Just as we’re leaving Amarillo, Texas, a quiet town I’ve heard of only in a country song, we encounter a pair of enormous disembodied legs, standing on a pedestal in the pasture. Near the barbed wired fence, a mock-historical marker states that the concrete legs are ancient ruins Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Shelley discovered in 1818 when riding horse back through the deserts of Spain.

Who knows how they made it to the arid steppe of Amarillo. Impressed in relief upon the faux marble plaque, Shelley’s poem “Ozymandias” tells of the ruins’ origin. The decrepit statue is of ancient “Ozymandias, King of Kings,” his lips frozen in a snarl, his shattered body and lost humanity the inevitable conclusions to his defeated empire. Next to his legs “on the sand, Half sunk, [his] shattered visage lies.” His angry voice growls in effigy against mortality: “Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!” Painted on the legs are white tube socks with red rings around the calves, reminiscent of high school gym class.

Amarillo’s sheriff pulls up and tells us Stanley Marsh 3, the most famous funny man in town, is responsible for this clever parody and dozens of other Amarillo must sees. We set out to find the man who has adhered to the top of his truck a windblown stuffed chicken and pursuant badger.

Two days later, I’m riding in the back seat of Stanley’s Suburban. His assistant, LBK (which stands for Long Board Kid) is taking us to see more of Stanley’s own creations around town as well as other artists’ works in his collection. Right now we’re heading toward Robert Smithson’s earthwork sculpture the Amarillo Ramp.

I’m trying to read when suddenly LBK gleefully hydroplanes through a water crossing at about sixty, splashing road workers. The fictional world irrelevant at this point, I put my book away and focus on the ride. Cigarette ashes swirl in cup holders before blowing through the air. Fake money, graffiti, and what looks like stuffed animal fur stick to the car’s vinyl interior. Enamel fumes linger. Spray cans jump in the floorboards. I hold tightly to the Oh Shit handle as we bound over Amarillo’s rolling hills.

Stanley primarily manages the Marsh family’s businesses and assets, wealth amassed long ago in oil and gas production in the Texas panhandle. But around Amarillo, he is known less as an empire builder than as an eccentric who just likes to have fun, using Amarillo as his canvas. Most of Stanley’s art projects are harmless fun, like when he blankets the town in fake traffic signs that say things like “It Just Crept Into My Hand. Honest.” Or when he secretly sets up his World’s Largest Soft Pool Table, with its gorilla-sized pool balls, for the enjoyment of people passing in airplanes.

But for some of his stunts, Stanley gets “mixed reviews,” in part because what others consider sinister he occasionally finds most delightful. A defining moment in his character, Stanley recalls, was the time he took a bunch of dead monkeys (tragically killed by dogs), dressed them up in bathing suits, Mickey Mouse watches and goggles and strung them up to someone’s trot line. He slipped away into anonymity long before the trot line’s fisherman discovered the monkeys. Simply imagining the stories that could have unfolded in those murky waters tickles Stanley most of all.

In addition to carrying out his own creative ideas, whether sinister or not, Stanley also assists other artists in achieving their visions. He always has “hippies” (errand kids) around the office, who spend their time making art and consuming vegan snacks in a studio Stanley provides them. His current hippies are vast, impenetrable hipsters with messy hair and skinny jeans. While visiting Marsh Enterprises I asked one guy sitting on a couch in front of a large, styrofoam sculpture how they came to know Stanley, and he replied, “If Stanley wants to meet you, he’ll meet you.”

Art stars of greater import have also graced Stanley’s list of friends and collaborators, including sculptor Robert Smithson, who created the world renowned Spiral Jetty on the Great Salt Lake in Utah. Stanley and Bob Smithson became fast friends when they met, and Stanley asked Bob to stay at his ranch for awhile. Stanley recalls, “I really liked Bob. He drank bullets.”

(Smithson’s Spiral Jetty and the Great Salt Lake)

Before long Smithson had plans to build an earthwork sculpture on Stanley’s ranch lands. They would call it the Amarillo Ramp, a semicircular mound of red clay dirt rising from the ground into the horizon. Visitors could walk up the ramp to view the land spreading out before them in all directions.

