Traveling home one evening in the fall of 1999, J.C. Dyson, President of Dyson Building Center, saw a Halloween decoration of a large spider in someone’s yard in Harwood, Maryland. While driving, J.C. thought to himself, I want to make one of these for their yard at his store.
The body of the spider was made out of a large round bale of straw and it’s legs spread out around it. As it turned out he was unable to put his hands on the round bale of straw and at about the time he was ready to give up, his daughters said to him, “let’s make a SpongeBob!” Just as a refresher, the SpongeBob cartoon show first aired on May 1, 1999. Melanie and Hillary, J.C.’s youngest daughters, loved the show and watched it whenever it came on. Since it came on in the evenings, good ‘ole dad got to watch it also. Being quite familiar with the show, J.C. thought, why not? We’ll give it a try. J. C. and his daughters did rough drawings of what SpongeBob would look like and once the base of SpongeBob was figured out and built, it seemed only natural to build the body out of bales of straw. They were stacked in the base and on top of each other to make the body. Items around the yard and a little imagination were then needed to make the eyes, mouth, arms, legs and teeth. A pair of old boots were nailed to the bottom of the legs for his feet and yellow gloves for his hands completed his look.
SpongeBob through the years...the rest of the story