogs and pelicans whose tongues and beaks double as slides; Yogi Bears destined for Jellystone Park campgrounds; titanic baseball mitts and baseballs; inner tubes for water parks that could double at king-sized donuts or bagels; tortoises the size of Volkswagens; Jaws-like sharks and ten-foot-tall bears; gigantic raven heads that would scare Edgar Allen Poe; seashells; ice cream cones that could feed a village; rubber duckies so big they would fill ten of Ernie’s tubs; guitars; boots fit for Paul Bunyan; Big Boy statues for the once-thriving chain of family restaurants; horses; Vikings; skulls; and just about every fish you can imagine, all much bigger than any fish story a failing Sunday fisherman could dream up.
We saw several examples of what must have been FAST’s handiwork on that 2018 road trip. In a park on the shore of Shell Lake, which is both a body of water and the name of the town that sits next to it, there was a walleye ten feet in length, it’s frozen tail seeming to flap wildly. In Wabeno, there was a lion whose open mouth contained a drinking fountain.
My father was 90 at the time of the trip. He loved his hometown and spoke of it often. Every summer he drove four hours to attend his high-school reunion, held over dinner at a local supper club called Club Oasis. But this was the first time he had shared the mind-blowing information that nearly all the outsized fiberglass animals in the state—seen in town squares, at amusement parks and water parks, and outside cheese factories and butchers of beef, pork and chicken—likely come from one place: Sparta, Wisconsin.
At that time, my wife Mary Kate and I already had an abiding, borderline perverse interest in commercial fiberglass figures. Our focus, however, was Muffler Men. What is a Muffler Man?, you ask. Well, they are large fiberglass humans, ranging from ten feet to twenty-five feet tall. They were once intended as gimmicky roadside advertisements for muffler shops. That is why they all have outstretched arms and open palms. Those hands once held a muffler.
Most Muffler Men were made in the 1960s and early 1970s by a company in Venice, California, called International Fiberglass. You can find them in almost every one of the 50 states, as well as Canada.
Over time, as the muffler shops closed, the men remained (they were too cumbersome to move or remove) and took on new employment as emblems for mini-golf courses, amusement parks, go-cart tracks and shopping malls. Many became cherished, if meaningless, symbols of local pride.
They look like Paul Bunyan or lumberjacks or gas station attendants or Native Americans or cowboys. They are surreal anomalies, totems of lost capitalistic dreams that crop up out of nowhere on the loneliest rural routes. They beacon you to some bygone attraction or mercantile wonder, looking to the horizon with dead eyes for the hordes of customers who will never come.
We love the Muffler Men. We often take detours just to see one and snap a picture.
Fiberglass animals interested us less. But learning that they came from my father’s hometown changed that. When the annual family reunion on my father’s side was held in Sparta this summer, we instantly knew how one of our afternoons would be spent.
FAST Fiberglass offers no tours. But they understand that their business is a minor tourist attraction for a certain kind of offbeat tourist. (It me!) A sign post on the property reads
VISITORS. Please read before proceeding. You are welcome to walk around the yard looking at and photographing our fiberglass items AT YOUR OWN RISK!!! Please be advised that there are some bee and wasp nests that spring up unannounced. Also, there might be sharp pieces or edges on some items. So it is best not to climb on things. Climbing on or touching the items may cause something to fall and injure you.
The sign goes on. We took note and toured the fiberglass mold graveyard anyway.
The graveyard covers a stretch of grass as big as a football field. When we arrived, we thought we’d be looking at actual fiberglass statues. But we quickly learned that these weren’t the finished figures, but the molds from which they are made.
A LaCrosse Tribune article in 1987 explained the process of making a fiberglass statue this way:
The first step in the making of one of FAST’s creations is a set of drawings done either by the customer or by [owner Jerome] Vettrus himself. Workers use the drawings to make a full-size two-dimensional cardboard cutoff. They then spray urethane foam over the cardboard mock-up. Once the urethane foam sets, it is carved and sanded into the desired shape. Workers then cover the urethane with plaster and sand it again. The plaster statue is covered with fiberglass after being sprayed by a substance that keeps the fiberglass from sticking to the plaster. After the fiberglass sets, it is split off into pieces from the plaster. These pieces become a mold with which workers make copies of the original figure.
There were once three companies doing fiberglass in Sparta. By the time that 1987 article ran, the other two were out of business.
The molds at FAST were surrounding by weeds and laid out in long lines, like the aisles in a grocery story. Some were grouped thematically. The Christmas molds were piled together in their own Santa’s Workshop. The sharks all swam the same patch of ground. All the ice creams cones had fallen onto one stretch of hot sidewalk.
FAST Fiberglass has a tangled history. The business was begun in the 1960s, probably 1962, which is when the company began advertising for salespeople. It was first called Sculptured Advertising and specialized in larger-than-life animals, which it displayed in front of its warehouse as very palpable roadside lures. A 1968 ad calling for distributors read, “There is a new dimension in outdoor advertising, business identification, and feature promotions. It’s the unique visual-impact of giant fiberglass sculptures, designed and engineered to stop traffic, attract crowds and sell merchandise.”
