(male announcer) Production funding for this program is provided by the DeBruce Companies, proud to serve agricultural communities throughout the Midwest with high-speed grain handling facilities, fertilizer and feed ingredient distribution terminals, and retail fertilizer operations.

(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.

♪ ♪ We're consulting the map.

You're insulting who?

(Don) Dear TV Mailbag: how much for GPS?

Hi, Don the camera guy here, bringing up the rear while those two producers once again debate about which way to turn, trying to find a fence someone sent us an email about.

Yeah, we listen to these tips.

We pay attention when people write.

We even write back usually.

Amazingly enough.

And if we find it, and if it's worthwhile, it'll be in the show.

And if not, we'll just make fun of the viewer for having even suggested it.

So DustShadow1, watch out, buddy.

(Don) But hold the phone.

We now interrupt this aimless wandering around so Mike can perform a rescue mission on a small helpless woodland creature.

Little guy's happy, he's healthy.

Sitting out there on the road like that where he could get hurt.

Hey, you didn't have to breathe life back into the turtle, did you?

No, he's healthy, he's happy.

He hasn't been hit by anything yet.

I'm gonna turn him loose near the edge of the woods, point him that way so he doesn't go back to the road.

Go that way, young man, go west.

Go.

Go.

(Don) This is one silly sight.

And even though our mojo may now be improved, we're still no closer to finding that mysterious fence.

Caplinger Mills, right here.

Here it is, 39.

(Don) After another few miles of backroad combing, past Caplinger Mills and then around it, what should appear but the much discussed object of our quest?

(Randy) Wow.

(Mike) What a place.

The fence meister.

(Randy) Okay, our tip's starting to look better and better.

(Mike) Well, I take back all those bad things I said about whoever gave us that tip and those directions.

(Randy) Well, the directions sucked, but the fence is cool.

(Mike) Jeez o' Pete, the inset, the inlay in the wall is-- (Randy) There's horseshoes.

(Mike) Little marbles and rocks and rings.

(Randy) Well, this is incredible.

(Mike) Ah, that is a heck of a road-- or a heck of a fence.

(Randy) Wonder what he's got fenced in there.

Wild aminals?

(Mike) I don't know.

(Don) Horses, shoeless horses.

So it's hats off after all to DustShadow1 for a tip well told.

But no, the end of the road's nowhere near-- just a long, scenic, Ozarks drive with a brief pause to ponder this roadside rabbit-- Wait a minute, there was a hair on my lens.

Then some of those windy, blindy curves that say Eureka is near: Eureka Springs that is, AKA, Little Switzerland.

We've been here before, but never to this place: Mitchell's Folly, filled to the gills with fine folk art, some of which local folks have made.

By Golly was-- his name was Ernie Schilling, and he moved here in the early part of the century.

I don't know if you can see this.

He lived ia wan, camped out under Indian bluffs.

And he was a colorful guy, a colorful character, and a sand painter, itinerant artist, "Your portrait done from life, By Golly."

And the signs he painted were all over here in the '50s, '40s or '50s, and they've all gone away.

He did Get Right with God, By Golly.

And the sign across the street, of course, is his work.

I don't know if you've seen that.

That's a bathhouse symbol.

He got the nickname from chewing tobacco and spitting and saying "by golly."

That was a good nickname for the man.

(Mike) Oh , he would spit an d then-- Say "by golly."

psttt!

By golly.

And that's how he got the nickname.

So it kind of stuck, so to speak.

It stuck, yeah.

This is a By Golly painting.

It's signed "By Golly."

Here we have a-- painted on a stump.

(Mike) And that's a work of his?

We think it is.

It's not signed.

And there's a whole array of these with bikini's or without bikinis.

They're painted on both sides of the board.

A lot of original folk art like this has gone who knows where.

It's all over the country.

So if you have a piece that says "By Golly," now you know where it was, where it came from.

It came from Eureka Springs, Arkansas.

Julie Traxler is a local hero of folk artists, outsider artists.

