As I sat down with Duane Edward Flatmo, the walls around us seemed to whisper with the vivid tales of his murals. Our conversation is a textured mosaic, chronicling Duane's transition from a sign painter in Santa Monica to a muralist whose canvas is the very town of Humboldt County. We traverse the landscapes of his life, from the sun-soaked memories of Big Bear craftsmanship to the transformative college years in San Diego, where the hum of iconic concerts fused with dreams of a simpler existence. Duane's reflections and my own mirror the evolution of our communities, a reminder that the places we call home continue to shape us, even as they themselves are reshaped by time.
The creative pulse of our chat quickens as Duane unveils the intricacies of his craft, from the meticulous grid technique honed in high school to the communal narratives captured in his Los Bagels mural. Local art legends like Randy Spicer dance through our dialogue, each anecdote painting a stroke of insight into the life of an artist threading his passion through the fabric of a town. We share the laughter and trials of a creator's journey, exploring not just the splashes of color on walls but the personal stories that make each piece resonate with young and old alike. Duane's art isn't just seen—it's experienced, connecting people and place with every brushstroke.
Our episode wouldn't be complete without the sparks of inspiration that have fueled Duane’s path beyond murals, lighting up the stage with comedy and setting the desert ablaze with mechanical sculptures at Burning Man. Duane's artistic odyssey doesn't end with paint; it encompasses the kinetic sculpture races that have become a 33-year tradition and the heartfelt acts of kindness that thread through his narrative. As we wrap up, it's clear that Duane's pursuit of peace and human connection is as much a part of his legacy as any mural. Join us for a journey not just through the past but into the heart of creativity, community, and the enduring quest for a world where we uplift each other in both art and life.
Find us on Facebook at 100% Humboldt.
As I sat down with Duane Edward Flatmo, the walls around us seemed to whisper with the vivid tales of his murals. Our conversation is a textured mosaic, chronicling Duane's transition from a sign painter in Santa Monica to a muralist whose canvas is the very town of Humboldt County. We traverse the landscapes of his life, from the sun-soaked memories of Big Bear craftsmanship to the transformative college years in San Diego, where the hum of iconic concerts fused with dreams of a simpler existence. Duane's reflections and my own mirror the evolution of our communities, a reminder that the places we call home continue to shape us, even as they themselves are reshaped by time.
The creative pulse of our chat quickens as Duane unveils the intricacies of his craft, from the meticulous grid technique honed in high school to the communal narratives captured in his Los Bagels mural. Local art legends like Randy Spicer dance through our dialogue, each anecdote painting a stroke of insight into the life of an artist threading his passion through the fabric of a town. We share the laughter and trials of a creator's journey, exploring not just the splashes of color on walls but the personal stories that make each piece resonate with young and old alike. Duane's art isn't just seen—it's experienced, connecting people and place with every brushstroke.
Our episode wouldn't be complete without the sparks of inspiration that have fueled Duane’s path beyond murals, lighting up the stage with comedy and setting the desert ablaze with mechanical sculptures at Burning Man. Duane's artistic odyssey doesn't end with paint; it encompasses the kinetic sculpture races that have become a 33-year tradition and the heartfelt acts of kindness that thread through his narrative. As we wrap up, it's clear that Duane's pursuit of peace and human connection is as much a part of his legacy as any mural. Join us for a journey not just through the past but into the heart of creativity, community, and the enduring quest for a world where we uplift each other in both art and life.
Find us on Facebook at 100% Humboldt.
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls of all ages, my new best friend, Dwayne Edward Flatmow. Dwayne Edward, yeah, yeah, and welcome to the 100% Humboldt podcast. All right, I'm glad to be here, it's great to have you. You know, it's like Dwayne Flatmow's coming. My wife goes wow, that's gonna be great, he's famous. I go whoa, okay, great.
Speaker 2:I mean, I had to take time out of my day to do this. I know here it's. I don't have much time.
