Rare Visions and Roadside Revelations | Seattle, WA, to Long Beach, WA | Season 11 | Episode 3
(male announcer) Production funding for Rare Visions & Roadside Revelations has been provided by: (female announcer) YRC Worldwide and public TV are natural partners.
We share the very important goal of connecting people, places, and information.
In this big world, that's a big job.
YRC Worldwide and public TV can handle it.
YRC Worldwide: honored to support the communities we serve.
(male announcer) The DeBruce Companies, proud to serve agricultural communities throughout the Midwest with high-speed grain-handling facilities, fertilizer, and feed ingredient distribution terminals.
(male announcer) And by Fred & Lou Hartwig, generous supporters of KCPT and public television, urging you to become a member today.
(man) ♪ Welcome to a show about things you can see ♪ ♪ without going far, and a lot of them are free.
♪ ♪ If you thought there was nothing ♪ ♪ in the old heartland, ♪ ♪ you ought to hit the blacktop ♪ ♪ with these fools in a van.
♪ ♪ Look out, they're driving hard, ♪ ♪ checking out art in their own backyard.
♪ ♪ Randy does the steering so he won't hurl.
♪ ♪ Mike's got the map, such a man of the world.
♪ ♪ That's Don with the camera, ♪ ♪ kind of heavy on his shoulder.
♪ ♪ And that giant ball of tape, it's a world record holder.
♪ ♪ Look out, they're driving hard, ♪ ♪ checking out art in their own backyard.
♪ ♪ Look out, they're driving hard, ♪ ♪ checking out the world in their own backyard, ♪ ♪ checking out the world in their own backyard.
♪ (Don) And action.
Dear TV Mailbag, how can this be?
A great vegetarian meal to start the day and someone else doing the work.
Nokona.
(Don) Hi, Don the camera guy here, free-floating, in part, because I'm in Fremont, proclaimed by itself as "The center of the universe."
Did you know this area of the universe had a map?
Looks roughly like that.
What's the scale?
(Mike) They've got a-- hold it; wait a minute.
They got a saying here: "Delibertus quirkus," "freedom to be peculiar."
(Don) Indeed, this freethinking subset of Seattle has not only a rocket of its own but a big old statue of Lenin striding briskly past the Taco del Mar.
(Mike) So this guy sculpted him with flames and guns to point out the violent revolutionary that he really was.
(Randy) I was more into McCartney.
(Mike) At one point in time, the sculpture was at the flea market, where it had a big for sale sign: "$150,000 or best offer."
(Randy) Hey, you know, this reminds me of Journey to the Center of the Earth, which I think is one of Mike Murphy's very favorite movies.
(Mike) Oh, man, what's not to love about that movie?
They need to--if they could remake Poseidon Adventure, surely they could remake Journey to the Center of the Earth.
(Randy) Are there enough noises going on around here?
Is the center of the universe always this noisy?
(Don) Yes, these two producers, thinking thoughts that producers do, are my traveling companions, searching Fremont for one last thing, and that would be a troll which can be found, as trolls often are, beneath a bridge.
And this must be it, a bug-smashing piece of public art refreshingly unlike any we've seen before.
We're trolling for content here on this show so far.
(Don) This guy's a real crowd-pleaser, and before you know it, I'm taking pictures of the crowd too.
Then here comes the other part of our entourage, the world's largest ball of videotape, which popped out for some quick photo ops, then was whisked away for some much-needed maintenance.
Next stop, Green Lake, home of one Greg Blackstock, and a perfect place to pursue more of our video mission.
You dirty rat.
(Dan) That is, to meet and greet outsider artist, self-taught, grass-roots, whatever you want to call the folks who make what they weren't trained to do.
Greg is an autistic savant, and his so-called "list paintings" are graphically packed and patterned.
They're up on the wall alongside commendations he received on retiring from his post as pot-and-pan steward at the Washington Athletic Club.
And he's no slouch on accordion, either.
[playing Stars and Stripes Forever ] ♪ ♪ (Mike) Tell us about the drawings.
Where'd you get started?
(Greg) It was early 1986 at the Washington Athletic Club, starting with a few series of saws, and I got to different-- I got onto different subjects that took a little time.
(Randy) How'd you know all those knots?
(Greg) Well, I had Dad give me a book, and I was always interested when I was sent to school.
(Randy) Here's king-sized jails.
(Greg) That one's been sold.
(Mike) Where do you get that many bells?
Well, I mean, I don't think I could even think of that many bells.
(Greg) Library research, and I got my book on bells and things.