She was part deaf from an early childhood disease, measles or something, and was just full of spunk and personality, and we all loved her dearly.

This are real trailer park signs that she scavenged and painted.

And this is probably about ten years old.

Well, you can date it by the license plates: 1995.

She's an all around artist.

She did art cars, she did yard art, she did welding, paintings, carvings.

This is what you do with your 1950s pink hair rollers and a pie pan.

She was very productive.

And I think that's a good-- her body of work numbers in the thousands.

She had the most cluttered yard, and it was covered with pink flamingos, black bowling balls-- probably 2,000, 3,000 black bowling balls.

She comes from a different perspective, I guess.

That's what I like about untrained artists, is they all have their own niche, their own way of seeing things.

Even ones who've been to college and studied art, if they're doing something that is not taught in the schools, that counts too, I think.

I had five buildings full of stuff.

I just sold two of them last week.

So I'm kind of running out of room.

It's sort of a joke, it really is, I've got way too much stuff.

(Don) That stuff just happens to include a small version of a very large thing that looms above the town.

Emmett Sullivan made this model in clay, prior to making the real thing.

And speaking of prototypes, he also made this, which spawned something more up our alley, something still standing out near Beaver Lake.

I'm talking about Dinosaur World: acres and acres of concrete folk art in reptilian form.

And we hear the fishing's good too.

(Randy) There's natural elements here.

There's a beautiful bridge.

We can cross that bridge when we get to it.

(Mike) Hey, what's he pointing at, Don?

(Don) I could be wrong, bu t I think he's trying to say, "Watch out for that Sabertooth."

Either that, or "Please cross your legs."

Whoa!

I'd like to shake your hand.

Oh, oh, man.

(Randy) Okay, these guys lived a tough life out here.

(Don) No kidding, you know why?

(Mike) Why?

(Don) There's no restroom facilities beyond that point back there at the gate.

(Randy) And all that running water.

(Don) You don't think there're any prehistoric chiggers out here, is there?

(Randy) Look at that.

Check it out.

(Mike) Yo, put that woman down.

(Don) I don't know why he's angry; he's got a girl.

Okay, scientifically speaking, there might be some issues here, but that's for some other show.

We like it, the big ball of tape's happy, and for all practical purposes, this day is done.

You can drop that postcard anytime.

(Don) Are we going to Branson?

Branson's around here somewhere.

(Mike) Da, da, da, hello, Mr. Truck Driver.

(Don) He's truckin' in some Branson goodness, some wholesome entertainment.

(Don) Now, when it comes to Branson, you either dig it or you don't.

And you'll notice, we're driving right by.

Though halfway to Springfield, Lambert's has lured us in.

However, it's too early for throwed rolls and plus size portions, so we're merely tossing a few in their honor.

(Randy) Th ey said you were content to be a role player, right.

Yeah, I'm a role player, exactly.

(Don) Then, just as quickly, grabbin' our balls, hopping back in the van, and heading for Hartville.

But since Randy is a master of driving past-er, we ended up backing into our next destination: the country home of David Kontra, a transplant from Ohio who, even in the world of grassroots art, is somewhat unique, since for most of his adult life, this painter has been legally blind.

I was drawing since I was a kid.

And when I was like eight, nine years old, I was drawing, but I was throwing things away.

All through my life, I just liked to doodle and draw and draw.

Now, I'm thinking that nobody's gonna want my art at all.

You know, I had no idea that I would get such great feedback.

I did it for relaxation.

I did it for an escape.

All these years I've been developing a style and not even knowing it.

When you're looking at you, I wouldn't know for sure how much vision issue you have.

Yeah, I know.

I fool a lot of people.

But I only have 5% of field of view.

If I look at you, you'll see that this eye kind of shifts this way, and it's because it's trying to get around the scars on the retina to get the light to be able to see.

When I paint, I only paint with my left eye.

That's the only eye I got left to really work with.

I paint of my time.

I paint of what's going on in the world today.

