Old Trapper's Lodge Statues

On our way to the Reagan Presidential Library, we made a detour to Pierce College in Woodland Hills, California where, tucked away near the animal barns, a collection of creepy sculptures pays homage to our pioneer past. Created by Burbank motel proprietor John Ehn, this hodgepodge of brutes, saloon girls, cowhands and virtuous frontierswomen once adorned the grounds of his motel, the "Old Trapper's Lodge." Like the old west, Ehn's statues are violent, sad, heroic, bursting with energy and politically incorrect. Very, very politically incorrect.

When it comes to storytelling, however, political incorrectness can beat the crap out of political correctness any day. In Ehn's world, "Pegleg Smith" and "Big Bear" growl their way through a bloody wrestling match that will, no doubt, end badly for both of them. These "Mighty Americans," as the statue's pedestal describes them, would want the government to keep its hands off their Medicare if they lived today, and the figures in the adjacent "Kidnap" statue seem equally uncomfortable with behavioral constraints imposed by "the man." Nearby, an anthropomorphic tombstone eulogizes another American archetype:

IRON FOOT EVA

(1800 - 1830)

 300 LB. GIANTESS

 POETESS-SINGER

 AND

 BLACKSMITH

 KILLED ON

 HER WEDDING

 DAY BY

 UNKNOWN

 RIFLEMAN

Similar tales adorn the faux tombstones blanketing the hillside, and Ehn's lonely, hardened pioneers gaze with detached interest at his imaginary burial mound. They seem resigned to an early, violent death and don't really give a damn that their days are numbered.  They are here now, and they will wring every salty drop of life out of this uncharted wilderness as long as their guns have bullets. They are Americans, after all, and long-term planning just isn't in our DNA.

Keeping with our national predilection for living in the moment, the state of California declared Ehn's collection of statues at the Old Trapper's Lodge to be a "State Cultural Landmark," and then promptly sent the bulldozers to tear them down, according to Roadside America.  It was the late 1980s, and I imagine that Burbank was eager to add another Dollar Store in the name of economic progress. How the statues ended up at Pierce College seems to be a bit of a mystery, but as Gary, his brother Jay and I spent the morning getting acquainted with Ehn's assemblage of gritty go-getters, we gave thanks that this piece of our politically incorrect past had been preserved.