When Ted Pelkey was denied a building permit to build a garage by the
town of Westford, Vermont, he decided to construct something else entirely
instead!
As a way of getting revenge, Ted built an enormous 700-pound wooden
statue of a middle finger. The statue is in the middle of the glow of two
floodlights, allowing drivers on the nearby Route 128 to see it at all times. It
cost Ted $4,000 to build the statue, but he felt that it was worth it after all
that the town put him through.
This all started over a decade ago, when Ted applied for a building permit
with the Westford Development Review Board (DRB) in the hopes of
building a garage on his land. He wanted to do this so that he could move
his truck repair and monofilament recycling businesses right next to his
home, as opposed to operating out of Swinton, some 25 miles away.
Ted fantasized about being able to “get out of bed in the morning, take [his]
coffee, walk across the driveway, and go to work.” However, the town
denied his request over and over again, even as he continued to reapply
year after year. The town claims that Ted has not met all necessary
requirements, but he says they have a grudge against him.
“I’ve been put through the wringer by these people, and it’s just not right,”
he said. “I haven’t been treated fairly at all.”
“I was sitting at a bar,” he explained, “and said to my wife, ‘Hey, I want to
get a statue made of a middle finger, and I’m going to put it up on the
lawn’… If you don’t want to look at the building, look at this.”
So Ted built the middle finger, and the town was not able to do anything to
stop him. While Vermont has strict rules about billboards, they are
powerless to remove the middle finger since it is not an advertisement.