(Randy) What's Monsters of the Deep?
(Greg) The great whales and the Pacific octopus and the giant squid and the great white shark.
♪ Rolling, rolling, rolling.
♪ ♪ Rolling, rolling, rolling.
♪ ♪ Rolling, rolling, rolling.
♪ ♪ Although our streams are swollen, ♪ ♪ keep them doggies rolling, rawhide.
♪ (Mike) So Greg, I'm looking around at all your photos on the walls.
That's pretty neat stuff.
(Greg) How about that?
Another guy I like was a Brooklyn, New York City comedian, Phil Silvers too.
(Mike) Sergeant Bilko.
"That's just a little kiddie bicycle.
What are you, some kind of a nut?"
♪ Move 'em on, head 'em up, head 'em up, ♪ ♪ move 'em on, move 'em on, head 'em up, rawhide.
♪ How about the shrill, loudmouth actress and comedienne Ethel Merman, too, huh?
(Mike) Oh, man.
"I'm with this truck driver at Peterson's Garage "in a place called Foster City, and will you shut up a minute till I tell you what happened?"
♪ Don't try to understand them.
♪ ♪ Just rope 'em, throw 'em, and brand 'em.
♪ ♪ Soon we'll be living high and wide.
♪ ♪ From my heart's calculation, ♪ ♪ my true love will be waiting, ♪ ♪ be waiting at the end of my ride.
♪ (Randy) I love the way it's-- you've got your-- your apartment decorated.
(Greg) How about that, huh?
♪ ♪ (Mike) You speak several languages, I've been told.
Is that true?
A little of each, yes.
I always like that, love the sound of that German, especially.
Hello, guten Tag.
♪ What a fine little girl.
♪ ♪ She wait for me.
♪ ♪ Me catch the ship across the sea.
♪ [speaking Czech] That's "Very well, thank you," in Czech.
♪ ♪ [speaking foreign language] ♪ Did you hear?
I said, "Louie, Louie."
♪ ♪ Oh, I said, "Me got to go."
♪ ♪ ♪ (Randy) Do you sit and think about what ones you're going to make each day?
(Greg) I don't know.
I got so many ideas in my own head, I have to do a little at a time.
(Randy) Does it takekekeot of time?
(Greg) Oh, yeah, it sure does.
(Mike) That takes quite a bit of imagination to come up with all that, I think.
(Greg) I did it.
(Mike) I'm impressed.
(Greg) I did it all.
I've done it all.
I did it.
(Randy) And you keep doing it.
[Greg hums Stars and Stripes Forever ] ♪ ♪ (Don) By the time you see this, a book will be out about Greg's art and autism and how they intersect, complete with some of his favorite recipes.
But when it comes to his love of old movies, TV still has the edge.
I mean, when's the last time you read a Cagney off?
Nah, see.
I'll talk to you any way I like.
You know who I am?
Think I let dames get away with anything?
You ain't as tough as you think you are.
[rapid speech] Nah, see, see, see.
I wish I could play that as tough as you... (Don) With apologies to impressionists everywhere, we bid adieu to Greg and his lovely cousin Dorothy and resume the driving portion of the show, which, thanks to the magic of television, can be considerably condensed.
All that slow city driving takes about this long, and we're seeing the dome of Tacoma and waxing on about the best chips of the trip.
Tim's chips, baby.
Jalapeno.
They're damn good.
(Don) Indeed they are.
And perhaps someone from Cascade foods will see this, note our genuine enthusiasm, and reward us richly.
Anyway, all this talk about food makes you think about drink, and when you think about drink in Tacoma, this place springs to mind.
As vernacular architecture goes, Bob's Java Jive is at the top of the heap and in remarkably good shape, especially when you consider that for most of its years, spirits, not coffee, have been its forte.
(Randy) I think it has cold beer, wine, food, dancing, pool, and videos.
(Mike) Are you spouting off again?
I wonder who their groundskeeper is?
This was made somewhere else and then shipped here.
1927--you're kidding me.
It was supposed to be the largest one in the world.
I believe it.
Looks pretty amazing.
It was the first prefabricated building put up in the Northwest.
That's pretty cool.
I'm repeating all this for the camera so they can know it's kind of an odd-- This is a new interview technique.
This is a new interview technique.
(Don) Ain't technology grand?
And so are souvenirs someone else pays for.
What do you think?
(Don) We'd love to hang around the grounds, but this is karaoke night, and even we have our limits.
As for tomorrow, all I know is, Rainier is near.
God help us if we have to climb.
