It's not how big you are...

I'm here in Raleigh, NC now, reunited with my wife and daughter, and all the joys and drama family brings...wouldn't have it any other way. On the drive from Kansas City I promised myself I wouldn't make any unwarranted detours because I was in a time crunch. I was only slightly amused when I saw the sign METROPOLIS 20 MILES. How cute... only in the good old USA would the name of a fictional city be lifted from the pages of a comic book and plastered onto a real town [or is it the other way around? will hit up wikipedia after this]. But when I saw the GIANT SUPERMAN STATUE NEXT EXIT sign about 15 miles later... no detours be damned-I'm going to Metropolis. And sure enough, in front of the court house in a town more resembling Smallville....



And with a Santa hat to boot! I was suddenly eleven years old again thinking this was freakin' awesome! The Official Superman Museum on the opposite corner was cool too. Any and every Superman relic had a home there. There were at least eight of us awed and befuddled tourists snapping pics and no doubt revisiting our childhood. But this little town apparently had a thing for big men and on my way out I found the true hero to errand-running housewives in this southern tip of Illinois...



It was BIG JACK the giant grocery-toting mascot. I'm not often at a loss for words [not a good place to be for a blogger] but I was fairly silenced by Big Jack. Seriously... what can you say when you see this?

I'm thinking this town holds the record for giant statues per square mile. A worthy detour indeed.