(male announcer) Production costs for Rare Visions and Roadside Revelations have been paid for in part by Fred and Lou Hartwig, generous supporters of Kansas City Public Television, and by viewers like you.

Thank you.

(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.

♪ ♪ So how far are we driving?

Like, I don't know, 800, 2,000 miles.

I can't remember.

It's a long ways.

We gotta get some coffee.

Need some coffee.

(Don) Dear TV Mailbag, who let the weasels out?

And what's with the guy in the toga?

Hi, Don the camera guy here, once again poised to hit the road in search of great grassroots art and other suitably strange stuff.

But first, a quick hometown fuel stop.

(man) Patron saint of bad habits here.

If you pour a little coffee on him, that'll help a lot for his-- just a little splash right on the top.

Oh, that's perfect.

That'll keep-- ke ep you safe on the road.

(Don) So now, stoked with good juju and even better java, we reclaimed our only claim to fame, the world's largest ball of videotape, and proceeded towards yet another cramped Chrysler minivan.

We're starting our journey across three states and hundreds and hundreds of miles, which, thanks to the magic of television, can take place in about this long.

(Randy) Wh oa, we're there.

(Don) Now, here we are on a road that looks very Ozark-ish somewhere in southern Ohio in pursuit of a castle that has a French name.

In other words, pretty much business as usual.

Nestled back here along the banks of the Little Miami, a Sunday school teacher named Harry Andrews spent 51 years building his own Norman style château aided in no small part by a group of lads he called his Knights of the Golden Trail, including one Joe Carey.

(Joe) He was just totally a jack of all trades.

He got drafted out of Colgate University, where he was studying to be an engineer.

And he spoke seven different languages, and he had to go to Europe in World War I.

He was knighted over in Europe for his bravery on the front lines.

And he was a real knight, not an honorary knight.

So what's a real knight without a real castle?

He came to-- Hamilton!

County hired him as a building engineer.

But when the Great Depression come, he took a job as a schoolteacher.

People would come down and help him, and he-- he worked on it during the early years and everything, as much as he could on weekends, and when he could get down here.

And then in 1955, he retired from Standard Publishing, where he was an editor, and he had enough done here to move in.

That's why I say he was a true jack of all trades.

He was an electrician and a plumber, and he just did it all.

This up here is the chapel and the Knights' armor room, and this is a nice sleeping quarters here.

Look out down below, you English pig dogs.

[laughing maniacally] (Joe) There's stones that people have brought from every state, and we got almost every country.

And when Sir Harry was doing the north wing, he started inserting them in the walls.

These were made out of milk carton bricks.

He would take his milk cartons, and he would put them-- Sealtest?

Put 'em on up-- any kind.

It didn't matter what kind.

Whatever he could get.

And he put some concrete in 'em, and then he'd stick a can or a lightbulb or any garbage in 'em, and then he'd finish filling them up.

And then when it dried, he'd take the milk carton off, and he'd have a brick.

he did income tax, car titles, and wills.

And if you brought in empty milk cartons, he didn't charge anything.

If you carried up rocks, he didn't charge anything to come in.

(Randy) Now, is that the way th e French built their castles?

(Joe) No, this type of castle was built by one man.

Now, naturally, it's not as big as some of the castles that he visited, but it's quite big for one man to build.

(Randy) And just like all the best French castles, click!

[groaning] (Don) And, of course, all the-- like all the French castles, you got your Pepsi machine.

(Joe) When people think of the 51 1/2 years of labor of building the castle-- that's not counting years he had to learn how to do it.

He was never afraid to do hard work, and he had ways to trick you into doing work.

(Randy) So he was a motivator?

(Joe) Oh, yeah, oh, yes.

He taught you how to put your toys away, because the winner had to put the game all back together and set it up for next week, and the loser had to get a rock.

And what happened usually: "Wait for me; I'll go with you."

Then the two of us would go down there.

Even the winner would go down there and get rocks.

You could see it's all physical labor.

Rocks aren't-- even little ones aren't light.

And he was in tremendous health.

He caught his pants legs on fire and ended up dying from that when he was 91 years old.

The man was 91 years old and climbing up 10-foot-high scaffolding and laying rock by himself.

He gave 28 scholarships away, and he spent all his money on the castle, and he really didn't have a lot-- he didn't have a lot of money when he died and everything, but look what he had.