Speaker 1:It's a bit we don't. None of us have much time, it seems like, especially with age. Tell us about how you got here. I saw I creeped on your Facebook from Big Bar.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and Big Bear, Big Bear sorry, big Bear. Lake, actually in the San Bernardino Mountains. Sure, but you know I was born in Santa Monica, grew up at Huntington Beach. Sure, you know doing the body surfing and the skin board, and I wasn't a big surfer, I just did the bellyboard and all that.
Speaker 1:Playing the water.
Speaker 2:And then my dad decided he wanted to build a cabin, or actually a three story house in Big Bear and move up there. So on the weekends all the kids would be playing and we'd be go up to Big Bear Lake, work on the house and built a house. We lived in and I learned, you know, up at Big Bear I went to high school and that's where my dad taught me drywall, plumbing, roofing he was a contractor and a painting contractor and I learned a lot from my dad building stuff, sure. So now when I work at my house I can fix stuff, really put a double pane window in or whatever you know, just from all the stuff he taught me Craftsman stuff, yeah.
Speaker 2:So I went to high school there. Then I went down to San Diego to go to college Grossmont College, sure and hung out there for about a year and a half and dropped out of school. Dropped out of college Grossmont JC yeah, I took a cup, I took all these classes and a couple of art classes and I dropped out of all of them except the art classes and just went to do art and I thought, why am I going to school again? I just spent 12 years of my life, in high school, and I just wanted to have. I bought a MG Midget and I'd cruise around with my buddy in his car and just go to see great concerts.
Speaker 2:Queen Jethro Toll got to see Electric Diet Orchestra Sport.
Speaker 1:Street yeah.
Speaker 2:Oh man, big, big shows, yeah, and. But then I was tired of the city. I, after being a big bear, you know you just feel like you're on these freeways crammed in all the time, everybody's, you don't ever see anybody you know anywhere, you know, and I'm kind of a smaller town person, so moved up to Humboldt County my girlfriend at the time what year was that? That was 1977.
Speaker 1:So you were in San Diego when I was in the mid-70s. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was fun time. Lot of rock and roll and good weather and fun.
Speaker 2:La Mesa, el Cajon, yeah, I lived in La Mesa.
Speaker 1:National city? Oh, really, not exactly Ocean Beach. It's almost too lavistic. It is, yeah, because it is. It's probably worse. Oh gosh, went back there for my 53 union just recently. It was 45th and it's. There's a saying my dad used to say you could never go home, and it was just, it's just big.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's never the same.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's never the same and the only thing that changes me.
Speaker 2:Well, now so you must have what's graduating like 75 or something 78, sweetwater High 75, so yeah, and I went to Southwest. Jc Okay.
Speaker 1:Diving under, you know, doing scuba Cool, it's almost like art, but underwater.
Speaker 2:Yeah, my hangout down there was like going to my girlfriend, was going to UCSD and Claremont Mesa and I'd always drive down there and then I used to hang around La Jolla, it was my favorite beach, la Jolla is great, all those beaches there, the Cove.
Speaker 2:Before it was really crammed in. It's a great spot. And Torrey Pines you can see the hang gliding out there. Oh yeah, blacks Beach, the naked beach, and I went there, did you really? You don't always see the best undressed people. You know they're not all perfect, they're all spiced up.
Speaker 1:They're all spiced up. Everybody goes wow, a naked beach. And I go. You're not missing a thing, man, it's just. It's pretty discussed. Sailors are particularly disgusting when there's no clothes on yeah, yeah, so, but yeah, beautiful, actually pretty natural spot.
Speaker 1:It's a beautiful place For San Diego County Cause it's a hike down and it's not what you expect. It's beautiful. We actually surfed naked one morning. It was that warm Really. Yeah, it didn't feel good, but it was. It was a fun experience. Yeah, cause it was warm. I don't know why I triggered that thought.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm trying to get the thought out of my mind right now. I'm trying to get the thought out of my mind right now. Do you want to see that?
