(male announcer) Production funding 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, 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) Dear TV Mailbag, how long would that be in dog years?

Hi, Don the camera guy here, missing my Nokona in sunny Arizona, trapped in back of a Ford Freestar with two producers up front, as always, on the lookout for the odd and amazing, like the Sunnyslope Rock Garden, which we belive is somewhere near here.

Yeah, this'll be a good place.

This was built by Grover Cleveland Thompson.

Which president was he?

(Don) Turns out this Mr. T. never held office.

He was a retiree from Seattle who moved to Phoenix and got the urge to start building in his own backyard.

Marion, the lady who lives there now, came out from New York and loved what he'd done with the place so much, she bought it.

Sunnyslope's smaller than some we've seen but makes up for it by sorely lacking in shade.

Sunstroke, here I come.

(Marion) Well, he was a heavy equipment operator.

He worked on Caterpillars.

You know, in the '50s, they'd make the pool, like, concrete and paint it blue and put rocks.

Well, that was--you know, he did that much in probably a couple places in Seattle, and then he retired.

He came here.

My understanding is, he started up here in the front and then worked his way toward the street, and it took 22 years.

(Mike) But he didn't start till he was already retired?

(Marion) He was 65.

Isn't that robust?

[laughing] His wife did not like it.

She wanted, you know, to go on picnics and go to the movies, things like that.

And he was out here working all the time.

She probably inspired him to work out here a little longer.

What Thompson would do is, he would sell the grapefruit.

That was the the come-on for people to come.

So among those people was this lady who was a nurse, so she would stop by and see how he was doing.

Then she would go to the hospital and call all floors: "Save the milk of magnesia bottles."

And so she brought him boxes and boxes of the blue glass.

To begin with, I think he was-- he didn't know how to make people.

So he would take a Halloween mask and pour the concrete in the mask and then build up a body for it.

So that's what a lot of these are, and they're just really great.

And then he got to a whole figure, like that gingerbread boy, and then he progressed to that mariachi figure.

(Mike) You said this had a name, this-- (Marion) Yeah, we call this "the gallery," because the gals are here, but he gave them all different complexions.

And I thought that was neat for that time, the '50s.

(Randy) I'm thinking this was a pond that really had water or a-- (Marion) Oh, yeah, there were seven fountains here.

So you can see there's, like, a waterfall, and then water came from here and circulated around, and there were little tugboats, and this was a dancing water fountain.

Oops, sorry--turtle.

The guy with the bright-colored T-shirt, what's-his-name, Skelton, Red Skelton, isn't it?

(Randy) It is Red Skelton.

(Mike) It is Red Skelton, I think.

(Marion) I think this might be his self-portrait.

Isn't that beautiful?

(Randy) He obviously just had an explosion of creativity.

(Marion) He did; he did.

(Randy) At 65.

(Marion) Start--yeah.

I don't know; I love it.

I do love it.

You know, I complain, but I love it.

(Don) She should be loving this too: a TV weasel doing some heavy lifting.

Marion's ready for cooler conditions herself, so Sunnyslope's future is somewhat up in the air.

But in the short term, she's leading us on to a piece of Paradise Valley, guiding us to Gus', where one man's urge to collect has taken a shape all its own, a shape he calls Over the Rainbow.

Somehow, I know this is going to hurt.

(Gus) I got the world's largest collection of specimen saguaros.

I have the world's largest collection of specimens of petrified wood.

Add to it about 1,000 plants.

This is a hummingbird bush.

This is local.

Organ pipe.

The stone here is from the Flagstaff area, out of the volcanoes in that area.

That's a crested saguaro.

I think there's only about 75 of those.

That's a piece of petrified wood.

This is a piece of petrified wood--Death Valley.

(Randy) Now, are you, like, one of the world's petrified wood experts because you got so much of it?

I could be.

At the first--thank you.

This over here is Miss Ursula's castle.

And can you get Alice?

(Mike) Hey, Alice.

That was out of the Phoenix theater, Fox Theater.

A story's on just about any item in here and every item.

That's a redheaded ball cactus.

(Mike) It's just an endless maze of-- (Gus) There's a couple miles of it.

Couple miles of it, Don.

(Don) Great.

[chuckles] (Gus) The cactus that you see in there in the cage is a night blooming cereus, and can you find the Indian?

(Mike) I see the Indian.

(Gus) He's over there.

(Randy) Does the cactus have to be caged because it's so dangerous?

(Gus) You've got one very good cameraman there.

(Mike) That's the truth.

(Randy) Yep, he's like a mountain lion, isn't he?

Don't say that too loud.

Mountain goat?

He is active.

It'll go to his head.

(Gus) This is my sphinx.

This is a rare cactus.

There's very few saguaros that doubles like the way that one done.

(Mike) Now, did you make that bear look like that?

(Gus) I had quite a bit of help.