So when I pick up a paintbrush now, and when I paint, I don't just paint a painting, I paint an emotion.

A picture like Corporate America, I think that's that one there.

(Mike) This one.

People walking on the street.

The yellow taxi.

(David) Yes, that's Corporate America.

(Randy) Corporate America does not look like a happy place.

(David) Well, are you watching the news lately?

I mean, that's what I paint.

This is called Voices are Calling from Inside My Head; I Can Hear Them, I Can Hear Them.

When I paint, I have to paint a section at a time.

Like on that painting, Me rchant Town.

When I'm working on th e building on the far left, I have to remember what the basic size of the building on the left is so it'll be comparable to the buildings in the middle and the buildings to the right.

All those things have to be, like, memorized so I know what kind of dimension.

Because I can't see the whole thing at one time.

I've turned a negative into a positive, because what I don't see is what I need to put in the work.

But it's using it in an opposite way.

Instead of putting more shadows, I put more light, or less light, which creates the shadows.

If that makes any sense to you.

Yeah, I think everybody can go through a depressive time.

But when you're a teenager and they're telling you that you're going blind, and you can't drive and you can't get a job and you can't do this or that, and then when you try to accomplish something, more people are telling you, "Well, you can't do that."

I still hear it today.

"You can't do that."

Well, what is a person supposed to do?

You have to try.

Maybe look at it in a different way or a different perspective.

So what it did was harden me, and I just don't care.

If they say I can't do that, I just don't care.

I can't do this either.

(Don) David is doing it and selling his art thanks in part to the internet and his girlfriend, Tuesday, who says if I take another picture of her, she'll clobber me.

Which sounds like our cue to move on.

Up the road to Richland, where, as a vegetarian, the dubious thrill of barbecue in a cave awaits me.

Note how even in these crowded quarters, there's still plenty of room for confusion.

Turn right on State Highway W. Drive five miles and turn left onto the gravel road leading to the restaurant.

If you find W, I'd turn, but the other thing is, I think there'd be a sign somewhere by now.

(Randy) Look, there's some bluffs.

I bet this is the river, isn't it?

(Mike) Yeah, this is probably the river.

(Don) These guys don't miss a trick, do they?

The Gasconade is known as a floater's paradise, part of the reason Dave Hughes chose to embark on his meat loving mission to build a barbecue in the bluffs.

You can't drive directly to it.

In fact, just getting inside is kind of an adventure.

(Randy) It's kind of confusing.

You get in a van, they put you in an elevator, and you look around, you see a bunch of rock.

Where are we exactly?

Well, you're four miles from the center of Richland.

You're 20 minutes from the gate at Fort Leonard Wood.

You're 45 minutes to Lake of the Ozarks.

Half of the lake eats here.

This cave turned into a dance hall in Prohibition.

The first room here was the dance hall floor.

The whole second dining room was a solid rock one foot under the ceiling when me and my wife bought this place.

We took out 2,160 ton of rock: 160 ton with with a jackhammer, a shovel, and a cart.

I have no cartilage left in my knees from pulling the cart behind me.

Actually separated my breastbones pulling a cart behind me.

I made everything here.

There's 420 pounds of welding rod.

We farmed for 20 years, so I had a lot of it.

This, right here, was the front of the cave before me and my wife built all of this framework.

This light fixture here is my quarter horse's shoes, mule shoes, wagon wheels.

That's the cart I was telling you about.

There's 250 yards of cement in here.

There's 500 yards of carpet.

(Randy) So did you read some book about how guys would build a restaurant in a cave?

Or did you-- I'm not a book person.

It took 15 minutes with a flashlight, 8:00 at night, and was just like God put a picture right in front of my eyes at how to do this.

So when I took my wife home and I told drew it out, I explained to her exactly how it would be.

And she says, "Well, we're little people.

We can't do that."

I says, "Yeah, we can.

It's gonna take a while."

Well, it took five years.

Five years of the hardest work you can imagine here.

Everybody said we couldn't do it.