Speaker 1:So you, you came to Hubble then with your girlfriend.
Speaker 2:I grew up at the time and we didn't. We got married, but we didn't. We were both really young at the time. It just kind of went different ways, you know, and we thought we were going to get a place in the mountains and we're going to live self-sufficient off the land, sure. And then I started to realize no I want an eye stereo.
Speaker 1:I want a big TV.
Speaker 2:I want to go party on the weekends at the clubs Button for the heat.
Speaker 1:The heater works right here.
Speaker 2:I don't want to pedal a bike to watch TV, I don't want to chop wood and but we just, you know, when you get married really young, like 20 and 21, and all that.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 2:So when I met Mickey, you know, I met her gosh. We got married, I think, in 85. And so we've been married 38 years and just, we both get along great, nice, yeah, great relationship.
Speaker 1:She looks familiar to me. Is she a runner or athlete?
Speaker 2:and some no, she, she rode horses for a long time. She's a horse, Fresh water. She had a. She was doing desage for like 15 years.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And? But no, she's. We both work out of the house. I have a studio. I built her in the backyard, so she's got a nice place. She goes every day and works on her, so she's super creative too, right? Oh, amazing, amazing Costuming for the nutcracker she's doing she's also does she got into doing costuming because we wear people wear outrageous costumes at Burning man.
Speaker 1:All right.
Speaker 2:So we just bring all these, make these costumes and get up on the machine and people would just be, you know, go wild over her outfits. And that's where she started doing it. But man, she's just so good and when people see her work, like her painting and stuff people look at it, look at me and they go well what was your name? Now we know the real hardest in the family. That's good, yeah, if you married up like I did. Yeah, it's true, she's ex exquisite painter.
Speaker 1:Nice. So you came to Humboldt. And then what happened?
Speaker 2:You did you go to Humboldt State or I went to CR, okay, and I had, you know, I had a great teacher in high school, mr O'Hare, and he taught me, you know, he knew, he knew I had a talent. At that time I could draw really easy and do cartoons, and I was on the journalism staff, the yearbook staff, and he taught me how to sign paint. And he said you go anywhere in life If you know how to sign paint, you can make a living. In any town you go to, you find an old sign that needs to be repainted, get some quills and some these kinds of paints. And so that's kind of what I did. When I got up here, I was, you know, I first started working at Sears because I needed some money, sure, and it was right down the street from where we lived.
Speaker 1:Was that Sears or is it Montgomery? Oh so Winko, winko where Winko is. Yeah, the I kid just called it the sad mall.
Speaker 2:I call it mall classic, mall classic, new Vo. Yeah, it was funky.
Speaker 1:It was a funky.
Speaker 2:And they had an organ player in the middle of it, you know, doing the organs, and they were selling pianos and organs in one store, right Old school, yeah, and I remember that, yeah, but coming up here it was exciting, it was just, oh, let's see, what was I telling you about the going to Sears? And then I started doing sign painting just little signs and I said I'm not gonna work anymore, I'm gonna do my own business. And my wife was working, so she kept most of the bills paid, but I was struggling like ups and downs, just like artists all artists start off.
Speaker 2:And I was painting butcher paper signs hamburger 59 cents a pound for windows of stores, and I'd get the money to masos when they just were in business in Old Town and some of these, a lot of old businesses, that Mazzotti's. I started out painting all these signs and I was making a good living and then Bucksport came along, greg Rice, and he said, hey, I got permission to put this image up on my building. Could you put that on my building? Perfect, and it was by a guy named LW Duke, who's the original artist of those paintings. And I just actually, oh, yeah, sure I can, I always got this, you know, you've got to.
Speaker 2:I tell people now just act like you know what you're doing, go back and then figure it out. And I had learned you know where you do a little grid on a piece of work and then you can make a larger grid on the building and draw everything you see in those squares numbered. And so I had learned that in high school. So I just I knew I could do it Sign painting. And when I first put that up I was like gosh, I can do murals, you know. And then Greg Rail from Los Bagels oh, dennis Saw it, I mean Greg. That's his brother, greg. They're brothers, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Greg Rail.