There was a guy going through here.

His name was Michael Caden.

I gave him some money and a free house-- I had 11 houses-- and he done some of the sculpture work in here.

I went through almost a million bucks.

[yelling] This here is the haunted house.

This is the underground sidewalk.

(Randy) Excuse me?

Phoenix developed sidewalks, trying to get away from the heat and the dust.

Here we have the Good Ship Lollipop.

[whistling] It arrived quite a while ago.

And I don't know if you can read this or not.

"Warning: if you panic easy, don't come in here."

There's a swarm of rattlers here.

You are doomed.

It's toodle-oo.

(Mike) Oh, no.

(Gus) You might have a little luck if you go this way.

(Mike) Ah, maybe.

(Gus) Go through there.

(Mike) You sure know the ropes.

(Randy) Well, does anybody have the same kind of Phoenix history in their yard that you do?

(Gus) Not that I know of, not this.

It's a good idea to keep moving here.

This is an old Indian fort, an old burnt Mexican house.

(Don) You got everything but the kitchen sink.

Hey.

Might be it.

(Mike) Gus, we've kind of come to the end of the road here, haven't we?

Yes, sir.

I'm kind of sad.

(Randy) Do we feel like we've been ov er the rainbow?

I hope so.

(Don) More like a rainbow landed on me.

You got to give it to Gus.

At 83, he still leads quite a tour.

And just for the record, there's records and movies and more stuff inside.

Just thinking about it makes me tired.

Drop that postcard, please.

(Mike) Have you got the big ball strapped down?

Because that's the wagon of death, I think.

(Don) Now, astute viewers-- and you know who you are-- may recall the Tom Mix suitcase of death down in Dewey, Oklahoma, which we stumbled upon some years ago and heard its chilling tale, which goes something like this: (Randy) It looks like a gully washed out the bridge, and he'd been told not to do it.

He ignored the advice.

He got to the spot, had to brake suddenly.

The suitcase of death struck.

You know, and you guys were killed by a flying camera guy who wasn't strapped into his seat belt.

Yep, this would be the very same road where the luxury luggage did its dastardly deed.

We pulled off to pause and reflect on the silent-cinema giant, whose marker sustained just a few flesh wounds, a fitting reminder that safety comes first.

Isn't that kind of spooky?

He died in a Cord.

We're driving a Ford.

(Mike) Did he have a secretary named Lincoln?

(Don) Now, as a card-carrying member of the Tom Mix Society, I'm both saddened and gladdened by this occasion but putting it all behind me as we make tracks for Tucson, looking for the yard of one Jerry Hall, not Mick Jagger's ex but this wild-welding lawn-tending guy-- blessed, he says, by a world of imagination.

(Jerry) I think everybody's got imagination.

They just got to be brave enough to let somebody else see it.

(Mike) And did it start with just one?

Did you have a plan?

Did you have a-- Well, the plan was, I wanted to turn this place into, like, a museum.

I wanted to make people see and make them happy and make them smile, you know?

I just look at something and focus on it, and I can put it into metal.

Welcome into the Hall's place.

(Randy) Thank you.

(Jerry) Okay.

(Randy) I like the way these figures are walking you in, you know?

(Jerry) Well, these used to be the gunfighters.

These were actually the first ones to my house I built.

These were out of crane cable, you know, from the mines, you know, the heavy stuff?

(Randy) Yeah.

(Jerry) One day, when the mine shut down, I was out riding my dirt bike out in the desert, when an old mine was out there, and there was just miles and miles laying on the road.

So these were actually the first art pieces that I ever did from metal here.

It's supposed to be, like, a gunfight.

So when you come in, they're shooting across to each other.

These used to be on top of my house and, you know, tooled a new roof on it.

So I said, "Well, why don't I use this dirt "they messed up my yard with, "put a pile up here, and then put them up like a happy hill?"

So everybody's singing-- the Indian and the guy playing the banjo.

And then these other guys are up there watching them, you know?

These have been here forever.

See, that's a whole car frame there, and when I first started making that, I had visions of the Flash Gordon and the flying people.

(Randy) Yeah.

By the time I got done with it, it was a giant flying ant.

Then everybody else looks at it.

They say, "Well, what is it?"

I say, "Well, that's what it is.

Whatever it is, that's it."

When I remodeled my front of my house, I took the door off, because they didn't know what to do with it.

So I stuck it out here to show people this is the way that my inside of the house looks like.

(Mike) The inside of the house looks like that?

(Jerry) Yeah.

(Randy) Pretty colorful.

(Jerry) That's half marbles now.

(Mike) Where do you collect this stuff up, just when you're out?

(Jerry) Well, I started-- when I first started out, I didn't have, you know-- then I didn't have enough money to buy metal, so I'd go down there to all these plumbing places and get their old water heaters.

The body of that cat is a car muffler, a big car muffler.

