Oddities seen driving to Buena Vista and in Buena Vista. |
Below: While Lee Duquette was driving the
RV, Karen Duquette noticed an interesting pick-up truck and quickly
snapped a picture out of the moving RV window. The GPS said they were
passing through the City of Orange in Orange County, Virginia.
Shortly afterwards, they passed a Pinwheel Garden that was in support
of Child Abuse and Neglect - see the photo below.
However, The two RV Gypsies also saw a different, bigger and more colorful
pinweheel garden in front of The Alamo in 2015. The 2015 pinwheels
were a symbol of hope and heeling for children who struggle with mental
illness. Both pinwheel displays are of equal importance. |
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Below: Coffee Pot House
1870 E. Midland Trail
Lexington, Virginia |
On Highway 60 between Lexington and Buena Vista, a building that almost looks like a coffee pot sits on the right side of a curving grade. The two-story corrugated metal structure qualifies as coffee-related by virtue of its roundness and the attached spout and handle.
 According to Roadside America, Ellen Bryant shed some light on the origins of the big pot. Her grandfather's brother Kenneth Wills built the coffee pot in the late 1950s (the family usually referred to it as a teapot). "He operated it as a restaurant for a long time, until he moved his family to Virginia Beach. Kenneth Wills died in 1964 from a heart attack. His wife still resides in Virginia Beach."
The coffee pot has been inhabited by a succession of business; in the 1990s a vacation canoe rental operated from there. In 2010 the building was open for business as a fresh fish market, but closed by next report in 2012. The distinctive coffee pot elements are always visible. |
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Below: Paulverizer: Cyborg Muffler Man
1400 Sycamore Avenue
Buena Vista, Virginia
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Mark
Cline is the creator of his 2013 "Paulverizer". Standing atop the cab
of a junked truck, it holds a motorized dirt bike at the end of one
of its beefy human arms, but aside from these two limbs and its head,
the rest of its body is robotic. Inside its chest is a control pod occupied
by an insectivore alien, who's operating the giant humanoid with levers.
Mark said he got that idea from a scene in the first Men in Black
film. Paulverizer is the cyborg embodiment of Paul Palma, who owns the
recycling plant where it stands. Its RoboCop-inspired head
was originally modified by Cline for a Muffler Man that stood at Galaxy
Golf in Nags Head, North Carolina. Hurricane Bertha destroyed that statue
in July 1996; Mark salvaged the head, and it lay in the yard of his
fiberglass studio for years. In 2010 Mark was asked to play Patsy Cline's
second husband in a theatrical production of her life (Mark is related
to Patsy's first husband, Gerald Cline). The woman who played Patsy
was married to Paul Palma. He and Mark struck up a friendship, and Paul
then paid Mark to build the 24-foot-tall cyborg Muffler Man. Starting
with the salvaged head, Cline created the rest out of his imagination.
It was unveiled on October 19, 2013. |
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Not sure where these were located - photographed through the window of the RV, while driving. |
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Marlboro column in 2019
in Richmond, Virginia |
Marlboro column in 2004
in Richmond, Virginia |
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