(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.

(Don) ♪ 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.

♪ ♪ Dear TV Mailbag, where is Lady Liberty hiding this time?

Hi, Don the camera guy here.

Looks like LaCrosse, Kansas, is yet another place where one of those boy-scout-built mini-monuments is still standing small.

LaCrosse is also home to the world-famous Barbed Wire Museum and the not-so-famous Post Rock Museum, neither of which we have time for today.

We, as always, being me and the world's largest ball of videotape in back with that TV-producin' brain trust up front.

How's the ball riding?

(Don) Um, the ball's, you know, snug.

Yes, space is always at a premium, even in our Ford Freestar, which replaced the cramped Chrysler of previous years.

And speaking of previous years, we're making our way back to Mullinville, a small town with a big, round barn which we aren't going to see either and a fabulous field of folk art, which we are.

And this isn't even it, just overflow from the main attraction over on the other side of town, not far from the shed where M.T.

Liggett, U.S. Air Force veteran, has been making stuff since 1989.

(Liggett) North of here, along the street, I build a gargoyle to protect my horse.

And that was the first one.

(Mike) One sculpture, right?

One hardwood one, and then I put the county commissioners up and down here on the road.

And then I just kept building.

And kept it going and going and going and going.

And the quickest way to die when you're my age is set down.

And I work seven days a week.

[welder buzzes] A person is never remembered by the words you don't say.

I'll tell you what, this is my art.

It's the way I talk.

And I piss a lot of people off.

[welder buzzes] Hey, here's one of them I'm getting started to.

This is going to be Boss Hogg.

(Mike) That's a nice-looking shape.

Now, do you just-- did you draw that freehand or did you just start cutting it?

(Liggett) I draw everything freehand.

(Mike) But, now, you learned that in art school?

You went to art school?

[bleep] no.

I've always said this.

The best artist in the world is probably a five- or six-year-old kid.

There's the best artist.

And then they get these so-called art teachers in there that screw up their brains.

And they teach them what censure is, and they say, "The hell with it."

That's what happened to me.

[welder buzzing] I have a lot of trouble sometimes with religious fundamentalists.

And they'll start in on me, you know.

And I don't know all that much about religion and don't want to know, but I know enough to get a fight started.

A lot of these folks you're happy with, right?

Oh, yeah, everybody from then on, I'm happy with them.

I think everybody gets the mistaken idea that if you're up here, you're in trouble for some reason.

No, no, these people isn't all-- Here's my next-door neighbor.

This girl is a recorder for the 16th Judicial District.

This is the Dragon Lady, a good friend of mine.

Now, here's a gal friend of mine.

I met her in Madrid, Spain.

(Mike) Now, these aren't painted yet, it looks like, all the way.

(Liggett) I have quit painting, really.

(Mike) Really?

Too much work, or too high up, or what?

No, rust is the thing.

(Randy) Rust is pretty nice.

Here's one of my last windmills I put up.

That's a heavy-set sucker.

These winds are really hard on stuff.

(Mike) You know, I gotta take it your opinions have changed over time.

(Liggett) No.

(Mike) Some of them?

(Liggett) No.

(Mike) What about Rush for president, 1996?

I put that up there to make the people think about it.

Yeah, what do you think now?

Rush Limbaugh?

I'd like to get ahold of what he's got, get me a three- or four-pound sack of those.

Here's the three faces of Eve.

We've all read that story.

I like old Jim Carville.

You know.

He's crazier than [bleep].

That's Bill Clinton, by the way.

See it, I got a padlock on his fly.

I just loved old Bill Clinton.

[bleep]damn, if you wanted a story, all you had to do was follow him for a little while, and you got it.

You know, for all of his damn faults, that son of a [bleep] is a politician.

What, are you going to try to make a five-minute clip?

(Randy) Ye ah.

That's what I figured.

(Randy) Th at'd be my guess.

Five minutes where you don't cu ss too much.

I won't swear anymore at all.

(Don) Do you swear?

I won't swear anymore.

(Mike) Are you-- let me ask you this, M.T., are you ever satisfied with these?

(Liggett) I always work on a better one.

The next one you make is always the best one, really.

So you're the camera guy.

(Don) Oh, that's it.

Good thing we know that M.T.

's bark is worse than his bite.

But we're still bribe-- I mean, honoring him with commemorative garb and a firsthand look at the big ball itself.

We are, like, three stupid guys, aren't we?

Well, no, you're kind of crazy.

But, you know.

(Don) Anyway, the sun's almost done for the day, which means that the world's largest hand-dug well in nearby Greensburg is, well, closed for the day, which would be a sad thing, when, what to our wandering eyes should appear but Erica Nelson at the wheel of the world's largest collection of the world's smallest versions of the world's largest things, as seen on our last show.