Smithson got to work choosing a site, completing drawings and placing stakes in the ground where the ramp would be built, but he never received the chance to complete his vision. While flying over the ramp’s site, his plane crashed, killing all passengers. Stanley, his wife and child had just flown on the same plane the day before. No one knows exactly why it crashed the following day. With help from Smithson’s widow, sculptor Nancy Holt, and sculptor Richard Serra, Stanley did his best to complete his friend’s vision. “It was a long summer,” Stanley recalls.

As is true for Smithson’s Spiral Jetty on the Great Salt Lake, few eyes have seen the ramp due to its remote location. Sure, all one needs is an adventuresome spirit, but hiking a few miles in bleak desert heat to see the jetty doesn’t appeal to all. Many people wouldn’t have what it takes to pass the No Trespassing signs, much less drive their vehicles twenty miles down desiccated, potholed roads to get to the gate.

Stanley attributes the problem to people, not the land. There are art galleries filled with “clothes that can never go to the Spiral Jetty or the Amarillo Ramp.” As for the ramp, only personnel of Marsh Enterprises know how to navigate the red clay roads. These days, LBK takes people to see it.

So with LBK we go. I put my book down just in time for LBK to swerve left and cross through a chicken wire gate. This is when the driving portion of the tour really fires up. LBK jumps the car off the dirt road for some good ol’ cactus blasting. He floors it. The front bumper gives a line of cacti the kiss of death, sending the green, prickly, appendages flying across the blue sky. He swerves right to miss some tire-busting cedars then back left for more victims. From the back seat I think I hear the electronic timbre of a high score racking up.

Before too long, LBK regains the dirt road sending a brief calm through the car. In his soft voice, he tells us he’s destroyed a few tires while cactus blasting, so he’d better not get overzealous. But just a few turns in the road reveal more excitement: a bovine road block. LBK lays on the horn. He guns the Suburban, splitting rears like a cleaver through cheese. LBK’s cerulean eyes gleam madly in the rear view mirror. We break through the lumpish beasts who, terrified, trample each other in our dust cloud. The road clears and LBK finally parks a few steps away from our destination. “Now we walk,” he says.

The ramp sits in a shallow valley between swells in the land. It curls gently up from the ground. At the highest point, very little obstructs a view of the vast landscape except for a lone, verdant tree privy to a secret water source in the sage brush. The ramp is about the width of a dump truck. Some artists work in pen. Some work in brush strokes. But “Smithson worked in dump trucks,” Stanley says. And the ramp’s surface, once a pile of freshly turned dirt, now resembles the earth around it. Roots from below the ramp have over the years pushed up and up, sprouting in small shrubs along the ramp’s surface, anchoring it to the valley.

While the ramp naturally sinks into the landscape, some attributes are less natural, such as the fluorescent green rocks scattered along its surface. LBK runs to the ramp’s highest point, and on one of these rocks places a business-counter-like silver bell. He kneels carefully and with the grace of an orchestra conductor rings the bell, his body motionless while the sound subsides, then he rings it again. The rocks weren’t green in Smithson’s plans. They are LBK’s addition. LBK is the ramp’s only regular visitor and he clearly feels an affinity for it not entirely different from his affinity for spray paint. LBK spray paints the cacti, too. He has a compelling treatise on how he’s preparing them for the apocalypse.

(left: a close-up of the ramp and LBK’s green rocks; right: LBK spray paints cacti)

On the twelfth floor of the Chase building in downtown Amarillo, Stanley Marsh 3 sits on a couch facing a giant projection screen on which the Dow Jones Industrial crashes from ceiling to floor, casting a dull, purple glow over his face. A pillow version of one of his road signs lies on the couch next to him. It reads, “The Road Does Not End.”

