Wednesday, January 16, 2013

the monolith monsters



The Monolith Monsters (1957)

The curse of the Monolith Monsters—came back to haunt all the respectable, law-abiding people of lovely little Fly-Over-State Emporia, Kansas.

What else to call them—these weird Easter Island stone monstrosities west of town? There they were—gaunt, gothic, stark hunks of limestone. 

This Stonehenge primitive cluster of over-sized, gigantic, old limestone Fenceposts—the brainless creation of the mad artist Richard Stauffer of ESU and ESU fame.


Conceived in his glass-blowing studio-laboratory—
up by Wilson Park overlooking the old Welch Football Stadium. He been a crazed Frankenstein madman—since he fell down a ladder while remodeling his basement with local stonemasonry. 

He broke both his arms in the fall—and badly bruised his poor sculptor’s creative brain. After that he switched mysteriously to junk art sculpture—prowling junkyards around town for thrown-away car parts and useless tired machinery. 

Later he switched to glass blowing art—making nice shiny beautiful pieces of art out of lovely tinted glass for people to enjoy. 


But then his obsession with stone sculpture and giant size-queen stone masonry—got him a sizable grant to build the Monolith Monsters.

He’s always been rather historically inclined—hunting for Indian flint arrowheads and tribal artifacts. No wonder he ended up dedicating the Monoliths to the Indians, settlers, even William Allen White. 

Up they went like stony obscene gauche Erections—west of Emporia by the Lyon County Fairgrounds. Driving into town along Highway 50 from the Interstate—there they were glaring and scaring all the tourists and visitors.


Was it any wonder that this weird coffee-klatch of ugly giant statues—seemed cursed from another world like the Paleozoic Mosasaurs out past Strong City. The tall grass prairie covering—what was once a vast primitive Inland Sea from the Gulf up to Canada.

And so whether it was an old Indian Curse or prehistoric monsters returning from the deeps—the ugly gargoyle stone hunks started to grow and grow and get much bigger day by day.

Looming higher and higher like giant phallic Erections—horrible Kansas hard-ons totally disgusting for people driving by.


These Monolith Monsters stomped the Fairgrounds completely flat—then they headed east along Hwy 50. All the way downtown along Sixth Avenue—wrecking havoc with all the businesses, gas stations, homes and churches. 

Wherever they went—the Monolith Monsters destroyed and crushed every thing in sight. Flattening the banks, the courthouse—the old Newman’s Department Store (already a ruin).

Nothing was sacred to the Monsters—the Granada Theater and even the sturdy Presbyterian Church built like a fucking brick outhouse.


All the way up to the Sunken Garden and the pretty little college campus—pretty soon nothing was left but a town that looked like the spitting-image of the destitute ruins of ugly Detroit.

The Monolith Monsters had taken over—the pretty little modest comfy Athens of the Midwest. Speculation and rumors were rife across the devastated wreckage of a town—people blaming Hostess Twinkies and Tyson Meat Packing greed for their tacky downfall.

Others blamed Lorna Anderson and that awful Reverend Bird—for the wrath of the Lutheran Lord descending on their doomed town. 



The good thing about this horrible Kansas disaster—was that word got around on TV and the Media about the cataclysmic sinking of Emporia just like the grand ocean liner The Titanic.

The only standing building untouched—was the old EHS neo-classical high school there on Sixth. It had been remodeled and renamed The Breckinridge Hotel and Convention Center.

All of sudden the Breckinridge Hotel got flooded with out-of-town inquisitive visitors and gawking shocked tourists out for a cheap thrill. 


The Breckinridge was packed with wealthy people—from across the vast country. Suddenly The Flyover State was bigtime lucrative business—Mayor Bobbi Mlynar declared a Kansas Sunflower State National Holiday—filling the city commission’s coffers with oodles and oodles of Tourist Money and even lucrative Hollywood movie contracts.

Which only goes to show you, Dorothy. There’s always a Pot of Gold—at the terrible, tortuous, troubled, tacky End of the Rainbow, honey!!!!!!




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