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By KELLEY BENHAM
Published January 28, 2005
Bumpernuts
If we didn’t have the taters to say it in the story, you didn’t really think we’d have the taters to show the taters, now did you?
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Reporter's note: In this story, the editors have substituted the word "taters" for each reference to a pair of sensitive male reproductive parts. They did not have the taters to use the word taters in a story about taters.
She's just a woman in a Camry cruising the Old Northeast in St. Petersburg, looking modest and ordinary in all ways, except for the flesh-colored aluminum taters dangling 8 inches from her bumper.
Carrie Jelaso -- 33, single, a former massage therapist -- is glancing in the rear-view mirror, scanning the roadside. "Come on," she says. "Notice my (taters)."
She makes her living off truck taters, which are common enough that you'll eventually spot a set in the wild.
Put "truck" and the common slang for taters into Google and her Web site is first on the list, and there are lots of photos of them, in an array of colors. Carrie packs the orders herself, in her living room, and ships them all over the world.
"I'm the (tater) lady," she says. "I just come right out and say it."
She did not invent them, but she did modify the design, and she caught the trend in its infancy. Now it has blossomed internationally and, to demonstrate the appeal, she is cruising around hoping people will admire them. But admittedly, this upscale neighborhood is not in her target market.
"The NASCAR 500, that would be a gold mine for me. I've been to Kash n' Karry and they've gone crazy on me. I have driven through Pinellas Park and they go crazy. That's the mecca where they enjoy the (taters).
"The salt of the earth is my people."
She ships many of them to Texas, where she says the need is so great that people make their own using two tennis taters and a sock. They're popular in Britain, Australia and Canada. They start at $24.95. Mothers buy them for their sons. Wives buy them for husbands. CEOs buy the $45 brass ones.
At S&M Truck World in Clearwater, when a woman walks in stammering or wringing her hands, the guys behind the counter point automatically to the display of truck taters, offered in blue, yellow, red, green, camouflage, flesh and chrome.
"Any time a woman calls and says, "I don't know how to ask this,' it's about truck (taters)," manager Kevin Schuler said.
Store owner Steve Humphries can attest to their popularity.
"I sold 250 -- you call 'em sets, I guess, or pairs -- at Christmas. They're just selling like hell.
"The real rednecks buy camo. We've got blue ones for the married guys."
Carrie first spotted a pair on a truck in Georgia several years ago, and she thought they were inspired and funny, but poorly made.
She thought she could do better.
She found a local forge to make a mold -- "It's kind of like a Jell-O mold" -- and, no, there's no human model -- "Come on, what guy has 8-inch (taters)?" -- and she had them "drop-forged" and "powder-coated."
Her proudest moment was when a soldier's dad bought a set to send to Iraq. His son wanted them for the back of his Bradley tank.
"For some people, (taters) symbolize courage, which for me gets me all choked up. It does."
She thinks about them over there in the desert, dangling from the back of those big tanks. It makes her so proud her eyes water.
Get a set
Carrie Jelaso's product can be found at www.bumpernuts.com
- Kelley Benham benham@tampabay.com
[Last modified January 27, 2005, 13:40:34]
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