(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.

♪ ♪ Nobody missed a big chicken yet, have they?

Not yet.

(Don) Dear TV mailbag, did someone say chicken shhh?

Hi, Don the camera guy here, stacked in back in a minivan, with two producers up front.

As always, on the lookout for the odd and amazing, which, here on the streets of Marietta, seems closely connected to "extra crispy."

[grinding noise] (Randy) Big chicken.

Come on, come on.

Wup-wup; hold for camera guy.

Hold for camera guy.

Did you get a good picture?

Where have you come from to take a picture of the chicken?

Oregon.

(Don) All the way from Oregon?

You don't have chickens up there?

No.

Not like that.

(Randy) We thought you were with another TV show and you beat us to it.

(man and woman) No.

(Don) Did you cross the road to see the big chicken?

No.

No, I didn't cross the road.

But I was reading on the internet where they said that they tore it down or were going to take it down, and there was such a big hullabaloo about it.

And so they had to put it back up.

I think it's cool.

I love the beak opening and shutting.

(Don) And the eyes have it too.

But now that our fowl play is done for the day, we can resume the folk art portion of this show, heading now into the city proper.

The one that Sherman burned has been rebuilt with something named Peach Tree at every turn.

Our destination is all the way downtown, to find the mechanically inclined Tom Haney.

That's his lovely wife, Paula, guiding us in.

Yeah, I used to make props and models, and I designed and built sets.

I did that probably for about 12 years.

[clicking] I've sort of taught myself to carve, which was probably about back in '94 or so.

Most of it was influenced by other folk art carvers, a lot of eastern Kentucky people.

So I started carving, and it's kind of gone from there.

[clacking] Started off making whirligigs.

And I saw this other guy doing figures with whirligigs.

And I thought, "I'm going to do that.

"I'm going to carve a figure and hang him off the back of the whirligig."

And it didn't-- when I carved the figure, it didn't really work the way I wanted it to mechanically, so I put strings on it and I thought, well, instead of making of making a marionette, which is on the ground, I decided to, like, bring him up on a stage.

This guy is operated by the keys out front.

So there's a key for each of his arms.

And then the center key kind of helps him-- lifts his body and helps him turn.

John Roebling built-- designed the Brooklyn Bridge.

You kids.

[laughs] You kids get off my bridge.

This is Billie Holiday.

I kind of wanted to do her because I like the way she sings, and I just think she's a very interesting person and very attractive.

She's definitely got a style about her.

And then this is Mr. Oddball in Mexico.

So I gave him maracas here, so he can play the maracas and dance.

And his hat goes up and down.

Some people think I'm-- my background is puppeteering, and it's--that's never-- that's not where it came from.

And I'm not, because I think of a puppeteer as an entertainer, and that's not my personality at all.

I don't, like, put on shows or entertain or on stage or anything like that.

So my pieces, to me, are very personal.

Dance.

March.

[laughing] When I was making the key-operated pieces, I always wanted to-- I always thought of putting a motor in them, because we need to get a big wind-up motor and put it in there, and it would run by itself.

In 2000, I found a Victrola motor, so I started with that.

So probably every year, usually in the winter, I make one big mechanical piece.

[gears clanking and twanging] The Victrola motor is down below this, and it kind of comes up here.

And then I have gears that slow the motor down and give it more power.

I've always been mechanically inclined.

I've always taken things apart and tried to figure out how they work.

And I've always been fascinated with mechanisms.

(Randy) It's pretty easy to see why not too many people are doing this-- (Tom) Yeah.

Yeah.

(Randy) Because I can't imagine.

How many hours, roughly?

(Tom) This is probably over 300 hours, basically, the whole month of December and January.

(Randy) Todd, that's amazing.

That truly is.

(Mike) Very impressive.

(Randy) Very cool.

Stop it now.

[gears clanking and twanging] (Tom) You'd think I'd get quicker and quicker at carving, but I spend more and more time at carving, obsessive for some reason.

And whenever you work with mechanisms, it's always difficult, because you're trying to figure out something, you know, very mechanical, and it's a lot of trial and error.

