There’s another Schreiber sculpture a stone’s throw from the fork in the opposite direction: He turned an old propane tank into the world’s largest Prozac pill, with a sign over it reading: “Don’t worry. At night, they glow in different colors, another Schreiber creation. Five pick-axe heads are welded into the shape of a capital “E” to become “Pick-E.”Īlong Route 199, if you take that now-famous fork toward Red Hook, you might notice giant white orbs in the woods to the right.Giant augurs are driven into a stump, with the sign “Boring”.Round stones are arranged on a rusting metal stairway to nowhere, as “step-n-stones”.Rusting circular saw blades in a log become the stegosaurus plates of a “D-Tree-a-Saw-Russ”.A dozen or so ends of hoes are arranged on a pole to become an "Xmas Tree (Ho-Ho-Ho)".Six iron hoops are lined up with a sign “Rolling a Lawn”.His long driveway is dotted with punny sculptures: So he tacked a sign to a tree that reads, simply: “Wow.” When visitors to the hilltop home he calls “Steve’s World” take in the commanding view - a panoramic vista that sweeps from the cliffs at New Paltz to Overlook Mountain to the Red Hook water tower and beyond - they all say the same thing. He sank them into the ground and suspended red balls from them. And every story is riddled with laughter.įor instance, he created his ode to Christo’s iconic “The Gates” project in Central Park using clothing racks that were once bolted to a Manhattan ceiling and set him back all of $25 at auction. Steve Schreiber has the air of a bemused old prospector who, instead of looking for gold, is mining for laughs.Įvery artifact on his 60-acre property, whether it’s rusted pieces of steel or machine parts worked into a lawn sculpture, comes with a backstory - where he found it, how much he paid. It's also a favorite spot for geo-cachers and for tourists on their way to Franklin D. There’s a 21-footer in Franklin, Kentucky, for example, and a 9-footer in Centerport, Pennsylvania.īut Schreiber's is the tallest, large enough to win a landmark pin from Google Maps, and to get a mention in "Ripley's Believe It Or Not" and on the Roadside America website. There are other oversized forks in other roads. Yes, Steve Schreiber is the man who put the Fork in the Road at the fork in the road. When folks drive west from the Taconic on Route 199, they reach a point where they have to choose: Will they go left on Route 308 to Rhinebeck? Or right on Route 199 to Red Hook?Īnd there, in the grassy triangle of state land, stands a sculpture paying tribute to that choice: a 31-foot-tall steel fork. Posse Gathers: Red Hook Society marks 225th year combating horse thievesĭecades later, Schreiber, 78, is still getting folks to slow down in this tiny stretch of northern Dutchess County, but not with macintoshes and Macouns. He’d deliver whatever they wanted right to their car so they wouldn’t lose their place in line, remembers Schreiber, who was just a boy at the time. His dad, Wally, was more than happy to sell apples from his fruit stand to a bumper-to-bumper clientele who were going nowhere fast. Service stations dotted the roads leading to the parkway, with pump jockeys eager to water radiators, top off gas tanks and hand out S&H Green Stamps. This was the 1950s, and the Taconic State Parkway was opening up in sections, which meant parkway-bound traffic would bottleneck on local roads into Rhinebeck and Red Hook. MILAN – Steve Schreiber remembers the eastbound cars backed up for miles along Route 199, all the way back to the traffic light in Red Hook. Watch Video: Fork in the Road creator in Red Hook
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