Muffler Man: Uncle Sam

Springfield, Massachusetts

Arm position: left arm down, right hand waving

Accessories: top hat, has been an Uncle Sam in the past.

Southern Gentleman

On the periphery of classification as a Muffler Man is this "Southern Gentleman," or "big White Guy," a puzzling mixture of the rare Texaco Big Friend and an ersatz Muffler Man head with sleepy eyes.

For decades from his platform in front of Chicopee's Plantation Inn, he greeted cars as they exited the Mass Pike. In an earlier incarnation as Uncle Sam, he stood in front of Mutual Ford in Springfield, Massachusetts, until 1999. Before that he served as a pizza chef in Framingham, Massachusetts.

"Southern Man" or "Plantation Man" (as he's known locally) was painted completely white, with the aforementioned head and top hat. He appeared to be a mix of liquor branding gentility: the top-hatted Johnny Walker with the white-suited Jack Daniels.

The Big White Guy may have also served as an unofficial visual marker for the C-5As that lumbered frequently overhead, landing at a nearby Air Force base.

Update: The Plantation Inn and the Big White Guy were put up for auction in Nov. 2013. The Inn didn't sell, but the Big White Guy did, for $11,500. He vanished for a time, then reappeared in the parking lot of a strip mall in Agawam in early October 2015. He vanished again in June 2017, then reappeared outside the East Village Tavern in East Longmeadow. He was repainted as Uncle Sam in July 2025 and promptly moved to his current home in Springfield.