And we're just two little farmers that can do it.

(Mike) Now I'm going to do the rib.

(Don) There's something about gnawing on smoked flesh deep inside a dripping cave that's pretty primeval.

Think I'll stick with breaded fungus.

Just for the record, unlike days of old, you can't get a drink here.

In fact, Dave says he's hoping to sell the place, but only to someone who won't build a bar.

On that note, we've got one last stop before dark: Larry Baggett's Trail of Tears Monument outside Jerome.

Now, doing the show as long as we have means sometimes saying final farewells to your favorite folks, of which Larry was surely one.

(Randy) Remember when Larry out lifted me on his homemade gym?

(Mike) He whooped you good.

And I remember that he told me that he built all this rock work on a sand foundation.

'Cause he said you didn't have to have if you'd build it right.

It's that old thing of if you wanted to build something that said "I was here."

Larry was definitely here.

I hope he has a good trip.

(Mike) I do too.

Hold on, is that Young Huck?

Hey-hey.

(Don) Now, there are reenactors reenacting all over the place, but we're about to do what Lewis and Clark did not manage to do while they were ashore here.

Perhaps because the game had not been invented yet.

Yes, I'm making up for missed opportunities on the banks of the mighty Mo if only briefly-- That's Lewis and Clark's first gold record.

(Don) Since our real reason for coming is actually a few blocks away inside this building, home base of Charles "Spitball" Darling: sign painter, graphic artist, and trick shot pool player extraordinaire, which is an art in itself.

(Randy) Oh, my.

This stick is my old faithful stick.

I've had it for over 35 years.

I won it off a guy when I was in college.

Boom.

I'd been playing for quite a while.

I've been playing since I was ten years old, so by the time I was 15, I was playing really good players.

Ooh.

That was tight.

It's a fun thing to do.

It's just a challenge.

You know, whether you're playing for a nickel or a dime or a dollar or a hundred dollars, it's just to have a little extra something on the game.

You know, kind of adds to it.

Anyway, I'm gonna drop the tray, flip it over, catch all the balls on the other side.

There you go.

Voila.

The first thing you learn as a pool player, trick shot artist, is to make up excuses.

This table, even though it's a nice table, it's an antique table I've had for over 30 years.

I'm still not used to playing on it.

I was always used to playing on my front table.

I think the same eye that allows me, and the same hand-eye coordination that allows me to paint a sign, and being able to judge distances visually, this sort of thing, it all coincides with my pool playing.

One handed.

Instead of sitting at a drawing board, you're sitting at a pool table.

Instead of using pens, you're using balls.

So anyway, here's the same shot you just saw, except spitting it out of my mouth.

Hopefully I got enough breath for this.

(Mike) Wait a minute.

Why do they call you Spitball?

Like I say, it's all humidity-- the humidity and the temperature in a place.

You all know how to dial 911, don't ya?

I should've left it where it was.

(Randy) You made contact.

(all) Yeah!

(Don) Color us impressed.

And even more so upon learning that Spitball Charlie also made signs for the Black Madonna Shrine, a sight worth seeing, though we've already seen it.

So after Mike verified that this is harder than it looks, we set off in search of food and fuel, and as it turns out, a cleansing experience courtesy of those student council kids at Washington High.

(Mike) Oh, yeah, oh, that's some good work.

That's some good work.

(Randy) Would you check our fluids too?

Doesn't it feel good to see the future leaders of America doing this?

I know I'll sleep better tonight.

(Randy) Yo u got any 6'9" power forwards that could get up to the roof rack?

Look at this, look at this guy.

Oh, innovation.

Oh, my goodness.

(Don) Is that a 9-iron?

It's a 7.

(Don) 7-iron.

I would've used a wedge.

Fluffy!

You okay?

Oh, Fluffy.

There's the big ball.

It needs a little buffing.

That's the worlds largest ball of video tape.

Don't rush to it all at once.

(Don) Yes, even a world record holder needs a touchup at times, and so might my shoes, but all this attention does come with a price.