I take it back.

We cannot go to the well too often.

Uh-oh, I feel one of those early-morning dream sequences coming on.

Two coffees, sir?

Oh, you didn't get yourself one?

Oh, I didn't think it was part of the employee benefit program.

Sure, come on.

Go back and get yourself one, little fella.

Gee, you guys are good.

[dreamy music] Good thing it was just a cheesy effect.

And we're still on track to catch another creative Kansan down the way in Kingman.

His name's Glenn Stark, and after only a short stretch of fruitless wandering around, we're almost certain this yard is his.

(Stark) I grew up partly down on the Oklahoma lines in Harper County, east of Kiowa, between there and Anthony.

(Randy) Were there giraffes and buffalos and dinosaurs down there?

[laughs] (Stark) A lot of my stuff has been early things, like the Indians and the buffalos, and then the cowboys later.

Finally, the farm stuff.

Of course, old Big Foot, he was here all the time.

Resemblance?

What do you think?

[Stark laughs] A lot of people get a kick out of the way the giraffes both look at you.

My wife says, "One's a lady, because it has sweeter expressions than the other one."

(Randy) Did you make these in the first place so people would come and look, or did you just make them because you like making things?

Well, I like to make things.

Well, this-- I've did woodwork all my life, little things.

About 40 years ago or more, I started making life-size figures.

I like to make things.

It's just in my nature, always wanted to shape things.

I'm not very much for science or electronics or anything, but to make things of wood or of concrete.

Now, I mix Portland cement and mason cement with fine masonry sand and make my own mixture.

There's a lady that had been over in Venus, and she had seen some griffins, winged lions.

She wanted one.

She couldn't buy those at any price over there.

Now, those horns are so strong that I can swing on them.

See?

The last thing I made last summer was that moose.

He's a little out of place down here.

(Randy) Did it just occur to you one day, I gotta make a moose?

Yeah, something like that.

I used to avoid things.

And the lady give me a chewed-out, you might say.

She said, "You're selfish."

She said, "You're making these things and then hide them where people can't see them, put them in your basement.

Get them out."

I said, "Well, I'm not trying to show off."

"Well, it's not, but people deserve to get to see them."

So I began to thinking, "Well, if they want to see them, I'll put them out where they can."

(Randy) You're 86 years old, right?

Yeah, be 87 next week, uh-huh.

(Randy) Yo u look like you're in great shape.

[laughs] The older I get, the stronger I get.

If you don't believe it, just smell my socks.

[laughs] (Don) Now, that's quite an offer, one we politely declined.

But we did let Glenn show us the retaining wall mural he painted at his last house and a giant totem he carved at another, further proof that doing this stuff does keep you young.

Food for thought anyway on our way into Wichita, where the boys say Dan Beck's is our destination, a quiet, colorful oasis smack-dab in the middle of the air capital city.

(Beck) I don't know why I've become so expressive, but I seem to make art all day every day.

It's either jewelry or painting or stained glass or landform manipulation or shrines out in the country.

But every day, I tend to make art.

To me, my whole yard is functional.

I create different spaces that are wonderful to be in at different times of the day and different seasons of the year so that I can always find a place in the yard that it's comfortable no matter what the temperature is to create something, to carve, to listen to music, to paint.

It's trite, but I do create outdoor rooms with different functions.

One of the things I've tried to do is create little microclimates for different types of plants.

And so here we have alpines and natives that can't tolerate water without incredible drainage.

Onions, I recognize those.

Yes, that's actually the Egyptian walking onion.

You can see I've carved butterflies into the path.

Yeah, look at that right there.

And as I move that way, they get more and more abstract until eventually every trapezoid and triangle is a butterfly to me.

But back here, we almost never water this garden.

This is a native garden and designed to fend for itself.

(Randy) We're here not exactly in your yard.

(Beck) No, This is technically city property that I've adopted.

Some people weed for me.

People walk their animals here.

People come here and have a picnic, just a little piece of people park here at this corner of the ghetto, where the city is not going to spend any money.

(Randy) Are you a zoologist, botanist, butterflyologist?

(Beck) I'm an incredible reader.

I've read ten books a week for 40 years.

And I read almost all the time when I'm not working or making art.

One of the reasons I started the whole project was to expand my living space without consuming more raw materials.

And all this sawn stone was scrap stone that I got, no one was using when I started the project.

And I've got, now, over 2 million pounds of scrap stone in my yard and the city property.

I've probably driven every dirt road in four or five counties to the east looking for rocks.

My theory has always been that I'd move the big rocks while I was young and still could, then when I get old, I'll sit around and carve them all.

When this house sold last fall, I figured I'd better stake my claim to this little piece of ground before it got away.