[cow moos] [tableware clinking] (Don) Well, as it turns out, our drive in the country will stop well short of the peak.
Here, just past Elbe in a magical land where the deer and the Sasquatch play sits something called Ex-Nihilo, a sculpture park filled with sculptures that Dan Klennert has been sculpting because, well, he can.
(Dan) When I was a kid, I loved drawing.
And I grew up in Minnesota, living the life of Huck Finn.
So then my dad brings us out here and drops us in the middle of concrete jungle Seattle.
I started scrounging.
I'd get up early in the morning with a little red wagon and go around.
People--you know, we lived in a low-income housing project where a lot of seniors live, and they'd pass on, and their relatives would come and put a lot of belongings out there for the garbage man to take, and sheez, I'd take my wagon there and go through that and find jewelry and all kinds of cool stuff.
So that's where I developed the art of scrounging.
And when I became an adult, I went to work as a mechanic, and this guy shows me how to weld.
So then I started reaching in the scrap iron bin and welding these gears and stuff together.
My foreman comes in the shop.
He goes, "Where'd the hell you get those things?"
I said, "Well, I made them."
He goes, "Maybe you're doing the wrong thing for a living."
And that statement right there was like a pat on the back or something that encouraged me to keep going.
These are old hot water tank bases, but I look at it as those eyes on those lizards, you know, those chameleons or whatever, that their eyes go like this.
Break pedals off an old truck.
When you turn it this way, what you got is a guy, like a guy running.
It's a anchor.
But I mean, I just--you know, you can put this on there and make a dog, have that for ears.
Ears.
[Randy laughs] (Mike) Where'd you find this stuff?
(Dan) Oh, I get it all over.
My favorite spot is going to eastern Washington, because back in the early 1900s, people threw their garbage in ravines, and those things are glory holes, man, just gold mines.
This a motor mount of a truck.
You turn it this way, and you got a European nose.
Another one.
It's a Native American.
And then this also could be a squirrel.
When I go out in my junk pile, there's pigs and dinosaurs and buffalo and stuff jumping right out at me.
It sounds like I'm on some kind of drugs, but I'm not.
See, I want to put hair on this guy, because Sasquatch has hair all over his body.
But I don't want to ruin the looks and the feel of this beautiful driftwood, you know.
(Randy) So it's not always got to be about iron for you.
(Dan) No, it's-- (Randy) You'll go with other-- (Dan) Everything.
I mean, anything.
You can pick up leaves and make art.
I tell everybody it's the love.
You love that piece of metal, junk, driftwood, whatever, and then you can take that and turn it into something.
(Randy) So here's the pile.
(Dan) Well, this is my boneyard.
I can go to a certain area and pick something up.
If I need a round part, I go to this round area.
How many horseshoes?
I figure about 60 tons.
I'm going to do about a 30-foot sea horse with those.
(Mike) Wo w. (Dan) I don't know.
I just turn on the music and disappear into my imagination, and I just stand behind my eyes and watch myself work.
My hands just work on automatic.
(Randy) "Ex-Nihilo?"
(Dan) Yeah, I ran into a preacher up in northern Arizona on one of my trips to Santa Fe and that.
I stopped to get a cold Coke, and this guy's out by my truck and trailer going, "Ex Nihilo."
I says--I went up to him.
I was, "What the hell's that mean?"
He says it means, "something made out of nothing" in Latin.
You know, and it stuck to me.
And then my brain says, "We got to use that.
"When I get my sculpture park, we're going to use that "for the title of the sculpture park, because the whole place is made out of nothing."
When I first bought this thing, I mean, I had to clean the whole place up.
It was all garbage and dead animals and 'frigerators.
It--people thought I was on cocaine because I was such in a hurry to get it-- get the hard work done.
(Randy) Do you drink coffee, Dan?
That's actually what I want to know.
Yeah, I drink coffee.
Is coffee the key here?
I love coffee.
(Don) Yes, it seems there is a theme of sorts starting to emerge here, and that theme is caffeine and overachieving of one kind or another.
And that, of course, is a cue for our own world-record holder to come out and play.
What the hell's in here?
(Don) After which we reversed course and winged our way over to Winlock, home to a world's largest of its own.
(Mike) Viewers really shelled out for that shot, I'll tell you.
(Randy) Hey, you're awful hard-boiled now, aren't you?
My brain is scrambled.
(Don) Well, as that other Lennon once put it, "we are the egg man, coo-coo-ca-choo."
[together, prissily] Ooooh!