And then he--he left it to his knights, and look what we have.

(Don) The Knights of the Golden Trail still slay dragons-- or at least whack back weeds and keep the castle up to code.

Even though Joe says they seldom drop water balloons on pesky visitors anymore, the boys seem fixated on that whole system of defense.

(Randy) Yeah, I would say lead really is the way to go-- you know, lead.

(Mike) You could pick it up after it drops.

Lead and tar; tar is good.

Look out down below, you English pig dogs.

Then, of course, there's always the good old favorite, just human wastes, which aren't so much lethal but really insult the enemy.

Yeah, apparently.

(Don) And no shortage of it, actually.

(Don) On that note, we must hasten away from Harry's haven and head for Hamilton!.

There's history here, they say, almost too much for one sign to contain.

Is this a monument or an eye test?

(Don) Let me paraphrase.

The park pays tribute to Captain John Symmes.

No, he didn't invent the bagel.

He believed the earth was hollow and vowed to explore it.

Hamilton!, Ohio, the hollow earth monument, 1829.

And it's got a plaid cushion.

He was convinced that the earth was hollow and that we could, you know, live down there and make a better world for ourselves.

(Mike) Now, this reminds me of one of my favorite movies, Journey to the Center of the Earth.

If you have not seen it, you need to go out right now.

Rent it.

It's got James Mason.

(Randy) Pat Boone.

Pat Boone at his height-- the peak of his career.

(Randy) When did that hollow earth thing get disproved, really?

(Mike) Well, when did it come out?

The early 1820s?

I'd say basically by about 1830s, it was over.

(Randy) Well, remember, we're in Hamilton!, the town that put an exclamation mark after its name.

Hamilton!

Hamilton!

Right there, right there, the proof.

Hamilton!

(Don) Guess all that exclamating has reinvigorated us, since we're now speeding north towards Dayton-- Hamilton!

(Don) Keeping a collective eye out for something near Carlisle that shouldn't be hard to spot.

(Mike) There it is, right there.

(Randy) Wh oa, yeah.

Whoa, baby.

(Don) Now, this flying saucer duplex is nothing we've ever seen before, nor are we seeing any inhabitants either, which, I guess, accounts for this new journalistic low.

What did the spacemen look like when they landed?

[barking] Were they tall?

Were they-- were they big guys?

Were they shiny?

[dog barks] Are there more coming?

(Mike) Do you think Pete Rose should be in the Hall of Fame?

Oh, my God, I see 'em.

They're horrible.

(Don) Okay, now things are just getting silly, and we're starting to run late for our last stop of the day up the road in Wapakoneta.

Wapak, as it's known, is known as Neil Armstrong's hometown, but the moon museum has no pull on us.

The place we seek is the Temple of Tolerance, and all we really know is that Jim Bowsher's been building it in his own backyards.

(Jim) What I've done here is, I tried to save this stone, I mean, if you have a look at this and say, "What is going on here?"

Number one, architectural stone that's here.

It's that unfortunate thing where they tear down buildings.

And when they tear down these buildings, we lose all this hand-cut stone.

I thought, "Instead of losing this, "I'm going to collect it.

"Then I'm going to build it into something so intimidating they can't tear it down and throw it away again."

Then I got into the natural stone.

My brother and I are archaeologists.

And as I followed the glacier line-- the glacier came into Ohio-- and I followed the glacier line.

I suddenly saw all this igneous, metamorphic rock, this rock that's banded.

Well, my concept was--is, "If I get enough of these, then I can build a huge thing with these," these origins of earth, 'cause these are 4 billion years old.

I said, "I'm going to have this temple with a lot of power, and that power comes from the origins of the earth."

So that's as strange as I'm going to get.

Yeah, yeah.

(Jim) We should go-- what we'll do is go all the way out.

We'll go all the way to the back.

You guys'll see the temple.

And then as you see all this stuff, you'll decide what you want.

(Jim) And there's a million stories here.

And another thing.

As you see, you have to duck and weave.

And here's what I tell people.

This is really made for kids to play in.

And I say kids are constantly having to acclimate themselves to the adult world, so, adults, get used to it.

You have to acclimate yourself here to a kids' world.

Wow.

(Mike) Wow.

(Jim) Now you know what I mean by banded rock.

