They're Soft, Cuddly and Lashed to the Front of a Truck. But Why?

NY Times ^ | 13 November 2005 | Andy Newman

[Lorianne]

A bear with a prominent grease spot on his little beige nose spends his days wedged behind the bumper guard of an ironworker's pickup in the Gowanus section of Brooklyn. A fuzzy rabbit and a clown, garroted by a bungee cord, slump from the front of a Dodge van in Park Slope. Stewie, the evil baby from "Family Guy," scowls from the grille of a Pepperidge Farm delivery truck in Brooklyn Heights, mold occasionally sprouting from his forehead.

All are soldiers in the tattered, scattered army of the stuffed: mostly discarded toys plucked from the trash and given new if punishing lives on the prows of large motor vehicles, their fluffy white guts flapping from burst seams and going gray in the soot-stream of a thousand exhaust pipes.

Grille-mounted stuffed animals form a compelling yet little-studied aspect of the urban streetscape, a traveling gallery of baldly transgressive public art. The time has come not just to praise them but to ask the big question. Why?

That is, why do a small percentage of trucks and vans have filthy plush toys lashed to their fronts, like prisoners at the mast? Are they someone's idea of a joke? Parking aids? Talismans against summonses?

Interviews with half a dozen truckers as well as folklorists, art historians and anthropologists revealed the grille-mounted plush toy to be a product of a tangle of physical circumstance, proximate and indirect influence, ethnic tradition, occupational mindset and Jungian archetype.

[JRandomFreeper]

Is the bunny from Nantucket?

/john

[TASMANIANRED]

I think you are onto something.

[Fierce Allegiance]

[PeteB570]

Looks like my sister's car (x 3). She's got more deer with her car than her husband has got with his rifle.

She lives in rural southern MN and drives like a Bat out of Hell. It's the deer that run scared in that neck of the woods.

[PeteB570]

Now thats a nice looking hood ornament. Is it stock?

[Fierce Allegiance]

Nah, it's an accessory that you have to pay for by the hour.

[upchuck]

She really enjoys lashing, right?

If she doesn't, let me know. I'd be happy(!) to teach her.

[tet68]

I have this memory of my late business partner, he was
from OK. and loved the okie image.
He came by to see me once when he was moving, and he had
stuff tied all over his truck, it was pouring down rain
and lashed to the right fender was a cage with his cat
in it, the cat was NOT happy.

[fuquadukie]

Kinda skank face.

[Experiment 6-2-6]

bear with a prominent grease spot on his little beige nose spends his days

BOBO!

[Lady Jag]

[Dashing Dasher]

This is what is passing for news these days?

[Dashing Dasher]

[Dashing Dasher]

Now, that's funny!

[Beaker]

I almost pinged you to that picture until I realized that it was you who posted it! Ha!

[Fierce Allegiance]

Kinda skank face.

Glad I didn't putmy glasses on to check.

[Lady Jag]

Now, that's funny!

That bad, huh?

[Lady Jag]

LOL! Well, thanks for thinking of me!

[exile]

If only plush toys would learn to cross at the crosswalks, none of this would ever happen.

[TruthWillWin]

If I had a choice I'd pick that type of Deer on my hood.