So I'm kind of developing something that's a little less time consuming, just so I can make more pieces.

I mean, I have so many ideas that I want to try out.

[metallic clanging] Ooh.

Did you get that, Don?

(Paula) He is a genius.

I mean, I'm here with him, and he's making these things, and, you know, I see the final product, and I'm still going, "How in the world did you do that?"

You know.

Sometimes, "Why?"

But how in world does somebody figure out how to do that?

And I really think he's very underappreciated with what he does; not by me, of course.

(Mike) Or us.

Well, not by us.

We came from-- al l the way from Kansas City to appreciate-- We're still appreciating him.

[laughing] (Don) Both Tom and Paula are big believers in living downtown, and why not?

Since just a few blocks from the front door where they bid us adieu, Atlanta's built its very own folk art park sporting pieces by such heavy hitters as Vollis Simpson, James Harold Jennings, and the Pasaquan man himself, St. OEM.

Sure it's concrete laden, but still a nice spot for some afternoon catch.

They do need to work on the infield grass just a little.

(Don) Ooh, man; astro-tough.

(Randy) Okay; if you hate us playing catch on this show, do you hate it less because it's in front of folk art or more?

Check that outfield wall.

Have you ever seen ads like that before?

(Don) It wasn't long before this game was called on account of sun, which seemed to be pointing us to the Little Five Points part of town for a very quick stop at a great new gallery called Orange Hill, which shows our kind of stuff in a very nice way with very nice people, like Elizabeth the curator, who showed unusual kindness to weasels and even made sure we knew how to find the Star Bar, home of the Grace Vault, which Jim Stacy will now explain.

(Jim) The original two owners for this bar were Marty Nolan and Dave Heany.

And they had started off the Grace Vault in the trunk of a '68 Sedan DeVille.

And they would charge, you know, 50¢ for people to see it in the trunk.

So when they bought this bar, they just stuck it in the safety deposit vault.

Then when my partners and I bought it, it kind of fell to me to be the curator, because in this day and age, it's the closest thing to a roadside attraction as I could possibly figure out.

And that is in my blood bad.

I mean, I'm not the hugest Elvis fan, but it kind of serves a purpose, where it becomes everybody's chapel, whether they're religious or not.

You know, if something goes on in the community, you know, you'll see people in there, kneeling and praying to whatever they pray to.

You know, I've done it.

It's kind of our hall of-- you know, hall of champions or whatever, in a way.

(Mike) Now, I'm going to figure you went to college to be a museum curator.

Yeah; that's exactly what I did.

I went to college to get kicked out is what happened.

(Randy) Ho w'd it work?

Perfect.

We have people come from all over, you know.

It's written up in Fodor's of all things.

One of the three things in the entire city of Atlanta that's written up in Fodor's.

Like I said, this is the closest thing that I, you know-- in this day and age that I can get to a roadside attraction and still make a living at it.

(Randy) So Graceland hasn't raised their head ab out anything?

Well, see, this is the thing.

It's like, I understand Elvis Presley Enterprises and all that, you know, trying to keep a lid on people merchandizing stuff.

But we don't charge.

We don't charge anything to come see it.

It's just--it's been donated and given stuff.

And all it is is a-- it's a pile of their licensed stuff.

You know, so-- They've never sent us a cease and desist, and I would fight it tooth and nail, because I'm not going to dismantle the damn thing.

And if they want to make me an offer on the bar, they can have it.

(Don) No argument here, not with a 6'6" killer clown.

And besides, we have a few wishes we hope the King might just grant.

Elvis-- Help me, Elvis.

Help this shootin' day end.

Please, please, Elvis, please.

This is how our day begins: on a sidewalk in south Atlanta with Lorenzo Scott, housepainter by trade, artist at heart.

And with his fabulously framed paintings in places like the Smithsonian, you'd have to say the latter is working pretty well.

(Marguerite) He have always done things like this.

I remember when I was really small, and he'd begin to get his little pad out and started sketching us, you know.

And the things he would sketch, it was really weird.

And I guess he decided to put it on canvas one day.

And this is what it comes out to.

