Here, collected in one 1,100 word blog post, is everything you need to know about my trip to The World’s Largest Wooden Nickel.
Last week, myself and Team Bleep Bloop went down to Austin to shoot an episode at a local arcade. Pat proposed a Sunday roadtrip to the Alamo and, even though I’m passionately disinterested in history and learning, it seemed like a good excuse to see more Texas. While looking online for interesting stops along the way, our director Creighton discovered we would be driving past The World’s Largest Wooden Nickel (Common sense tells me I probably don’t need to capitalize it, but instinct tells me otherwise. It’s taking restraint not to use italics).
At this point you’re probably thinking, “Come on, I’ve seen some fucking huge wooden nickels. This thing is going to have to really be at a different scale to impress me.” Well, according to wooden-nickel.net it’s 108 times larger than a standard wooden nickel, and if broken down to raw materials could produce 400,000 wooden nickels. “Enough wood for about three weeks of wooden nickel production!,” the website promised. I was sold.
Every good roadtrip tests the faith of its travelers, and ours was no exception. While using my phone to pour over every detail of The Nickel’s homepage (and not looking at the scenery at all, thus defeating the original point of the roadtrip) I noticed that the wooden nickel museum conveniently located next to The Wooden Nickel was only open Monday through Friday. This raised a lot of concerns. We weren’t even sure what regular wooden nickels were for, would we be able to appreciate the accomplishment of The Nickel without an expert to explain it’s historical significance? Is the buffalo depicted on the nickel life-sized? If we left without a t-shirt, did it happen at all? I tried to rationalize good reasons to press on. Perhaps The Nickel was behind a fence, and if we couldn’t get the full experience perhaps we could at least see a splinter poking over the edge. Maybe, I hoped, it would be outside, but still visible through a window for the benefit of those unfortunate enough to be roadtripping on a weekend. We agreed that since the original artist’s concept drawing on the website depicted The Nickel as an outdoor attraction that you can just drive right up to, we should stay the course and hope for a plaque to answer our questions about wooden nickel history.
Yes, in retrospect we were possibly overestimating how much security there would be, but not nearly as much as it’s owners underestimated how much it needed. The first thing you notice when you get to The Nickel is not it’s imposing size or patriotic imagery, but rather that both the heads and tails sides have been vandalized with graffiti. Thoroughly. Then you see that, for reasons that are still unclear to me, the parking lot is strewn with traditionally sized wooden nickels that were all soggy and soft from the rain. It looked as if The Nickel had sensed it’s own demise and decided to spray it’s seed in the air.
I’m generally in favor of harmless mischief, but I was truly saddened by the hooligans who defaced this wooden monolith. When this VFW drew up that concept art and made the decision to keep The Nickel outside unprotected, they were probably considering people like us. We’re just travelers who want to drive to The World’s Largest Wooden Nickel, but we don’t have enough time to schedule a proper visit during the museum’s weekday hours. Their intentions were so noble they didn’t even consider that anyone might want to tear down what they were building. My heart still sinks when I imagine the day The Nickel’s architects showed up to find their dream desecrated, and slowly realizing how hard it is to clean graffiti off wood without destroying the artwork underneath. In retrospect, I’m glad the museum was closed. I don’t know that I could have hid my disappointment from the people who were still proudly showing it off. Somehow, I was not prepared for things to get even sadder.
Graffiti or not, if you’re at the world’s biggest anything, you stop and take some pictures. We were so fascinated by the nickel, we didn’t really notice a woman pull up and park. I want to stress that she was friendly once we explained ourselves, but I thought her initial tone was a little accusatory when she asked what we were doing there. It seems like a simple question, but when put on the defensive it’s surprisingly tricky to explain exactly why you drove to see The World’s Largest Nickel. This is the first time I’ve gone to a tourist attraction and someone demanded to know what we were up to.
I stammered for a bit, but when I explained we just wanted to take some pictures she acted relieved. She then explained that several people in town want to steal the nickel. I didn’t want to act suspicious so I didn’t say it outloud, but I immediately thought that if I did want to steal something that’s thirteen-and-a-half feet long and weighs more than a ton, I probably wouldn’t have come in a rented Chevy Impala. I also questioned if “3D”, the mastermind whose greatest caper thus far is showing up in the middle of the night with a paint roller, really had a better plan.
We made a comment expressing regret for what had happened, but the woman confidently explained how plans for it’s restoration are already underway. The Nickel would be sanded, repainted, and given a fancy poly-something-ene finish so that if this happens again it can just be washed down. There are also a long-term goal of hoisting the nickel up and keeping it on the roof of the VFW/museum. I do not know when they plan to get it up there, but on the way out I noticed some of the graffiti was dated 2007. My heart sank again.
When we finally made it to The Alamo I listened to the guides, but their tragic story didn’t make me nearly as depressed as that nickel. Yes, there’s no good reason to construct the World’s Largest Wooden Nickel, but there’s also no good reason to visit one so I empathize. It really gets me that those hooligans, who are usually defined by their love of doing things that there’s no good reason to do, couldn’t respect that. At the very least, they should have drawn a huge penis on the buffalo.