Ah, Mike.

I'm gonna need a receipt.

I'm sorry, is that gonna be a problem?

There's 8 hard bills and one Sacajewea in honor of Lewis and Clark Days.

Don't go out and buy beer with that, okay.

'Cause that's a bad thing.

Beer: bad, school: good.

(Don) Clearly, we need to be leaving.

So off we rolled in our clean machine, signts set now on St. Louis, where some years ago, Bill Christman, better known as Beatnik Bob, taught us more about corndogs than we ever dreamt possible.

Bill/Bob is still up there on the third floor of the always amazing City Museum, a seven-story monument to having fun the old-fashioned way.

Here he comes.

[screaming] (Don) Mr. Christman does, however, have a whole new gleam in his eye.

And the name of that gleam is Dumont Dempsey, recently deceased, but throughout his turbulent life, a maker of many things artistic.

Gathering up Duey's remaining creations has given Bill a mission of his own.

(Bill) He was kind of like the older, rebel, beatnik brother that I never had.

He made four movies, wrote two books, recorded a bunch of very primitive blues music, and a whole lot of sculpture and drawings.

He had a simple, childlike belief in the Holy Trinity which he found in nature as the Sun, the Moon, and the Earth.

He had a great sense of humor and stuff, which is subtle.

His sculpture would end up scattered all over just in people's yards, like waifs that he would try to find homes for.

That's where I harvested a lot of this stuff.

It was just in this one gal's backyard that Duey had put it in.

My kids love Duey.

And they thought he was the most unique, interesting adult they had ever met.

And occasionally, what I liked about him so much, is he would go, "Lo and behold."

He would speak like an Old Testament figure or say, "Indeed."

He just had these eccentricities that most people don't have.

I want this work to connect with as many people as possible, which it can at the City Museum, because we have a lot of people here.

The trick will be to get them to come into an exhibit and not know it's art.

(Don) Not unlike tricking these two into some heavy lifting on the premise of a quick peek at Bill's sculpture garden next to his studio at the edge of Forest Park.

Once again, I have the twin themes of darkness and light, goodness and evil.

(Don) Dark meat and light meat.

This is the one entrance here.

And this is all, pretty much, the wholesome side.

And then this is the dark side entrance.

And this wall I rescued from an old expressway that was torn down a couple blocks from here.

It was built during the World's Fair.

Every Thursday night, we have live music here.

And so people pay 5 bucks for the band.

They bring their own beer, and we keep it in this giant cooler here.

(Mike) Got a big John.

Or half a big John.

(Bill) As you see, there's petrified nougat trickling out of the bottom of his bag.

(Mike) Is that petrified nougat?

Here's another giant piece of petrified nougat right here.

Anyway, Big John is bringing nougat to the New World.

And eventually there'll be a little miner's lamp on that helmet.

And this is a Duey Dempsey little memorial pavilion here because my son and I built this in honor of Duey, and we lined it with blue glass bottles like Duey's cave.

(Don) I love blue glass music.

(Randy) So why is this dark over here?

Well, that's where I'm going to have an evil miniature golf course back there.

And it's all gonna be ominous to scare kids as they play miniature golf.

(Don) If Bill can be believed, there's a cold beverage waiting for me inside.

So what the heck, let's watch those weasels work some more.

This is Don the camera guy, signing off.

(Bill) Come on, Randy.

(female announcer) To learn more about the sites 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 and audio description provided by the U.S. Department of Education.

Captioning and audio description byCaptionMax www.captionmax.com (Don) He's not Quitball, Mike.

Yeah, it's not Quitball.

It's Spitball.

(Randy) Are there going to be issues with the FCC about caressing turtles pretty soon?

(Mike) Yeah, pretty much.

You can't do this.

You can't show a turtle without clothes on.

(male announcer) Production funding for this program is provided by the DeBruce Companies, with facilities providing customers with market information and marketing opportunities for domestic and international grain, fertilizer, and feed ingredient businesses.