(LBK and Stanley Marsh 3)

But for those traveling the highways of the investment world, dead ends pitching off into oblivion materialize in nanoseconds, shifting all reality into imbalance. Stanley tells us, in carefully articulated guttural phrases, that he’s unsure about the fate of the Amarillo Ramp and his other works in town. As do all his art pieces, the ramp exists on valuable property, but doesn’t exactly rake in dough as do the family’s business and financial investments. Given the current economic quagmire, once Stanley’s gone and his children become responsible for the ramp, who knows what will happen to it. In the meantime, LBK will continue his enamel commentary.

The threats Stanley faces as the markets drop may be more pressing than protecting his beloved art forever and on. These threats, for us traveling art folk who don’t have market investments, remain in the abstract realm they occupy, seldom affecting us in meaningful ways. Or maybe we, like Ozymandias, just don’t see our end coming. Maybe we just can’t accept that tomorrow our legacies, however small, could sink into the immaterial. Either way, we continue to have hopeful conversations, like ones about the little known wonders of small town Amarillo, and watch, believing in the immunity of our own toes, as the lightening bolts select their paths to earth.

(images from The Cadillac Ranch, a piece Stanley commissioned from artist collective Ant Farm; graffiti is welcome. above: Taylor adds his own mark to the car.)

Below are additional photos from our visit to Amarillo.

Seth and I spent the month of August canvassing for the Democratic National Committee in the Portland metro area. Between 4:00-9:00 each evening, we’d knock on around eighty doors, have on average thirty to forty conversations, and sometimes meet a slew of democrats, sometimes none. Our goals on turf were to 1) have as many conversations as possible; 2) talk to people about the issues (I spent my off time informing myself); 3) and sign people up as volunteers and donors. No matter the party affiliation of the people we met, we had some interesting conversations.

Here’s our top ten most memorable moments from our days as democracy-spreading donkeys.

#10— On turf, we spent a lot of time correcting misinformation, a woman who identified herself as a democrat said this to me: “I can’t vote for Obama because he’s a Muslim. Wasn’t he raised in the middle east?”

#9— A couple and their toddler stand in the driveway. The boy is trying to toss a football. After I introduce myself and ask them if they support the DNC, the wife says, “My husband and I were huge Hillary supporters, but now that she didn’t get the nomination, we don’t know what we’re going to do.”

“Being Hillary supporters, don’t you think that Obama would still be the best candidate for you to support?” I ask.

“You see, I don’t know. I don’t know much about him, and after that Wright thing, I’m scared. I mean, he seems racist against whites.” The boy throws the football at me. I catch it and hand it back.

I then ask her if she heard Obama’s speech about race. She says no, so I summarize some parts for her. In the middle of talking, the boy tosses the football up and it hits me in the head.

#8— A husband and wife stand in the doorway of their duplex. The wife says, “You know, I just can’t trust Obama.”

“Yeah, he can’t be trusted,” her husband chimes in.

I ask, “Well, why can’t you? What information do you have that gives you that feeling? Is it his stance on the issues? Did you read something somewhere?”

“No,” the wife says, “you know, when you have a gut feeling about something, you just have to trust it.” She wraps her arms across her waist to show me where her feeling is. “We just have a gut feeling about him. We don’t like him.”

“So you don’t have any specific reason, just a gut feeling?” I ask. They nod their heads. I say thanks and walk away.

#7— Canvassers sometimes receive more than donations and volunteers. We canvass bathrooms, food, and water regularly. Sometimes we receive printouts of articles that are meant to enlighten us. I’ve received some good book recommendations from an independent who donated to the DNC. But sometimes we get even cooler things. I canvassed a bottle of wine on a day when I raised over $450. It happened to be Seth’s and my wedding anniversary. Seth’s canvassed a picture that a little girl drew for him while he was talking to her mother.

#6— I approach a couple in their driveway. Their house is on a cul-de-sac, so they see me coming. Their kids play in the yard. I tell them I’m with the DNC, and that we’re working to elect Obama and democrats nationwide. I ask them how that sounds to them.

The wife says to me, “I wouldn’t even bother with him (meaning husband) if I were you.” Her face moves from sour to awkward smiling.

“Oh, you’re not Obama fans.” I say. At least we got that out of the way.

But before I can thank them and leave, the husband says to me, “Do you work?”