(Don) That may be the dumbest thing we have ever done, but there's no time for pausing and reflecting on it.
We're already making tracks for Centralia, home, by all accounts, to a genuine jaw-dropper, "Richart" Dick Tracey's rich art yard, inspired in part by the number five.
(Richart) Five is important.
Two fives are ten, and ten is the magic number.
Somebody asked me, "What do you do this stuff for?"
And I said, "Well, I do it in five hours or less, and I do it for $5 or less."
And that's what I stuck to.
And I don't care what the inflation rate is or what the stock market's doing.
I know what $5 is, and I know if it's going up, then I have to be more resourceful.
I have to get more stuff for free.
I'm not protected.
I'm not in the house.
I'm not in a museum.
But, boy, because I'm out here, I'll beat you every time.
Why?
Because the raindrops get around here and can do it.
You can--you can just see places.
(Mike) Is that the-- is that why you choose that Styrofoam to work with?
It looks like that's-- (Richart) Yeah, Styrofoam works, whereas metal and wood don't.
It just takes time.
Maybe in a year or two I will see this differently, but I've got to continue the black there, and I probably won't put it there.
This piece fell down and bent those rods, and I like the bent rods.
It's something new.
All of my stuff is kind of going like that.
See, when I come back to this, I start to see things growing in the cracks, in the holes.
Everybody's trying to get everything just right.
I don't want things just right.
I want things-- I want things more like, "Oh, Grandma left us that" or "Grandpa left us that" or "Somebody left us that" or-- I'm looking at that wire there.
I want to see the shadows.
I want to see the patterns that are-- those are gifts that are only here right now.
You guys come early this morning.
You don't see those shadows.
(Mike) Speaking of patterns-- Yeah?
That is just almost like a chaos, isn't it?
Yeah.
What have you done there?
Have you tied all that together with tape?
(Richart) Ye ah, with tape.
Where they get like that, I'll get them out of there so that they don't lo ok like bats.
(Mike) Wow.
(Randy) You just keep seeing something different.
(Mike) Hey, I love all this stuff.
(Richart) The real lighting for this is in the morning.
10:00 in the morning, the Sun is right up over here.
It's coming up over the chimney, and it just comes in here.
[whoosing noise] Oh.
This was done yesterday, and when I put this here, I liked it.
This like this shower curtain.
This is like Alfred Hitchcock.
That's a student.
A student did that.
(Randy) This is very good.
Don't cut this out, because I'm going to tell you the story on it.
This is the first one I did.
Every year, I ride the Seattle to Portland, Seattle to Portland bicycle ride, but I don't go from Seattle to Portland.
I go from Centralia to Chehalis, seven miles, turn around and come back.
And so it's when I'm coming back that they say, "Hey, you're going the wrong way."
And I'm thinking, "Oh, you're crazy.
"I'm going home.
You guys are going to Portland.
You're going the wrong way."
(Randy) Why "Art2," art squared?
(Richart) Yeah, it's Art times art.
That's lots of art.
[laughs] Well, I got one more to tell you, and that's it.
(Randy) Or our five minutes will be up?
(Richart) Oh yeah, your five minutes is up.
Your museums are just nothing but money-grabbing buildings, and the buildings don't have any place for artists.
Take a real good check and see how many museums will take this piece.
"Oh, no.
There's no place for it.
"But yes, we like it, but we're kind of-- we're into Matisse today and Picasso tomorrow" and that.
You know what I mean: just a bunch of crowd pleasers.
(Mike) I have to ask how long have you been working on this beautiful site.
(Richart) 22 1/2 years.
(Mike) So does your wife love coming out here and wandering around the yard?
(Richart) No, she's-- she's never been out here.
No, that's about the truth.
She--she might have been here once or twice, but... (Mike) So this is your world out here then.
(Richart) Yeah, this is my world.
I can be a storyteller, but I can't emphasize how important to people that have been here that have made a statement.
A 12-yaer-old comes, says to his mom, "He ain't moving."
That's quite a statement.
Don't you know how transient all of us are?
Can't you understand a 12-year-old saying, "This guy ain't moving"?
[laughs] I'm not moving.
(Don) And I'm kind of shagged myself, trying to shoot the shots to show what all he's got here.
For a while, it looked like the ball might be staying in the Richart yard, but we retrieved it and resumed driving west, which, in this part of the world, you can only do so long.
For the geographically challenged among us, here's a hint as to why.
[tractor rumbles] (Don) Well, thanks to our accommodations at the optimistically named Edgewater Inn, we are acutely aware that this claims to be the world's longest drivable beach, complete with speed limit signs.