His head's made out of a water heater.

Then you got the stove burners again and then tailpipes.

She had two eyes, and the other eye fell off.

But you see what the other eye's made out of, don't you?

(Mike) Doorknob.

(Jerry) I got a winding staircase up to my tree house.

It's made out of water heaters-- the inside of it, you know?

(Randy) So you don't have a whole lot of grass to mow is kind of what it comes down to here, Jerry.

(Jerry) Man, I tell you, I didn't have time to cut the grass.

I cut everybody else's grass.

And I hardly had time to do mine, you know?

90% of the people around here love it, and, you know, there must be something there, because I've been in the newspapers.

I've been in five galleries at one time, and I'm in the Sons of Pioneers up in Utah, Salt Lake City.

And my mom and dad used to tell me-- when I first started out, they used to say, "Gee, Jerry, what do you got all this junk in your front yard for?"

And I said, "Well, because I like it."

Well, when they finally made it in the museum and sold some of this stuff, they kind of backed off and realized that I wasn't such a bad boy after all.

(Don) He's good for the neighborhood too.

Jerry-rigged pieces are popping up all over.

And speaking of public art: Tucson's taking the snake by the tail.

(Mike) Cast your eye upon the serpent.

(Don) It's an overpass makeover unlike any we've seen before.

Rattled or not, we'll be back for more in the morning.

Now, as savvy travelers know, sometimes a deal's just too good to pass up.

So we didn't.

Do we have to charge that hoagie up at night?

(Don) Even if we don't eat this humongous hoagie, it only cost five bucks.

Color us impressed.

(Randy) Well, we're going to the Garden of Gethsemane, and maybe we'll feel like a picnic.

(Mike) What is the Garden of Gethsemane?

(Don) Don't ask me.

I only know that Randy's still holding his hoagie and that, whatever else we may be, at least we're not a reception.

(Randy) Come on, let's see what Felix made.

♪ Nothing more than Felix.

♪ (Don) Felix Lucero, that is, a World War I vet so thankful to have survived that he came back and sculpted up a storm.

(Randy) He wasn't a sculptor.

He was a soldier and just got down to work here.

(Don) Now, I know what you're thinking, and, yes, this bunch does appear to be waiting for food, but, no, those are letters we do not need.

Theology's not our thing, but the fact that Felix lived down by the river while making all this is what makes grassroots art great.

We departed the garden with our sandwich still intact and once again resumed the driving portion of our show, circling once around Tucson's big Bunyan, then heading for the hills and a town called Bisbee, a quaint old mining town where art cars roam free.

Copper was king here, and the big hole called the Lavender Pit was calling us to recreation.

(Mike) ♪ You got to know when to hold 'em.

♪ ♪ Know when-- ♪ So are you the guys that play catch?

We are the guys, but this is sort of a minor-league catch, you know what I mean?

That big hole back there is almost as big as the Kansas City Royals have dug after about six weeks of playing.

Aren't we down to our last ball?

That's it.

Well, the big ball-- (Don) I'd say if any fence deserves a warning crack, it's this one.

(Randy) He y, are those Apaches up there on the ridge, Donny?

[laughs] Oh, watch out; watch out.

Ho!

(Don) Looks like we've drawn a crowd, and before you know it, one of those guest gloves we haul around is getting some use-- the lefty, in fact, for Ron from Colorado, who's more than holding his own.

[laughter] But now, in a TV kind of way, it's back to the mines, back to Bisbee to see what's shaking at the Shady Dell, a motel known far and wide for its vintage accommodations.

(Wesley) Ed and Rita started this place about, well, about 12 years ago.

And they started with just a couple of little trailers, the little Crown there and the little homemade right over there.

And from there, it kind of snowballed.

How many we got altogether?

Let's see, we have nine trailers, a yacht, and the bus.

1949 Airstream: this is the honeymoon trailer officially.

(Mike) If that trailer's a-rockin', don't come a-knockin'.

(Wesley) Don't come a-knockin' with cameras.

[chuckles] Spartan is the most represented here, Spartan Aircraft Company in Tulsa.

This was the top-of-the-line.

It's got the art deco lighting and birchwood interiors.

Airstreams are the ones that, you know, that are so famous, you know, that everybody follows and wants to have and wants to stay in.

But once they stay in a Spartan, you know-- (Mike) Well, I like the way you've decorated them, down to with the old TVs and-- (Randy) Lo ok, he's right at home.

I mean, that's really a nice touch.

(Wesley) People want to remember, you know, those days.

We have music from-- you know, we have Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and movies from the '40s and '50s.

There were literally hundreds and hundreds of different companies building travel trailers.

There's only a few that made it, that stood the test of time, usually the ones that come from a background of aviation, because they were the ones that knew how to make things, you know, watertight.

Airfloat was notorious for leaking, so that's why you don't see many Airfloats left out there.

