ST. ROBERT, Mo.—You’ve heard of the headless horseman of Sleepy Hollow, but what about the headless muffler man of Route66? Last April, severe storms decapitated the “Mega Mayor,” a twenty-two-foot fiberglass Goliath standing proudly over Uranus, Missouri—an out-of-this-world tourist attraction in unincorporated rural Pulaski County. Back in 2015, self-proclaimed “Mayor of Uranus”
Louie Keen—often decked out in a patriotic red, white, and blue suit—transformed an old roadside mall into an entertaining themed destination known for its delightfully cheeky puns. Highlights include the Fudge Factory and General Store (“The Best Fudge comes from Uranus”) and the World’s Largest Belt Buckle, a ten-foot-tall, thirteen-foot-wide clasp officially certified by Guinness World Records.
Keen added the iconic muffler man to his Putt Pirates mini golf course in 2021. Fiberglass artist Mark Cline reassembled shattered fragments of a 1960s-era muffler man cowboy from Calgary, Alberta, that had ended up in a junkyard, casting a one-of-a-kind likeness of Keen himself—accessorized with a mayoral sash, hat, sunglasses, and an oversized golf ball and putter.
After strong winds blew the Mega Mayor’s head hundreds of feet to the northeast, the bean was recovered but declared damaged beyond repair. Keen tells us that Cline crafted a shiny new replacement to restore the figure to its former glory. The new noggin has been attached to the old neck. It looks a lot better than a pumpkin.
Photos courtesy Mayor of Uranus.