And these people are real nice.

This is what I've built the last couple of months in the yard.

And this is going to be another, this base is going to be another shrine locale.

I'm going to make a big shrine out of, I think, aluminum and floating rocks.

I made an arrangement with my wife when we started, when we bought the house, that I would mow the grass and she would take care of the flowers, that I would build her a flower bed or two.

Now I have 20 square feet of grass left, and the rest is flower beds.

When I was growing up, we had to do well in school, or we'd spend our life with a wheelbarrow and a shovel.

And now I've done that, but I've added a hammer and a chisel, so I have a more complete life than I ever imagined.

Anyone that can gain inspiration from anything I do, that's a wonderful thing.

Anyone that can laugh at what I do, that's a wonderful thing.

But I produce because I produce.

I create because I can create.

(Don) Funny, but that's how we explain this thing, which Dan's hauling around with plenty of pomp and circumstance.

He's no doubt headed back to make more art while we resume the driving portion of this show.

Driving on into Oklahoma accompanied by some custom-made musical accompaniment maybe.

Stay tuned.

I'm not.

Then pausing outside Perry on Highway 64, even though the sign says not to because so many folks stop to see what all these signs say.

No doubt about it, someone's sore about something.

And it sounds pretty serious.

But in spite of all the verbiage and risking our necks to read it, we're not really sure what it's all about.

(Randy) The whole Czech-German thing, isn't that kind of, like, World War I?

Isn't that how it started?

(Mike) Yeah, I think that is how it started.

(Randy) Give or take a few details.

Well, I'll tell you what.

Can you play us outta here?

(Don) Okay.

♪ Gotta [bleep] pee.

♪ ♪ Gotta [bleep] pee.

♪ ♪ I gotta [bleep] pee.

♪ ♪ Find me a restroom.

♪ ♪ 'Cause I've gotta [bleep] pee.

♪ ♪ ♪ Well, a new day does bring another chance at redemption.

And down this road, another of those undersized churches that keep popping up.

Over in Highlandville, Missouri, we've seen cathedral Prince of Peace, and it truly is tiny.

But this wee one outside Ardmore does deserve special credit for its keen sense of theatrics.

[country music plays] ♪ ♪ (Don) And for providing a pastoral place to toss some quick catch.

♪ I saw you throwing at the chapel.

♪ What do we know about the church?

Have we done any research at all?

(Mike) Some guy from around here built it.

I want this one grounded in religion.

Huh, huh.

I think the good lord would like us slapping leather.

You know what they say.

God is glove.

(Don) Okay, theologically speaking, we are a little rusty, but at least our arms are looser as we cross state lines again.

And cresting a hill outside Gainesville, Texas, we're treated to a true roadside spectacle... (Mike) Oh, my goodness, it's like Mecca.

(Don) A genuine Giant Being Bonanza in Glenn Goode's front yard.

(Goode) See this man right here?

I built the head, the hat, and the hands, and I bought the rest of him for $5.

Brought him home, and there was a man standing up just like him down in Canton.

And me and my two sons went down there, and while he was standing up, took the head off that one down there, and I repaired him all.

And then this guy in Wichita Falls had this woman.

And they had a storm out there, and it blowed her down.

And so I says, "Hey, let me sell you a man to go with your woman."

And they said, "No, we'll sell you our woman to go with your man."

I said, "Okay."

I just got this one up, what, a year and a half ago.

Are you still taping all this?

(Don) I am.

Of course.

It takes $50 to get inside my shop.

$50 to get inside.

(Don) Ho w much to get out?

A hundred.

There's his chest and one of his arms right there.

And there's his head right there.

You see, it looks like an Indian right there.

(Mike) Yo u're like the doctor.

(Randy) Do ctor Goode.

(Goode) I'm a fiberglass doctor.

(Don) Turns out, Glenn does some preaching too, which explains why his Jackie is more chaste than most.

You see right here, you can kind of tell, I extended her skirt that far.

And then up there on the top right there, it was almost down to where you could see in between.

The--yeah, yeah, that part.

[laughing] (Don) So much to see, so little time and such horrible traffic in Dallas to wade through.

And we're wading through it en route to Red Oak and still another self-taught sculptor whose sculpted yard comes complete with actual sheep and goats.

(Strickland) I just was a welder that couldn't handle it and, you know, couldn't handle the pressures of construction jobs.

So I just kind of dropped out of that and started doing all this.

I built a bird like this right here.

It was called Big Bird.

That was, like, in '89 or '90.

What would that be from?

That's a chicken feeder, where all the chickens-- you know, you put it in here, they stick their heads in there.

That's the Red Rhino.

This one's, like, a flue for some kind of a fireplace thing.

