Pioneer Mom with Scary Child

Frackville, Pennsylvania

The 15-foot-tall Pioneer Mom, or "Pie Woman," is a disturbing rendition of frontier feminity. A somewhat masculine-looking lady in a bonnet holds a pie and gazes blankly towards the highway. Tipster Alan Marx theorized this was a transgender Muffler Man, but the statue parts don't add up to indicate any M-Man lineage.

The girl child clutching the woman's dress is even more peculiar, with the face of a 40-year old man, dragging a decapitated doll across the statue platform.

Roadside rumor has it that the statues formerly stood at the Pot-O-Gold Diner in Hamburg, Pennsylvania, and then moved here after that establishment closed. Granny's opened in 1986, so they've been here for a while.

A 2008 repainting in brighter colors reminded us at the time of M. Night Shyamalan's The Village, and now draws comparisons to The Handmaid's Tale.