[Randy stammering] It was worth the trip.

[laughing] (Mike) Je ez-o-peez-o, my jaw is dropping.

(Randy) Oh, my-- oh, my goodness.

(Jim) I set up stone in here that's thousands of pounds by myself to see if I could do it by going down, using an incline plane going down, putting block underneath it, and getting it up.

And somebody said, "So why did you do that when you have an operator?"

I said--it's like I'm a writer, so I said, "The finished product in writing is great, "but it's the process of what you learn while you're writing."

Or like you guys.

It's what you guys are learning while you're doing this is what you live with.

You're going to learn a lot.

It's going to change your personalities-- for some of you guys for the better.

It is lunar.

It faces east, and I'll tell you what I based it on.

On November 3rd on my birthday, when a full moon comes up, it lines up directly through there, yes, and goes to the altar.

I'm telling you, it's like everything I do I just went after it; I thought-- and as I tell the kids in the yard, I say--you know, they'll ask you the questions.

They'll say, "What kept you going?"

I said, "Guys, I saw this completed in my mind.

"You're thinking the day that I finished this I stood back and went, 'Oh, my gosh.'"

There was kind of that feeling, but it looked just like the picture in my mind.

And I said, "Now it's finally done.

Now I can get back to writing."

(Mike) Is it finally done?

The temple itself is done.

These inside of the gardens I think are done.

I might build a waterfall over there.

I got other ideas.

And then I got another line of rock over there.

And then, really, it is finished.

(boy) Go od job.

(Jim) It's the Temple of Tolerance, because I think tolerance is the first step in the journey--in the journey to enlightenment.

If you look at this place, I think the most phenomenal thing is, every rock is photographed.

My wife did the photography.

It's photographed, and then it's on an index card.

And I can tell you where every rock came from in every piece of fence.

Now, again, somebody said, "Did you do that because you were so obsessed with recording history?"

I said, "For that reason, "but also the more intimidating it is, they can never destroy this place," because they can't say, "It's just this thing he built," because all the Wapak history is here, and it's in those index cards.

We--we want to bestow upon you the official Rare Visions and Roadside Revelations T-shirt-- All right, good.

In honor of what you've done here.

And I just want to say-- [together] We 're not worthy.

We 're not worthy.

Oh, thank you, guys, definitely, thank you.

Oh, that's great.

(Randy) This is awesome, man.

You have done an amazing thing.

[cow mooing] (Mike) Careful with that ball, now.

(Don) The dawning of a new day finds us once again cramming things into every conceivable corner, but there's always time to share something one of us has learned.

It's a buckeye.

That's a buckeye.

Yeah, you were asking about that.

I was.

It's the Buckeye State, Ohio.

But, you know, you're supposed to be able to keep rubbing it, and it relieves stress and tension.

Here, you might want to try that.

It's the Buckeye State.

The whole state is based on this thing?

Yeah, well, you know-- Gallstones are similar.

Yeah, that's Minnesota, isn't it?

[giggling] The Gallstone State?

(Don) Glad we got that out of the way.

But once again, it appears that rocks, not nuts, are the order of the day here in Springfield at the Hartman Historical Rock Garden built during the dark days of the Depression by one Ben Hartman-- but not this one, who was just a lad when his dad died in the early '40s.

(Ben) He was always a history buff, plus he was out of work in the Depression.

There was no money, no nothing, so he got 50¢, got a bag of cement, and made something.

These were constructed basically the way you would build a brick building or a--well, like a masonry building, all masonry.

(Mike) Was he a mason?

(Ben) No.

Well, I guess he was.

I mean, he put a lot of things together.

But, no, he was a molder, an iron molder.

(Mike) So these are all--he made the molds for these figures?

(Ben) He made these figures and the molds for them and the whole nine yards.

Like, there's different little sayings and things he's put in the concrete there.

Yeah, that's supposed to be a heart in the middle with "man"-- so, like, Hartman, so-- nobody gets it, I know.

Well, he calls it Tree of Life, and it has the American flag and the globe with the U.S. on it and an American bald eagle on top and then a school and a church for religion and knowledge, I guess, and--and doves for peace.

So I guess that says it all.

Noah's ark and Christopher Columbus' home there.

(Randy) Harpers Ferry?

(Ben) Yeah, Harpers Ferry.

