I have been wanting to visit the Gateway Arch in St. Louis
ever since I first saw it from the freeway, which was in 2020.
But then I was in a hurry to get back to Massachusetts to my mom.
So this time I scheduled a visit. But what I didn't do is
figure out the logistics of that. So now I'm realizing that
it's not going to be too easy to park and Captain can't come into
the into the arch, you know, so he can't come up the elevator.
Anyplace I park is going to have to be safe enough for him to
stay there for however long that takes. And I don't even know how
long that takes. So the other thing is, I think I was supposed
to take an exit off the ramp that said waterfront, which I
did not do and now I can't seem to find the waterfront. So yeah,
sorry, guys, I think this is about as close as I'm gonna get
to this very big arch. But I'm gonna be very near some other
very big things later on today. So stick around.
If you've ever traveled around the US, then you've probably
seen some version of giant chairs, at least a few of them,
you know, like these ones, and they seem like giant chairs
until you've seen the truly huge ones. And then they seem like
quaint little oversized, you know, photo ops, but they are
definitely born out of a certain battle that has spanned across
decades, all over the country, a very strange battle for the
hearts and minds of Americans. A battle waged with giant chairs.
It started all the way back at about the turn of the 20th
century, when, right in my home state of Massachusetts, a 12
foot mission chair was erected in Gardner Massachusetts.
Gardner is the home of Heywood Wakefield, which is a famous
furniture manufacturer, especially chairs, and a couple
of other highly respected chair companies. So it makes sense,
you know, I mean, it makes as much sense as a giant chair
really would ever make. And then after that another furniture
capitol,Thomasville North Carolina, topped theirs about 20
years later by putting up a 13 and a half foot chair, but
Gardner wasn't gonna take that lying down. They were going to
take it sitting up. So they replaced their 12 foot chair
with a 16 foot Hitchcock chair in 1935. Thomasville of course
volleyed back and they put up an 18 foot Duncan Phyfe. So yeah,
from there, the frenzy spread, and there was a 19 foot ladder
back kitchen chair that went up in Bennington, Vermont, I think
it was, and then a 20 foot Phyfe chair in Washington DC.
Gardner's next entry, supposedly built to celebrate the
Bicentennial, but let's face it, it was just good old American
competitiveness. And that chair is 20 feet tall and 10 feet
wide. Pretty soon private industry stepped in and you can
imagine that they took the fight to a whole other level, a place
called Pa's Woodshed, which is a lumberyard in Binghamton, New
York, they put up a 24 footer, and they got it certified by
Guinness as the world's largest but not even a year later, a 25
foot one went up and then a 33 foot office chair was erected in
Alabama. In 2003, an Italian company put up a 40 foot chair
in Los Angeles at the LA Mart. I remember that because I lived in
LA then and I guess I never got close enough to realize how huge
it really was. That was the biggest one for quite a while.
Oh, we should talk about the rockers because the rockers are
like a whole other category. A 21 foot rocking chair one up in
Colorado, the star of Texas, which was 26 feet tall, topped
it. And then there was Big John at a furniture store in
Franklin, Indiana. Here's my friend Melissa standing in front
of Big John just to show you how big it is. But in 2015, that's
when we end up in Casey, which is where we are now. We're in
Casey, Illinois. It's a big city. Well, no, it's a small
town. It's about 3000 people, but it's full of big. You might
say it's the capital of big and that's thanks to a guy named Jim
Bolin, who's a local businessman who was so full of Casey civic
pride that he thought, hey, why stop at chairs? So he built the
world's largest wind chime. The wind chime was only the first of
many very big things. There is the world's largest golf tee,
and it has its own observation platform. There's also the
world's longest yardstick. Now this one disappointed me a
little, I don't know why. I just expected the world's longest
yardstick to actually be bigger. The world's largest pitch for
and the world's biggest mailbox. You can not only mail a postcard
from it but you can climb inside it. The world's largest barber
pole. And then there's the world's largest truck key. The
giant truck key really takes you by surprise. It's on a side
street. And it's very impressive. But it's also next
to a huge taco that isn't even on the roster of big things. So
I guess it's not big enough, but apparently the key is an exact
replica of Jim Bolin's own truck key. So I guess theoretically,
somebody could figure out how to scale it down and then steal
Jim's truck. Some of the big things seem like maybe they got
their title because there wasn't any competition. I mean, like, I
don't think there's a lot of people out there trying to make
the world's biggest swizzle stick. There are other things in
town that are big, they're not record breaking, but they're
just big like the mousetrap, the piggy bank in front of the
butcher shop, and there are these giant antlers. Now those
are very, very big, but they were donated. They were once
using a Jaeger Meister commercial apparently. And then
there's the birdcage. You can sit in it, you can swing on the
little birdie swing and get your picture taken. I'm sure there's
actually got to be a bigger birdcage somewhere out there,
but it is big.
But in this town full of bigness, nothing compares to the
chair. I thought I had seen giant chairs. But I turned the
corner and there she was. Nothing prepared for the
majesty, the enormity. This is a really really really, really,
really, really big chair. It stands 56.5 feet tall and it
weighs over 46,000 pounds. So I'm not really sure how they
weighed it because that would require the world's largest
scale and that is something I have not seen in town. I found
out after I visited Casey that the town also has a town park
that offers camping. That was a little pricier than I normally
would like to spend, it's 25 bucks for hookups, but it's $10
without hookups and there's showers. So yeah, I would pay 10
bucks for a spot that had showers because showers are
expensive. They are. I wonder how big the showers are. OK, now
go watch this one and keep your eyes out for those giant chairs.
Let me know if you find one!