So now he's a famous artist, and I'm proud of him, though, really am.

(Lorenzo) I remember, I was painting a picture one day, and I was getting ready to go to church on Sunday.

And something told me not to go to church that day, on Sunday.

And all at once, I said, "Well, if I'm supposed to go to church, I guess I'll start back to painting my picture."

And when I picked up the brush and started painting, first thing you know, I was where Jesus was crucified.

It took me back in a vision.

Well, I used to paint nothing but religion.

And then I said, well, you know, people there who are living happy-- All my pictures look happy like.

And people that-- that's religion too, you know.

That's religion too.

I put myself in the picture-- Some of the pictures that I've been painting about, I put my own self there, and the same, you know-- the same people that I've been painting about.

(Randy) You have a great look on your face there.

(Lorenzo) Well... [laughing] Like a old man said to me, ain't got grow up and age.

See, I wanted to be in a place like that.

That's where I would like to live now.

But I can't afford that.

It takes a lot of money to live in a place like that now.

This doesn't look like that kind of setting at all.

This is more like your classical-- classical kind of painting.

(Scott) I seen that picture in a book, and I decided to try to put it on there.

I really like all type of art, because I like-- you know, you're going to be an artist, you need to paint a little bit of everything.

I was looking at my artwork one day, and somehow or another, I just started making the frame.

Those frames in the museum made by machine.

This right here was made by-- I put that on with a stick.

[chuckles] (Randy) Wh at kind of stick you use?

Any kind of a stick.

(Randy) How much time do you spend painting?

Because I'm looking at a lot of your stuff here.

It looks like you might keep pretty busy.

(Lorenzo) All the time, except the time I go out and take a break.

I take a break.

Then I come back and paint some more, then I take my break.

Sometimes you feel good about working; sometimes you say, "I don't feel like working today, "but I got to do it, because I got to, you know, get some pictures done."

(Randy) But you don't paint any houses anymore, huh?

(Lorenzo) No.

(Randy) When was the last time you painted a house?

Last house I painted was about two years ago for a friend of mine.

Called me up, asked me, was I still painting houses?

And I said, "Yeah, I'll come and paint your house."

(Don) Lorenzo's oils have served him well, and those frames are truly one of a kind.

But the fumes haven't been kind to me.

So I'm hoping a little fresh air and--God forbid--some lunch might serve me well.

Somewhere around Decatur, though, I'm starting to wonder.

We're in search of a piece of roadside history.

We're not going to go to the first Stuckey's, because the first Stuckey's is too far away.

A bit of ubiquity began here.

I think this is it.

Oh, my God; there is a plaque.

"Unit 1,000."

Oh, man; this is not the first place.

But it's got a plaque.

It's got a plaque, but so what?

I got some plaque right here.

(Don) Still not sure just what happened, but at least I didn't have to eat there.

I still think they ought to be forced to take that "W" off the sign.

And we are still heading east, whizzing by yet another of those oversized signs that seem strangely out of place.

From the wild, wild west, our road now takes a Grecian turn, and the next thing you know, we're pulling up outside Athens at Bob Hart's house.

Bob's been an air force captain, technology teacher, and now a self-taught artist whose work you'll see more of soon.

But first, it's off to the woods for his homemade, just-had-to-do-it 9/11 memorial trail.

(Bob) Very shortly afterwards, almost three or four weeks afterwards, I started seeing that we weren't forgetting about what happened, but almost the feeling as to what happened-- we were just already-- already almost going back to a normalcy.

And I said, "Well, I've got to do something that's going to always remind me of what happened that day."

And if other people happen to see it and come and look at it, it will remind them of what happened.

My initial plan was to clear-cut this whole area and put it very symmetrical: just one, two, three, four, to put the names up on the property that way.

I'd made a diagram of that, and the next day, I came down here, and I looked at it, and I said, "This is just too beautiful to do that down here, to clear-cut it."

So that night, everything that I've got here came to me.

The path came to me.

The way I wanted to do the signs came to me.

The sculpture areas came to me.

And I just almost stayed up all night that night, just making little models of how I wanted to do it.

I was working at the time, and so this was really done all after work.