(Mike) Giant mushrooms?

[Ben laughs] Oh, yeah.

Well, that's a sporting goods store that was in Springfield.

Yeah, this was my dad's favorite place to go.

(Randy) Hey, there's The Last Supper.

(Ben) Yeah.

(Mike) And I think they might have done the cooking right here in-- Mount Vernon's kitchen.

(Ben) Yeah.

Well, I guess he understood the right proportion of steel to concrete, you know?

You gotta get the right percentage in the concrete, and then it's strong.

You get too much, it's not enough.

You know, it falls down.

My mom was rather particular about him.

Anything that he did, she wouldn't let me touch, you know?

It was just like, you know, "Leave it alone."

So nothing--nothing got fixed, and nothing got, you know, repaired or anything.

(Randy) Did the family come out and live around this stuff?

(Ben) Well, yeah, basically.

She said that he said, "I built all this for you to enjoy."

So then she was saying, "Now, get out there and get that lawn mower and start enjoying it"-- and the clippers.

[laughs] You know?

So that was a lot of enjoying.

(Don) People still come from all over to see the stuff Ben's dad did.

But he says keeping up appearances has less and less appeal, and who knows what lies in store for the garden.

But here's what lies in store for us: Dublin, apparently not the one in Ireland, though, since no boats have been involved.

And, no, we can't really explain this striking sight, either.

So I say, "Grab the gloves.

Let's play too."

You heard about around the horn?

Around the corn.

Be the corn.

(Mike) Oh, watch this now.

Be the corn, whoa.

(Don) Well, no peppa.

[together] No peppa.

Kettle corn.

(Randy) The corning trek.

(Don) No telling how long this cleverness might continue, except suddenly we're one producer down.

You want to see the pus?

No.

(Don) Looks like Mike's got a faulty foot and headed for the showers.

I almost hate to say it, but game called on account of corns.

Don't get sore or nothing.

[train honking] In case you're wondering, my feet are fine.

And even Mr. Murphy's on the mend, which is good, because we're cruising Columbus, the biggest city in Ohio and a great place to find great folk art made by such folks as Ralph Bell, William Hawkins, and the Reverend Elijah Pierce, a wood carving barber whose prime pieces have ended up at the biggest museum in town.

(Nannette) He had a barbershop for 60 years.

Half of the barbershop was dedicated to the barber's trade, 'cause he cut hair right till the end, and the other half of the barbershop became his gallery space.

Mr. Pierce was a lay minister, and he really saw these works not as works of art.

He saw them as ways of communicating with his community.

He called them sermons in wood.

And religious subjects were a big part of his--the body of work.

But he also carved subjects about his own life and moral stories, moral tales.

It was very much about how to live your life.

(Elijah) God talks with me in a natural voice, a way I can hear it and understand it.

They know my name.

They call me by my name, Elijah.

(Nannette) By the time of his death in 1984, he was an internationally acclaimed folk artist.

I mean, he was--people came from all over the country to that barbershop to visit, but it was really only the last decade.

Earlier than that, it was really very much about family, friends, community, about people who really knew him.

The thing that's interesting about William Hawkins is, he uses a lot of popular culture, like photographs from magazines.

One of the times I visited him, he would always bring out the National Geographic somebody had given him or the old Life magazine.

And he would take pictures from-- He liked pictures from it, and then he would use his-- you know, use them as the inspiration for paintings.

But large-scale, very expressionistic paintings.

They're just fabulous.

(Don) You cannot, of course, buy the art that's on display here.

But over in what's known as the Short North, Duff Lindsay would be glad to sell you some at the gallery which bears his name.

Despite spending much of his life in this sleazy business we call television, Duff appears to be a genuinely good guy.

(Duff) I lost the passion for the career that I had before.

And I stepped back and said, "What do I have passion for?"

And I have passion for this art and these artists, the amazing people who just one day got the notion that they'd pick up a hunk of plywood and a can of house paint like William Hawkins or a pocket knife and a piece of wood like Elijah Pierce and decide, "Hey, I'm an artist."

You gotta love that.

(Don) Sometimes Duff goes out of his way to encourage those who yearn to create.

Take the case of Stanley Greer.

Back in his teens, Stan learned to carve with the legendary Popeye Reed.

After spending a few years behind bars, where no chisels are allowed, he emerged and began to make up for lost time.