This one was inside of a house since 1960, so it had a roof over it.

(Mike) It looks like we're going into the royal palace to me.

(Wesley) Yeah, this one has a full-functioning bathroom.

(Mike) Shower and everything.

(Wesley) You know, this is the only one with a shower, so everybody wants this one.

You could live in this trailer for sure.

This is big enough to live in.

(Randy) If you were on Route 66 or something, it might be a little easier to get some of these folks who like that kind of thing, or is Bisbee a good spot for setting up shop?

(Wesley) It's hard to figure exactly how people get here.

The Shady Dell has really helped this community in its tourism.

But I think if we were closer to Route 66, we'd certainly get a lot more of those folks, sure.

But the climate here is really conducive to year-round accommodations, tourism, and it's easier on the trailers too.

(Don) Speaking of easy, this camera guy is clocking out for the day.

If anyone needs me, I'll be in my trailer.

[sighs] Well, if you thought they forgot Dot: not.

Dot's Diner was hauled lock, stock, and griddle from its home in L.A. to its site at the Shady Dell.

Dot's moved on, but good cheap food is still being served, with just enough stools for one big ball of tape.

One of the regulars here comes from Cali as well.

His name is Poe, and together with his wife, Sam, they run this place downtown, selling her paintings and his ever-inventive adventures in recycled sculpture.

(Poe) Everywhere I've been, I always get hassled by landlords, because, you know, I use a lot of stuff.

Most people refer to it as junk, but, you know, this is just material for what I do.

So I've been doing a lot of these lately.

This is a wind sculpture.

This one is made from, obviously, stovepipes and sheet metal parts that I pick up off the side of the road.

And I was trying to come up with a sort of a technology that doesn't involve-- I don't like to weld.

So with these, all I need is a screw gun and a pair of shears, tin snips.

Tin snips, sure.

[drill noise] The idea is, I'm going to design a peewee golf course, but the hulls will be mobile.

So each hull, or each component of the hull, will actually also act as a-- serve a sculpture.

This is Otis.

This was made from the junk on my loading dock in front of my studio.

[laughs] And once again, I like to acquire appetites for materials that other people don't use, in other words, stuff that's free or next to free.

[door clanging] I just built these little guys.

They're not quite done yet.

But these are a variation on the large outdoor ones, but these are made to go inside.

All my work is built from scratch, all of this.

(Mike) It just looks old.

Yeah, those pieces will end up looking like this, this kind of of patina.

(Mike) I got to ask: why a duck?

(Poe) That duck is an image I've been using for a long time.

One of the first things I made when I became an artist, or sculptor, was-- I was looking for an image to use, and it happened to be this duck.

So--and see, my dad was a big hunter.

His greatest thrill when we were little was to take my brother and I duck hunting.

And we hated it.

So when I got to be an adult, I was sort of thumbing my nose at him.

(Mike) The answer is getting better and better.

(Poe) I wasn't going to give you that answer, but you forced it out of me.

(Randy) It 's like 60 Minutes, Po e. We don't stop ti ll we beat the-- Now, was there training to be not paid well?

(Poe) I have some formal training, but my idea of getting an art education was living across the street from the college and hanging out in the art department.

So once I got in with the janitors, whom I bribed, see, I could go over late at night when there was nobody at school.

So I did that at about three different colleges.

This is a three-in-one Mona Lisa.

This is the blue-eyed version.

And you roll this up.

That's the Barbara Streisand version.

[laughter] And that's the smiling version, where you actually get to see her teeth, which is why she smiles with her mouth closed.

I did and I still am working on a whole series of what I call "dumb bombs."

(Mike) What makes it dumb?

Well, see, it doesn't know where it's going.

It's got periscopes looking this way, looking that way.

It's bloated.

It looks like a cigar on steroids.

(Mike) It does.

This, that's a clock.

That's sort of how I make money.

(Randy) With the little clocks?

(Poe) Yeah, I make these little clocks.

(Randy) Yeah, your clocks are very cool.

(Poe) See, there's not a big market for things like this, which is a smoke-ring cannon.

And this one blows the most beautiful smoke rings.

(Randy) Wow.

So it's a device that makes-- it's a sculpture that makes sculptures, really, because the smoke rings are beautiful ephemeral objects that just float through the air.

But there's not a big market for these.

Clocks sell much better than smoke-ring cannons.

(Don) Maybe so, but through 45 states, we've never seen this.

Smoke 'em if you got 'em.

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 Look, it's the Bisbee Bowels.

Oh, no, that's Bisbee Bowls.

Excuse me.

Here you go, sir.

Thank you very much.

That is yours to cherish and get grease on, if you so desire.

I will.

The guest glove I deducted on my 2005 income tax: been used.

IRS, it's been used-- Ron from Colorado.

(male announcer) Production funding 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.