Texas Pipe and Supply giant fishing rod hooking truck

A fishing rod of outsized proportions reels in a car beside a Houston pipe yard. It is one of the sculptures of Eclectic Menagerie Park, a roadside collection on Texas Pipe and Supply’s property at State Highway 288 and Bellfort Avenue.

Houstonia reported in 2013 that the piece, then in its final stages of construction, was the company’s largest work to date: a planned ten-story cast-iron fishing pole with a reel, line and stainless steel hook, from which a red Mazda Protégé would dangle. The magazine said the company chairman designed it and head welder Ron Lee built it, with an 18-foot-deep concrete foundation dug for the handle. Lee told the magazine: “I build big, money’s not the object here.”