I reply. “Uh, yes.”

“Do you want to keep your money?” He sounds pissed. “Because I want to keep my money and do with it what I choose. Obama’s gonna rob me.” He points to his two story brick home with a three car garage occupied by a Hummer and two other SUVs.

“I’m voting republican.”

I get outta there as soon as I can.

Later, a wealthy black couple in the same neighborhood (and a larger house) invite me inside to sit down while they write out a check. They’re drinking white wine at the dinner table and reading the paper. Having just met some irate rich republicans (the neighborhood I’m in is mostly republican), I’m curious if all rich people think the same way. So I ask the husband what he thinks about the next president, whoever he is, raising taxes on him. He says, “I think whoever’s in charge should raise taxes. What do people think, that the roads pay for themselves? That schools fund themselves? We have to contribute to society if we want to see it improve.”

#5— “I give all my money to OPEC. Don’t you?”

#4— I knock on a screen door. I can see inside the dimly lit house. The woman who answers the door tries to blow me off when I tell her I’m with the DNC. I’m persistent. She talks to me through her screen door from a chair in her living room while I stand on the doorstep.

“Oh God,” she says, shooing me away with her hands. “I’m really not interested. I already know all about you.”

“So, are you voting for McCain?” I ask.

“If McCain wins I’m moving to Canada!” she says.

“Well, if you feel so strongly about the election, why don’t you do something about it by helping the DNC and Obama win?”

“Listen. There’s no point. The democrats are gonna blow it.”

“Not if we get the support we need,” I continue.

“Let me do something for you. Here’s the only thing worth caring about…let me see if I can find it…oh wait here it is.” She cracks the screen door and slides a bumper sticker through. The heads of a gorilla, a toucan, a polar bear, and a giraffe sit below the statement: “Your Zoo Needs You!”

#3— Seth meets a woman who worked for twenty years at a museum of history in the area. She lost her job when the museum came under new direction. The new director fired everyone over the age of sixty-five, four people total. She went to a lawyer to see if she had any recourse, but without proof that the director fired her for being over sixty-five, she could do nothing. Getting proof would mean getting the director to admit she committed a crime while secretly recording her. That sound’s so easy.

She tells Seth that she has no money, but she wants to contribute. Seth’s first ask, before hearing her story, was $120.09 for the day Bush leaves office. She wrote him a check for the exact amount, Seth’s only contribution that day.

#2— First doors are always a little strange, maybe scary, but seldom does anyone have a first door like Seth’s. He met a man who said, “Oh, you’re with the DNC, huh? Well, let me tell you something.” Then through an incoherent babble, the man tried to make connections between Nazis and democrats and concluded his history lesson by saying, “Democrats are like Nazis, so as far as I’m concerned, I’ve got a Nazi standing on my doorstep.” Seth promptly left.

#1— I’m in a distant suburb of Portland and am convinced I’m in hell. I walk past the outline of a hand painted in white spray paint in the street. The hand looks like it’s flipping me off. Inside the word “Skin” is painted. Now I know why I’m having such a bad night. I’ve already met a few angry white men at the doors tonight, one who said, “Miss, don’t make me get rude with you.” So I’m worried now that there might be an even nastier undercurrent right around the corner.

But that’s the risk we take as canvassers. So, I approach another house and knock on the door. This lady, older than Moses, comes to the door. She’s very friendly, says she’ll definitely be voting for Obama this time around. I’m glad to see a friendly face and stay to chat for a little while. She and her husband barely get by of social security, but until the past few years, they’ve always made it and could live comfortably. But the rise in costs for groceries, gas, and healthcare and medicine, she and her husband now have to count pennies and can’t get the things they really need. Regardless, she gives $5 to the campaign.

I’m back with the bus.  Transit Antenna picked me up last week in LA.  I’ll be riding with them for the next few months.  Stay tuned for blog updates, photos, etc…

Here’s a ghost song for halloween: Great Ghosts!
It’s by Phil Elvrum and Mt. Eerie.  I’m going to see them play tonight.  In a cave.

W.