(Stan) When I first came out, I just started working out on the dry docks and coming down and looking in the galleries.

[tapping] And then one day, I walked into Duff's gallery over here, and I'd seen all of Popeye's stones.

Duff got me some stone and helped me get some chisels and get started back, and I've been doing all my carving pretty much for about, oh, a year and a half now.

Well, that's one thing about carving.

Once you do get started, you just want to keep on going, 'cause that's when you're in the groove.

You guys wanted to stop and talk, and I said, "Hmm, well, I want to carve."

[laughs] (Don) And then there's Levent... Isik, that is, who came to Columbus by way of Istanbul and Montreal.

One day, a Greenpeace guy going door-to-door noticed his work on the wall, and voila, a career was born.

I think people sometimes have trouble categorizing this, because it's so slick and so shiny and so technically masterful.

To me, he's a contemporary self-taught artist, and his work clearly pays tribute to his favorite folk artists.

(Mike) So it's human figures; it's animals-- Yeah, it's anything that goes.

I try and get, like, a story that's been told and retell it in a different way, my way.

When I'm not painting, I'm thinking about things to paint.

I have all my scrap pieces of wood.

I'll walk through alleyways here, scavenge anything that'll absorb paint: metal, wood.

I'll use all kinds of throwaway things, like--like doll parts or something like this.

I'll go to the thrift store and buy a whole stack of these, which is a little disturbing by itself, a grown man walking around with six new dolls under each arm walking through.

It's good to have jars of ears, eyes, body parts available.

This painting will be a carnival tragedy.

It'll be a monkey stabbing a clown.

I mean, he's just had it.

There's, like, too much competition between the two.

This is brand-new.

A friend of mine, Ji m Rubino, who's been around fo r a long time-- he does these wonderful kinetic works.

He's been so supportive of my art, and we just got together one day and said, "Why not work together, you know, and make my paintings come to life?"

And he was all for it.

We sat down.

We came up with an idea.

I said, "Let's do a hula dancer, and let's just have her move her hips around."

And she's going to have that kind of a movement, where the grass-- that grass over there-- Okay, we got this piece here.

This will be girls jumping rope.

Over here, here's an example of the dolls' eyes that I'll use in the pieces.

And this is Mademoiselle Strip Tease.

Her tassels spin.

And this one, you gotta crank by hand on this one over here.

But she's--she's still good, though.

I've always had these ideas, but I just never knew how to put the two together.

So, I mean, if they come to me like this, why not?

And these teeth are made out of little coffee cans.

It's a coffee can lid.

Get little snips, and I'll cut little triangles.

And these are, like, paintbrush bristles.

(Randy) Now, if you'd had art lessons early on, would you-- would this be no fun at all?

(Levent) No, it wouldn't be fun, because I've done a lot of things on my own that I figured out that work for me.

And I'd show other people, and they'd go, "There's an easier way to do it."

And I go, "Show me."

And I go, "That's not an easier way."

I'll work on 20, 30 pieces at once.

And there's some pieces that I started, like, ten years ago, which I've finally come around to working on.

You don't want to force anything.

It's just got to come naturally.

And when you start enough work, something will get done, chances are.

This has got double movement here.

This is a hypnotist.

When you press it here, as you can see, this spins, and her eyes spin at the same time.

(Don) Pretty cool, but it looks like someone's getting very sleepy.

Anyway, Levent needs to get back to finding more parts and making more art, which means it's time for me to say good-bye, Columbus.

This is Don, your juggling camera guy, signing off.

Don't try this at home, kids.

Whoa, around the corner.

(Mike) Oo h, around the curb.

(female announcer) To learn more about the sights you've seen on this show and plan a road trip of your own, visit Rare Visions on the Web at: You can also purchase DVDs, videotapes, and a companion book to this award-winning series.

Call 1-800-459-9733.

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

Captioning byCaptionMax www.captionmax.com [barking] (Mike) Ho w about them Bengals?

Is that hollow?

No, that's the beauty of it.

This isn't hollow.

There's no cereal filler.

This is full to the gills of videotape.

And we're full to the gills of something else.

(male announcer) Production costs for Rare Visions and Roadside Revelations have been paid for in part by Fred and Lou Hartwig, generous supporters of Kansas City Public Television, and by viewers like you.

Thank you.