But there are no signs whatsoever that say, "Without four-wheel drive, you'll never get there to find out."
I give you exhibit A.
[wheels whirring] Next thing you know, you're watching the Towing Channel, a bona fide Rare Visions first.
Looks like we're learning a lesson the hard way, and viewers like you are helping us pay for it.
What can you do except shake out the sand and deal with it the best way we know how?
Are we letting Mike drive?
(Don) By heading downtown to play some quick catch near some large local landmarks.
(Mike) So this is the big frying pan, of course, which the city used to actually use to cook clams up at a big giant clambake.
Of course, that's the famous squirting clam, but it doesn't squirt anymore.
(Randy) Can you see a doctor about that?
(Mike) Around the clam.
Whoa.
(Randy) You got a porpoise looking over your shoulder.
(Mike) I need a porpoise to my life.
The frying pan rusted.
It's a sad tale.
It rusted, so then they fiberglassed it and they put in here in the park, the town park, which, of course, is on all four corners here, because this is where the park was planted.
(Randy) He y, stop teaching an d throw the ball.
Sorry, I'm talking.
Hey, we're here to play catch an d irritate people.
It's a good place to end the show, isn't it?
No, we're going to go see Jake the Alligator Man first.
Oh, we're not done with this program?
There's still more fabulous television ahead.
(Don) And it's conveniently located right across the street: Marsh's Free Museum, an old-school assortment of oddities and amusements.
And the world's best-advertised alligator man just keeps pulling them in.
(Randy) How long has this been here?
Marsh's have been in business since 1921 on this main street.
(Randy) What kind of stuff did he put in here?
(Marian) Everything that's hanging on the wall.
(Randy) All this stuff.
There's more inside.
I don't know what that is.
(Marian) Well, I don't either.
That one don't have a sign.
(Mike) We ll, you need to make something up.
(Randy) Yeah, we'd believe it.
(Mike) A Jake?
(Marian) Well, Jake I bought.
I bought that down in Long Beach, California.
My husband and I bought it.
We weren't going to buy it, and we went out of the store and got down the street a few blocks, and I said, "Let's go back."
Well, and I guess years ago, they called him Minnie the Mermaid when he was in Whitney's down in San Francisco.
(Randy) Do you ever hear strange sounds coming from the case?
(Marian) No.
[goofy melody] ♪ ♪ [ragtime music] ♪ ♪ (Randy) Oh-ho-ho-ho.
Oh, look at that.
Rella... (Randy) You're going to get your money's worth here at Marsh's Museum because it's free.
(Marian) Yeah, it is.
(Mike) There's no charge?
You're kidding me.
(Marian) Uh-huh.
(Mike) What kind of a business model is that?
That's like public television.
That's why we're always so broke.
(Marian) Yep, one man said, "This is the most expensive free museum I've ever been in," after his wife got through buying.
(Randy) Well, didn't you give out a free shell at some point?
(Marian) Ye s, we do.
You still give out a free shell?
Oh, yeah.
So we could come out of here technically ahead of the game: a free look at Jake and a free shell.
(Marian) Yeah, everything on the ceiling.
And an $80 tow.
(Mike) And an $80 tow.
(Randy) Am I an idiot?
No.
Why?
Because they say you aren't a local unless you get stuck on the beach once.
(Don) Well, if I lived here, first thing I'd do is buy a tow truck, but we'll settle for some souvenirs.
Thanks to our friends at the Squish Penny Museum, show 806, we've learned the joys of elongated coins, and we're taking Jake home every way we can.
With sand squishing in my shoes, this is Don the camera guy signing off.
(female announcer) To learn more about the sights on this show and how to find them, visit us on the web at: DVDs, tapes, and a companion book to this series are available by calling: Captioning byCaptionMax www.captionmax.com [vacuum cleaner hissing] Hey, get the ball.
Get the ball.
[hissing] It's like the Flowbee.
[hums like vacuum cleaner] ding for Rare Visions and Roadside Revelations has been provided by: (female announcer) YRC Worldwide and public TV are natural partners.
We share the very important goal of connecting people, places, and information.
In this big world, that's a big job.
YRC Worldwide and public TV can handle it.
YRC Worldwide: honored to support the communities we serve.
(male announcer) The DeBruce Companies, with facilities providing customers with market information and marketing opportunities for domestic and international grain, fertilizer, and feed ingredient businesses.
(male announcer) And by Fred & Lou Hartwig, generous supporters of KCPT and public television, urging you to become a member today.
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