Sometime in the mid-1970s the company’s name was changed to Creative Display. This iteration was co-owned by Harry Quandahl and Dwain “Spike” Jones. A man named David Oswald, who went to high school in Sparta and had a talent for fiberglass design, was responsible for the various figure designs. Oswald once told a reporter he dreamed of making a figure, perhaps of a U.S. President, as big as the Statue of Liberty. A fiberglass visionary, was Oswald.
In 1978, Creative put out what is probably the outfit’s crowning achievement, a 145 foot long, four-story-tall muskie that is a local landmark in Hayward, Wisconsin. It is used as an observation tower at the National Fresh Water Fishing Hall of Fame. In 1981, Creative built a 16-foot loon for Mercer, Wisconsin. It was around this time that the company began making statures for the Big Boy restaurant franchise. Many a small town has put itself on the map with a phone call to Sparta.
A 1975 article in the LaCrosse Tribune reported the most popular figures to be “steers for steak houses, pizza chefs, 19-foot rainbow trout and bass for clubs featuring fish, rabbits, the new logo for Volkswagons and a 15-foot golf ball on a 10-foot tee for golf clubs.”
Creative Display had an international reach. It created animal figures for an amusement park in Kuwait, cows for the Soviet Union, pigs for Japan and The Netherlands, and horses for Mexico.
In 1983, Jerome Vettrus incorporated the company under the name Fiberglass Animals, Shapes, and Trademark—aka FAST. Vettrus started making animal-shaped water slides, now a major part of the FAST business. In 2000, James Schauf, a friend of Vettrus, bought the business. The Schauf family owned and operated the business until 2020, the year the operation was purchased by Ryan Lakowske and rebranded as FAST Fiberglass L.L.C.
“Graveyard” is an inaccurate term for the field of fiberglass molds. Though they look disused and abandoned, every item at FAST is a working mold. With just one phone call, a mold will be hauled from outdoors into the warehouse and put back to work.
The only worker we saw on duty the Friday we visited FAST was a friendly, talkative man named Lupe. He was busy working on several Yogi Bear figures. Somebody has recently ordered 68 of them. The statues typically cost around $10,000-$12,000, but are often more expensive. Small ones can be had for as little at $150, but they are very small. Popular items include the animal slides, various fish and teddy bears. FAST does do the occasional Muffler Man, but the giants are not their bread and butter.
I briefly toyed with the idea that our backyard desperately needed a fiberglass animal. But I quickly realized the only ones I could afford—the small items—would not satisfy me. The whole point of fiberglass animals, like Muffler Men, is that they are larger than life. They are ludicrous, joyful exaggerations. They make us smile because they make no sense.
So, for the time being, we’ll stay on the Muffler Man trail, looking out for fiberglass wonders that other kind souls have preserved for the world’s enjoyment. Only, now we’ll add a fiberglass animal trail to our road trips. Sparta, we salute you and the good you do.
Odds and Ends…
Dmytro Shovkoplias, the owner of Paravoz Speak Easy in Kyiv, continues his Brave Ukraine tour of American bars, raising funds for his bar, staff and the Ukrainian effort during the ongoing war. The next stops will be Herbs & Rye in Las Vegas (Aug. 11); Bar Iris in San Francisco (Aug. 15); Bathtub Gin in L.A. (Aug. 17); Neon Wilderness in Chicago (Aug. 19); and Katana Kitten in New York (Aug. 22). Follow Dmytro’s Instagram feed for daily updates … Dog Day Afternoon, the small shop in Windsor Terrace that has brought Chicago hot dogs and Italian Beef to Brooklyn, celebrated one year in business this past weekend… If you visit Takibi, the Japanese, izakaya-style restaurant in Portland, Oregon, where Jim Meehan designed the bar program, don’t miss the house julep, called Tanigawa. It is made up entirely of local spirits, including Westward American Single Malt Whiskey, St. George Spirits Umeshu liqueur, McCarthy’s Oregon Single Malt Whiskey and shiso. Also worth a try on the drinks menu are the Fir Coat and Rose City… William “Cocktail Bill” Boothby was the most famous bartender in the San Francisco area in the early 20th century and, for a few years, he held down the Pied Piper Bar in the Palace Hotel. It was there that he supposedly invented his signature cocktail, the Boothby, which is a Manhattan topped with Champagne. The drink is not on the menu right now, but the Pied Piper bartenders still know how to make it. Word to the wise… The second coming of Bar Agricole, Thad Vogler’s influential San Francisco bar, opened for business on August 3 at 1540 Mission Street. One half of space will be used for sales and tastings of the products featured in Vogler’s new spirits business, in which he is both making and importing liquors that meet his exacting standards. The other half will be the bar, with a marble, rectangular bar in the middle of the room. The house Martini will be served on the rocks. I’ve had a version of this. They know what they’re doing… If you think you don’t like artichokes, try the chilled Castroville choke served with umami mayo at Pacific Standard, the new bar inside the hotel KEX in Portland, Oregon. You’ll change your mind… Kevin Walker Garrett, the chef at Long Island Bar who left his position after five years last spring, is back in the kitchen at the Brooklyn bar (at least for a while). That means his beloved Gem Salad is back on the menu. Expect a new take on the fried chicken sandwich and a new pasta dish in the near future.
I always feel like I've taken a weekend getaway when I read your blogs.
Fun read! Wichita has a Muffler Man repurposed to hold a tire at Brown's Tire Service on a particularly seedy stretch of South Broadway (the old Highway 81 through town).