This Family’s Really Made of Strong Stuff

PEDLEY, Calif. —  Just about every day Mr. and Mrs. Muff and the twins stand at curb-side waving at passing motorists, along with their dog Muffy--a family whose bonds are strong as steel.

Fil Guerrero says he welded them together from old mufflers so motorists would notice his Progressive Muffler Service, but “now they see only the Muffler People.”

Muff, covered with rust-resistant paint, has a head made of an old tractor muffler, his nose is a clamp, his smile a collection of nuts and bolts.

“He’s like you and me,” Guerrero said. “He was single, he got lonely, he met someone and they got married.”

During the Christmas season, Mr. Muff wears a Santa suit. For Halloween, he’s Dracula, and the rest of the family members have their costumes. On July 4, they fly flags.

The townspeople call them the Mufflers. On days when they’re not out there, motorists honk and yell, “Where’s the Mufflers?” Guerrero said.

The family started seven years ago with Muff. The wife arrived later, and one day in 1983, Guerrero hung hand-carved wooden signs around the couple’s necks that announced: “It’s a girl.” “It’s a boy.”

Guerrero said some people misunderstood and “thought I had kids. They’d come in and ask about my twins.”

But Guerrero says he’s through creating additions to the Muffler family on Limonite Avenue, 50 miles east of Los Angeles. He has to haul them out to the curb every day, and “I have a bad back.”