Arnold Zwicky's Blog

Today’s Zippy takes us to Elmsford NY, a village in Westchester County, just across the Tappan Zee Bridge from New Jersey and not far from Connecticut, and home to a BP gas station with a startling fiberglass Muffler Man mascot:

(#1)

The actual figure, in full British Petroleum garb:

(#2) Note the price increase between #1 and #2

From Roadside America’s entry for the figure:

Fiberglass Paul Bunyan. Even without arms, he can sell gas. … His left arm was amputated by a truck … in 2007. His right arm was stolen decades ago and never returned.

A sad history.

And for reference, a map:

(#3) Washington Irving  and rich suburban country

The bridge over the Hudson in the middle of the map is the Tappan Zee (recently replaced). Back in the early 60s, this was the middle part of the route Ann Daingerfield Zwicky and I drove between Cambridge MA and Princeton NJ on visits back to Princeton when we were at MIT.

This entry was posted on February 3, 2018 at 5:48 am and is filed under Linguistics in the comics, My life, Pop culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.