And I thought it would take about a year, and it ended up taking about six months.

I'm not looking for it to become a tourist attraction, but I don't mind people coming.

Anybody can come down here and walk through it.

I don't bother them; they don't have to call me.

They can just come up and walk through it if they want to.

It's an expanse of names.

I mean, this is 2 acres of peoples' names.

There were, you know, 3,000 people almost who were killed on that day, and we can't forget about them.

And I think it maybe helps me-- it helps me live my life a little fuller maybe.

This is where I come out and do a lot of my painting, and I usually do my painting outside.

This is where I hang out and where I do my stuff.

and I've always been a very positive person.

One of my favorite songs: Louis Armstrong, What a Wonderful World.

I'm very much a Dale Carnegie, "something good's going to happen to you," Oral Roberts, and positive thinking.

And I've always been that way.

Take a look at that one over there.

It says "Freedom, opportunity, compassion, love, acceptance, tolerance, diversity."

I sat and said to myself, "Just start painting."

And so I just started painting.

And I'm very prolific, and I put out a lot of stuff.

And I enjoy it, and I have a good time doing it.

And some people like it.

Some people don't like what I do.

But I'm having a good time with it.

If you look at these, there's always a woman with a remote control.

And we all know who's ever got the remote control is in charge of the household.

In the background, I put some other folk artists that I know.

This is one of J.B. Murray's.

That's a copy of his.

And then what I can do is, I can just let my mind go crazy with my writing, put any writing that I want to around these.

I've got about 15 or 20 of these hanging over at the college where I used to work.

(Mike) Do you sell your work too?

(Bob) Listen; I'd give my work.

See, I would give my work to anybody that tells me that they like it.

If anybody says they like my work, I will give it to them.

My mother-in-law told me-- she's not dead-- but she told me I couldn't do that, that I have to get at least $1 for it.

So if anybody sees anything I like, and I can tell they really like it, they can have it for a buck.

(Randy) Wh at can we get for a ten?

No, that's--$1.

What do you want?

You want that one?

What do you want?

(Don) Could he have a receipt?

[all laughing] (Randy) What a weasel.

(Bob) Want a receipt?

(Don) Is that the Acropolis?

Athens is, of course, a great college town with a cool music scene, which you already know.

But did you know that it also has the world's only double-barreled cannon?

Somewhere around here.

Seen a cannon?

(Don) This time it's not our fault.

We got a bad tip from one of those WWWs.

It's not at the courthouse; it's a City Hall, which you can't fight but we can find.

(Randy) The balls were going to come out with, like, a chain or barbed wire or something between them, so that they would, you know, spread out a little as they went and then maim even-- Slice guys in half.

Yeah, that was the theory behind it.

Yeah.

But apparently, it, like, misfired on about the third time they tried to use it.

So it got retired rather quickly and put back here.

(Don) Naturally, the cannon faces north, which could open up a whole new can of worms.

But rather than re-fight the Civil War, we're adding our own dumb idea, the world's largest ball of videotape, to the picture and heading off to Harold's, Harold Rittenberry Jr., that is, whose yard is none too hard to find.

Even though Harold's had some health issues, his love of making metal sculptures has stayed strong.

(Harold) The way I got into welding-- In '85, went out to the mailbox, and I picked up-- a catalog came from Sears-Roebuck.

They had a welding torch in there.

It was acetylene oxygen.

So I said, I think I can-- I want to buy that.

So I went out, and I bought it.

I brought it back home, and I read the instruction book.

I couldn't even get that thing lit.

So I went two or three weeks.

And then one--at last, one day, I was going to take it back, and tried just one more time.

And that time, it worked.

And from then on, you could say that's history.

Right after I learned how to do that, that's when I made that horse.

(Randy) That was the first thing?

Just pieces of metal and pieces of a Dodge van seat, and the horse head is a mop-bucket squeezer.

And its mane is snow tire's chain.

Oh, that's Byzantine Knight.

He's just a old guy hanging out out there, everybody's favorite.

I started on--it took me two years to finish him.

(Randy) Why is he a Byzantine knight?