This is corn headers that are just turned up on the ends.

This, that's a Chevrolet truck frame, and then the floorboard part are the back part of the cab.

I just made it into a weightlifter.

I decided to, you know, just-- That's a birdhouse.

As soon as I stood it up, the birds just took it over.

This is Rosie.

(Randy) Love that roofing tin.

Isn't what that is?

Yeah, this is that real old barn tin that I saved from a-- it was a real old garage in Red Oak.

And they said I could have the tin.

I try to use stuff that's already-- I don't try to alter too much, just kind of piece stuff together and, you know, ad lib a few things.

But I'm getting older, and my energy level has dropped considerably.

I used to work from sunup to sundown.

But now about half a day.

I feel like I'm getting encroached by Red Oak city and eventually be told to clean all this up or put up some kind of fence or something like that.

(Randy) Working with those hands, those appear to be the hands of a working man.

Yeah, they're not always as greasy.

At least I got ten.

This will end up probably being a fish.

I hadn't really decided what it's going to be, but I just like the color and everything.

This is the piece that I started and just, I quit.

That's gotta be a year old, and I just--I stopped.

This was going to be the head.

You know, I could probably get out here and finish it in a week or maybe less, but I just, uh, don't want to rush it.

(Don) Sounds good to me, but these producers are always in a hurry, so before you know it, we're saying good-bye to Dave and heading across-- I'm not making this up- the Boxcar Willie Memorial Bridge on our way to Waxahachie, a Texas town where cotton was king.

It's got a great old courthouse that's worth a show in itself, but not this one.

We're looking for the Webbs, Bruce and Julie, who've got a gallery with a gate by Mr. Strickland and art in the window by some guy whose name starts with Z.

(Julie Webb) Winzel Zastoupil.

We've read about him in the newspaper, in the Dallas paper.

Somebody had done an article about him having his living room filled with toothpicks.

And there's everything incorporated in it.

So we called him up and asked him if we could come visit.

And so we became friends over the years.

And when we would be asked to take different arts groups on tours of art sites, we would always call up Mr. Zastoupil.

He would let people come, and they'd get to walk around inside.

And it would all be going.

It was just magical.

As he started aging, he became concerned with what was going to happen to his pieces.

And they asked us if there was a museum that they could donate the pieces to that would show them.

And we honestly could not think of a museum that would just put them out, but Bruce and I discussed it.

We said, "We will designate a part of our building and just house it here so people can continue to come and look at it."

And then when we came back, Bruce measured the window, and he said, "It'll just fit in the window."

So we decided, how great, then people could go by and look at it all of the time, and we can keep lights on it and keep it lit.

(Mike) Was there scholarly art in your background?

(Julie Webb) No, punk rock.

We were punk rock teenagers and had a flea market education, and so it was just, like, it was the same energy and aesthetics that we liked... (Bruce Webb) Kind of unbridled passion.

(Julie Webb) That we loved in that that we saw in the art.

We would get in the car, drive to North Carolina, be completely broke, then drive back home and sell as much art as we could so we could get back to the South again.

(Julie Webb) And I think the first artist that we visited was Reverend J.L.

Hunter.

He made these figures.

And we just fell in love with him and his wife and the way that he looked at things and how he could just se e a piece of wood and turn it in to something.

And we never looked at a wood pile the same again.

(Bruce Webb) When Reverend Hunter got into making this stuff, he just completely got into it whole hog.

And I think that's sort of the way it happens with a lot of people.

We got into it, and you sort of dive into it like into a swimming pool, and you realize that there's a whole ocean that you're swimming in.

When we opened a full-fledged gallery, we used to sit and look at each other and go, "What the hell have we done?"

You know, but, I think, over time, people figured out what we were doing.

(Bruce Webb) We still have people come in, just about every day, and they ask us, "Did you make all this stuff?"

And we always really laugh, because we thought, "Boy, you'd have to be a super artist to be able to do all this."

And so sometimes we say, "Yes."

It depends on who the visitor is.

Yes, it does.

(Randy) Di d you make all this?

Yes, I did.

(Don) Big as it is, the Webb's have still filled this place to the rafters.

The least we can do is help them clear a little space.

From wonderful Waxahachie, 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 the web at: DVDs, tapes, and a companion book to this series are available by calling: [strums chords] [all singing to the melody of Like a Hurricane] ♪ We've got a brand-new minivan.

♪ ♪ Freestars are in our eyes.

♪ ♪ We like to thank the real cool guy ♪ ♪ who gave us dough to make this show.

♪ ♪ He owns a grain elevator.

Don't you know?

♪ Captioning and audio description provided by the U.S. Department of Education.

Captioning and audio description byCaptionMax www.captionmax.com (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.