Every few years, the pink elephant at the Gas N Stuff service station and convenience store on Hwy. 141 in Fenton gets a makeover.
“We have to keep her looking good,” said owner Doug Mueller, who once again hired Suzie Smith of Suzie Paints in Imperial to give the elephant a new coat of pink paint.
Smith, who began that job on June 1, said it would take a couple of days to finish it.
Mueller said the 12-foot-tall fiberglass pink elephant doesn’t have a name.
And, he doesn’t really know if the elephant is a girl, Mueller joked.
What he does know, however, is that the pink elephant has worked well to draw attention to the Gas N Stuff station at 2599 Hwy. 141.
Mueller said that when a new gas station opened nearby in 2004, people told him that his station would be out of business by the end of the year.
“That was 2004. This is 2018. Apparently, the pink elephant has a friendly, loyal following,” he said.
His father, the late Al Mueller, installed the pink elephant at the site in 1984.
He purchased the property, which is near the intersection of highways 141 and 21, in 1981 and constructed an office building there “that never rented up,” Doug Mueller said.
So, his father turned the building into a liquor store. One day a man visiting the area from Kentucky told him he needed something to call attention to his business.
“He sold fiberglass figures, and he was just driving by,” Mueller said. “He had a 12-foot chicken in his truck and I think he was trying to sell the chicken to somebody.
“(The man) suggested something like Paul Bunyan or Babe the Ox or the 12-foot chicken, but my dad didn’t like any of those ideas.”
However, Mueller’s dad had seen an elephant that was just off I-70 near the Blanchette Memorial Bridge, and decided he wanted one like it.
When he acquired the pink elephant, it had a martini glass in its trunk.
“He thought he would mess with the alcoholics in Jefferson County,” Mueller joked.
Eventually, vandals broke the martini glass, “so for the holidays we put the American flag in its trunk and it’s a patriotic elephant.”
The liquor store later became a gas station and convenience store.
At one time, Mueller said, his father also had a miniature golf course and batting cages at the site, but both were torn down.
“I got tired of picking up baseballs,” Mueller said.
He said he opened the A-1 Locker Rental business where the golf course and batting cages used to be.
Mueller said the elephant is a popular landmark.
“It’s a daily event that people stop to take pictures of their kids with the elephant,” he said.
Therefore, keeping the elephant in the pink is a priority, Mueller said.
“Our obligation is to keep the elephant looking nice for the neighborhood,” he said.
Smith, who is painting the elephant for the third time, said the paint color she is using is “festive pink.”
She said it usually takes one day to wash and scrape the elephant and another to paint it.
Smith also painted the elephant in 2008 and 2012.
She said her husband, Jack “Rusty” Smith, and their daughter, Margeaux Smith, help with the job, with “Rusty” adding the artistic details, like the elephant’s sky blue eyes and gray highlights.
Smith said she paints more than elephants and takes on a lot of specialty work and creative finishes, like “sponging, ragging and feathering.”
She said she recently completed matching the faux finishes on a 1902 home at Lindell Boulevard and Kingshighway in St. Louis that was built for the World’s Fair.
Smith said she started the painting business in the 1990s, when her children were young so she could set her own hours and still be a room mother at their school.
Mueller said his gas station might not be the slickest in the neighborhood, but it has its own charm.
“We have friendly, down-home service. We’re not fancy, but have survived with good customer service,” he said.
And, then there’s the pink elephant, which also helps to keep people coming back.
The station sells pink elephant T-shirts and cups that say, “Party at the Pink Elephant,” Mueller said.