Carrie Jelaso sells an accessory for your vehicle that takes real - well, let's just say machismo - to display.
By KELLEY BENHAM, Times Staff Writer
Published January 30, 2005
Carrie Jelaso’s product can be found at www.bumpernuts.com. Jelaso, 33, makes her living off sales of the auto novelties.
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.
ST. PETERSBURG - She's just a woman in a Camry cruising the Old Northeast, 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, and which look real enough that our editors declined to publish a photo of them.
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.
"Now, the Old Northeast is not going to get it," she's saying. "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 points the car in the direction of Home Depot. To her right, she can see two guys in a Toyota truck smirking at her bumper. She slows at a light, rolls down the passenger window and yells: "You got (taters)?"
"Yeah," shouts the passenger, giving her a thumbs-up. "Big ones."
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 least one couple bought a set for their wedding limo. A local man bought one for his nephew's van, nicknamed the Shaggin' Wagon, but that didn't work out so well, as we'll explain later.
"I send a ton to Miami," she says. "You don't see as many around here. But they're coming."
She pulls into the Home Depot parking lot, where a guy gathering carts recognizes her car. She slows in front of a guy sitting on a bench with a McDonald's bag. His face registers neither displeasure nor delight.
"What do you think?" she says.
"Disgusting," he says, looking up from his cheeseburger. "I like it."
* * *
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.
They're less realistic than the brand Carrie Jelaso sells online. Smoother, more symmetrical.
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."
While he's thinking of it, he turns to one of his assistants and tells him to order more.
Perhaps there is some psychological significance behind this trend. Perhaps the truck, especially when lifted and buffed and fussed over, is a metaphor.
Steve buys that. "That would be the drive shaft," he says.
But mostly, truck taters are for kicks.
He keeps a chrome set on his personal vehicle, a black Dodge Ram 2500. They dangle beneath a "Goin' Fishin"' sign, which lights up at night and casts a glow on their chrome curves.
He has driven the truck to his 13-year-old daughter's school, where her classmates kicked them. He says his wife does not mind them, and that so far he has had just one complaint.
"It was an old woman, you know. She said, "That's disgusting.' I said, "Just because you don't use 'em no more, don't pick on mine."'
He likes to drive slowly through Belleair, where he lives. His might be the only unneutered truck in Belleair. He likes to bounce his brakes at stop lights.
"You can get 'em wobblin' real nice," he says. "They twinkle in the sunlight."
* * *
Carrie always loved big trucks and fast engines, and she liked to date guys who drove muscle cars. She'd say to people, "That truck has (taters)," in a metaphorical, complimentary way.
She 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.
"I wanted to do something new and entrepreneurial and funny," she said. "I wanted to make the best truck (taters) that's ever been made."
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."
The guys at the forge and the folks at the post office eventually got over the giggles, but her callers have not.
Men say their wives took their taters years ago so they need to buy a new set. They ask if she sells them in a jar. (No, but she will put a note in the box, and she's written some strange ones.)
They ask her to glue hair on them. They ask for female truck parts. "I'm like, "Y'all are freaking weird.' "
They seek reassurance that her products are larger than life. "Men will compare themselves to these and they have to tell you about it. They're insecure."
Husbands and wives steal them from each other. Some order flesh for summer, blue for winter.
To her, all the jokes are old, but she laughs anyway. "When I see people laugh, that's what brought me to the (taters)."
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.
* * *
The allure and the horror of truck taters converged in one St. Petersburg household on Christmas morning.
Darren Harris had spotted a set on the highway and decided they were the perfect gift for his 17-year-old nephew, Sean. Sean drives an old red van lovingly known as the Shaggin' Wagon. But Darren's wife Amy Allen pointed out, "Calling it the Shaggin' Wagon and putting those on there are two different things."
She tried to convince him this was a bad idea, but he was undeterred. After much debate over color, he ordered a set in blue.
When they arrived, his wife was appalled. They were much more realistic than she'd imagined. Hollow on the back side, they reminded her of an ice cream scoop. "A double dipper."
Christmas morning, everyone gathered at Sean's house, and Sean opened his gift, and then Sean was very quiet.
"Everybody thought it was gross," Amy said. "Everybody."
She and her husband ended up taking the taters back home.
After more deliberation, Darren then decided to attach them to their Mitsubishi SUV.
Amy thinks this is a terrible idea, but she has not had to argue with her husband about it.
Darren can't find the truck taters anywhere. Amy made sure of that.
