As a company handle, Big Boy Steel Erection scores -- not just with ladies and gay-boys but with everyone who sees the huge white trucks lumbering around town en route to another job site. Those whose minds aren't in the gutter automatically think, "Oh, there goes the men and materials to build the steel framework for warehouses, churches and schools." But perverts such as yourself may think something else altogether, something that prompts a certain stirring in the loins, triggered by the Pavlovian keyword "erection." Huh-huh-huh. Hey, Beavis, check this out: a woody, a chubby, a stiffy, a boner, a hard-on, Captain Standish, the old Hornington ...

It's no stretch to imagine steelworkers with a sense of humor choosing the name, hoping it'll get a rise, so to speak, out of the populace. But John L. Gerst, company president, says the name should be taken literally. "It was the name my parents came up with when they started the business in 1963. I was just a tyke then, and what their reasoning was, I'm not sure -- except it may be related to the fact that everybody in the Gerst family is big. We're all big people."

We're sure you are. But whatever the reason, we're thankful -- because, next to Bull Moose Tube Company, there's no other fleet of vehicles in the St. Louis area that engorges the mind in such a way.