He's a big, butch brute, the quintessential American male – tall, strong, expressionless. He's 76 feet tall, weighs 43,500 pounds, wears a size 112 hard hat and a 393 triple-D shoe. Despite that last statistic, he is, alas, not anatomically correct. We call him Ken.

His given name, I'm told, is Larry. He looms over the exposition building at the Tulsa State Fairgrounds, facing the traffic on 21st Street. The Golden Driller was erected outside International Petroleum Exposition building in 1953 by the Mid-Continent Supply Company in Fort Worth, Texas. It was put up again for the 1959 show, where it was such a hit attraction that the company fixed it up and donated it to the fairgrounds. It was permanently installed in '66, with his right arm resting on a derrick moved from an oil field near Seminole, Okla.

He's an inoffensive figurehead now, a relic of a bygone era when this town was awash in oil cash. He suffers the occasional humiliation of decoration – a radio station T-shirt in summer, an enormous Santa hat in December – and the rare attack (someone shot an arrow in his back once). He's built to withstand 200mph winds, so the seasonal tornadoes have barely ruffled his workingman's denim.

I was surprised to learn recently that the Driller is the largest freestanding statue in the world. Similarly, the IPE building – now host to an annual calendar of gun shows, boat shows, home and garden shows, guitar shows and, of course, the fair – is the world's largest unobstructed interior volume. That means it's huge and has no support pillars inside; the roof is suspended from a beam grid by cables, much like a suspension bridge.

There's a plaque at Larry's feet: "The Golden Driller, a symbol of the International Petroleum Exposition.  Dedicated to the men of the petroleum industry who by their vision and daring have created from God's abundance a better life for mankind."

A better life, indeed, and wars to end all wars.