Quirky Amarillo, Texas

TEXAS LEGENDS

Quirky Amarillo

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In Amarillo, Texas there is a driving force behind many of the odd attractions that you will see here -- Stanley Marsh, 3. Marsh, responsible for the building of the popular Cadillac Ranch on old Route 66, didn't stop there with his "artistic endeavors."

"Art," Marsh says, "is a legalized form of insanity, and I do it very well."

Stanley Marsh, 3 has made his mark on Amarillo in more than one way. Though the Texas millionaire is eccentric, he is also said to be very down to earth, quickly disregarding the “III” as too pretentious.

From the Cadillac Ranch, Marsh has moved onto other endeavors including a giant phantom pool table that can only be seen from the air, to huge sculpted legs south of the city, to a plethora of strange signs posted throughout Amarillo. In any event, it's an interesting ride!

Art is a legalized form of insanity,

and I do it very well.

-- Stanley Marsh III

Jeez, Louise, I was confused when I saw this sign.

Can someone explain what this means?

Kathy Weiser, May 2004.

While Marsh doesn't care if you graffiti the Cadillac Ranch as much as you like, you better not mess with his eccentric signs.

True Texan in form, Marsh has had more than a few run-ins with the law over his brand of enforcement. At one point, it was said that he penned an 18-year old boy with a hammer inside his chicken coop, when the boy was caught red-handed with one of his signs.

Northwest of Amarillo, Marsh has painted a mesa to look like it’s floating, where hundreds of sheets of plywood were painted sky blue on the side of a tall hill. Unless it's overcast, the resulting impression is that the summit is floating. The mesa is located about 8 miles northwest of Amarillo via Tascosa Road.

Another oddity is that of the Giant Phantom Soft Pool Table, who few have seen. The pool table sculpture is a 180-by-70 foot rectangle of dyed green grass complete with 42-inch plastic balls. Saying "maintaining good art should not be seen but dreamed about," he has kept his pool table hidden somewhere on his thousands of acres of family land - seen for the most part only by cows, cowhands, snakes and low-flying airplanes. "I move it twice a year, on May Day and Halloween, or whenever I feel like it," Stanley once said.

Marsh is also the man behind 200 signs on display at Amarillo homes and businesses. Looking very much like colorful municipal signs, they don't dispense traffic or parking rules, instead they offer a variety of offbeat slogans. One reads "Strong drink." "What is a village without village idiots?" asks another. There are dinosaur and ostrich "x-ings," signs that read "Road Does Not End." There was a sketch of Mona Lisa with the words: "Men have loved her." On Monroe Street, a Marilyn Monroe sign.

While the signs are spread out around Amarillo and the surrounding area, Old San Jacinto is the neighborhood where you'll see them in the highest concentration. The ever-enigmatic Marsh explained the signs, saying, "They are to be looked at."

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The signs are just there, like the Rock of Gibraltar or the Statue of Liberty. They are a system of unanticipated rewards." Marsh will provide the official-looking diamond-shaped signs to anyone who will put them up on their property.

See a whole bevy of Marsh's signs on the next page.

Beyond Cadillac Ranch and the signs, Marsh's eccentric public art vision extends south, to the junction of I-27 and Sundown Lane, where a sculpture of a pair of disembodied legs greets passersby. Marsh commissioned sculptor Lightnin' McDuff to build two large, trunkless legs of concrete reinforced with steel, one 24 feet high and the other 34 feet high inspired by the poem:

Legs Sculpture between Amarillo and Canyon, Texas,

Kathy Weiser, November, 2005.

This image available for photographic prints HERE!

Ozymandias

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed.

And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1818

More pictures of the Cadillac Ranch and Stanley's signs on the Next Page.

Also See:

Amarillo, Texas - Panhandle Cowtown

The Cadillac Ranch

The Haunted Natatorium

Book your lodging in Amarillo

right HERE online

Stanley Marsh signs are all over Cadillac Ranch.

This one is on Soncy Street, a couple of miles south

of I-40. Kathy Weiser, May, 2004.

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