(Harold) Because of the beard.

You see how his beard look?

I don't know how the professionals do it.

They--you know, they already know how to do things like that.

But a guy like me, I had to find that little groove.

When I get in that little groove, I hate to turn it loose.

So at that rate, I go hungry sometimes and don't want to drink water.

Art will kill you.

I tell you right now, art will kill you, just making it.

Because you get started on it, you neglect your health.

It's just like a... like a beautiful woman; you hate to turn her loose.

You get an idea, you're not going to sleep.

You have to get up, and you have to draw it or do something.

And that's the way it is.

It ain't going to turn you loose till you finish it.

The only worry now: will I have enough time?

Looks like I'm wasting time because I'm sick here.

I'm wasting time.

And I don't know.

It look like, when I do get time, look like I can't absorb enough of it.

Look like I'm wasting time all the time, not doing what I want to do.

Little, tiny.

(Randy) He's a recycler.

He is.

(Don) Turns out, all this is just around the corner from the place where a man named Dilmus Hall made concrete sculptures in his yard, making a big impression on young Harold.

Chris Hubbard, another Athens artist, knows the feeling.

In his case, it was Howard Finster and R.A. Miller who inspired him to chuck a career in microbiology and start making things, like his heaven-and-hell art car.

Astute viewers may recall, we saw it once before some years back at the Wigwam Village in Kentucky.

(Chris) Honda Civic hatchback with 258,000 miles now.

I'd been to Houston, Texas, and photographed art cars there, kind of as a hobby.

And after a couple years of going to some art car events, I finally said, "I'm going to make one."

Got a major theme here: heaven-and-hell car.

So it kind of stays with that, you know.

There's no Mickey Mouses have appeared or anything like that.

But it has-- I've replaced it with some of my artwork now, because really, when I made the car, I wasn't an artist.

It was kind of my first art piece, I guess.

So now as any plastic things deteriorate, I replace them with some of my artwork, like the cut-out tin stuff here.

"A little good, a little bad, like most folk."

This probably wasn't on my car windshield when I met you back in 1999 either.

Who-Ha-Da-Da artist collective that I'm part of.

I think you visited another one of our members recently: Ab the Flag Man and Danny the Bucket Man.

Basically just kind of second generation, self-taught, non-mainstream artists.

(Randy) But none of them are former microbiologists, are they?

I'm the only one, as far as I know.

(Randy) So you still feel good getting in there?

(Chris) Oh, yeah.

Well, I mean, many days-- Since I drive them every day, really, after so many years, a lot of days, I hop in there, and it's just kind of like another car to me, and I almost forget what I'm driving.

But you know, I'm trying to get another one started.

So it's a fever.

I have one behind me here, Pollo Rojo.

It loses a quart of oil every 30 miles.

So it doesn't leave Athens too much.

And then the little gray Nissan here is going to become my next art car.

I'm going to build a thing on the back of it that looks like a little Gypsy wagon type thing.

My heroes: R.A. and Howard Finster.

Now, about 2000, I started making other art and making my living off of that, and that's what I do now pretty much every day of the week and year round, travel around to festivals and stuff.

I drive the old U.S. highways, like you guys, a lot.

I rarely drive the interstates.

It's too generic and boring.

So I stop at old-- out on the old U.S. highways, gather up stuff when I see old falling-down gas stations, hotels, barns.

I find wood, tin, different rusty objects.

And then all my art has on the back of it where the pieces come from.

Like if there's wood, tin, barbed wire, and some bottle caps on a sculpture, it tells you where all those items were found, the city and state.

[high-pitched drill noise] (Don) One of Chris' signature sayings is, "Thou shalt not this; thou shalt not that."

And since it's raining for real now, we shalt not do any more today.

Happy trails.

(Don) 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 1-800-459-9733.

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

Captioning and audio description byCaptionMax www.captionmax.com (Don) Hey, I'm next.

Another adventure in the South.

Yeah, adventure on the road.

Lucky us.

Following a trash truck.

[Don imitating Elvis] Thank you.

Thank you very much.

That sun-- I can't do the sun.

Can't do that sun.

(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.