WAFB Channel 9, Baton Rouge, LA |February 19, 2003 - "Gorilla"
It's a traffic stopper in Iberville Parish, but what's the story behind the huge gorilla along-side Highway One? He stands sentinel on LA-1 smack dab in the middle of Plaquemine, this big old gorilla.
He hasn't been there a year yet, and he's already a landmark. Ask the man who put it there, Ed Schwing. He says, "Everybody going to a football game at St. John's, they say, 'Turn right at the gorilla.'"
Month in and month out the gorilla is dressed for the season. Right now, of course, that's Mardi Gras. But how in the world did he come to be here? Ed, who lives in the house where the concrete icon stands, says, "This is a keepsake I gave my wife to remember me after I'm dead and gone."
Gayle Schwing wasn't too thrilled with the remembrance from her husband. "Well, I was really kind of mad." "She wasn't kind of mad," says Ed. "She was hot!" Gayle chimes in, "I didn't like it because it is so ugly. It is so ugly!" And Ed reveals, "So she told me to get rid of it or she was going to divorce me. I woke up the next morning and she said, 'You made up your mind yet?' I said, 'I'm still thinking about it.' She didn't talk to me for a week. It was real peaceful around the house."
But Gayle says the ugly thing finally grew on her. "Since I'm putting the costumes on, it's not quite as ugly as it was." Which brings the Ugly Gorilla Saga to yet another level. Ed continues the story. "I said, 'You're not doing my gorilla justice. I'm going to get a professional seamstress,' and she started making our costumes."
So the divorce plans have been scrapped, and the gorilla is here to stay. Even Gayle has become a believer. "I guess, I don't know, it's still kind of ugly-pretty, but everybody in town loves it." The gorilla isn't about to go far. It weighs 3,500 pounds. Football players from St. John's thought they would move it last fall -- as a joke. The joke was on them. They couldn't budge it!