Speaker 2:And no, dennis said hey, I want you to do something on my building and I came up with that style with cutting characters out of National Geographics and then putting them in my own, the own scenes that I make up.
Speaker 1:He was here two weeks ago. They're going to be 40 years old this year. Was he, oh, yeah, yeah, and you've repainted that mural since, right yeah.
Speaker 2:And I also was there the day they got their first bagel machine in Is that right? And they were so amazed and we had a toast. We were drinking tequila and we had a toast. And then we all sat there and watching that machine with the thing, the dough, going in and it. Right it pops them out, it puts them together, you know, and then they pop out. And it was a upgrade for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's funny One of the stories. I was just listening to the podcast and he was saying that they used to bring bagels here from New York. Now it goes the other way. Yeah, they shipped their stuff out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, They've won some bagel competitions, you know they're some of the best.
Speaker 1:I think we took two big bags to Amsterdam to my son, a couple of months ago Did they stay nice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Johnny kept them kind of cool. She put some cooler something, something. But it was only maybe 24 hours.
Speaker 2:Now my favorite bagel garlic, toasted garlic, double toasted medium cream cheese, albacore onion and larypin mustard on top. Gosh, that sounds amazing. Yeah, you never want to eat it if you're going to be talking to somebody.
Speaker 1:I know it's like real close. I gotta get a drink of water right now.
Speaker 2:But I'll tell you I can eat one of those things with the albacore on it and that'll last me until two or three in the afternoon. I love it. It's hard to yeah.
Speaker 1:So nine kids. I take my kids with purpose to go do something before church or wherever, right. So I would take one or two to Las Bagels for the last 40 years. Nice, is that right? Yeah, that would probably work. And yeah, always a nice experience. And funny thing that you're sitting here, because we would sit there across from your mural and we'd kind of play a game. Do you see the guy with a funny little top hat? Can you spot him? And here's little Jacob. He's two or three years old. Yeah, dad, he's right there. Okay, your turn, because do you see the purple thing? I don't know what purple, but we'd have fun because the art was interactive in that sense.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So back to Bucksport, which is I gotta consult my map here, so Bucksport sits down here. Oh, it's right here. That's actually on my map here for Eureka, and so it's a sporting goods store For those that don't know. You probably know this. Yeah yeah, you might know this, and you did one of the first murals in town, right Well?
Speaker 2:when I moved here, randy Spicer had done a lot. The big giant wave on the waterbed store oh right, that blew me away and that's the first time I yeah, that's the first time I saw one and went, wow, wouldn't it be neat to paint murals someday? And I met Randy. I've known him for years and he kind of a recluse, doesn't get out a lot and he's done a lot of fin and feather. He did the Louis Armstrong one across from the Arkley Center, on the other side of the Arkley Center, on the other side, yeah, that one of the big, it's got a clown and all that music stuff. Oh right, right, and he did that. And then he did the horses by the library there's a bunch of horses pulling a fire truck. He did that, which is beautiful.
Speaker 1:I've seen that one yeah, yeah, he's really so the backside of Redwood Capital, by the way, nice sweatshirt I did that.
Speaker 2:That's all you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and I was marveled because the two windows that are painted up there in the light blue. It's funny how you got it so close to most of the sky, most of the time.
Speaker 2:That's what you're trying to do.
Speaker 1:yeah, yeah you look at it.
Speaker 2:I don't know if it changes color with the day or with the contract, but it's pretty close yeah when I get a good day and I see it even I go up, take a photo. That's when I got the photo that I take that I use for that. But I kept thinking that some bird is gonna fly right into that thing trying to go through.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of dead birds.
Speaker 2:John Talby, I told somebody that and they go oh, you gotta paint some bird feet up in a pile on one of the window cells. I go, no, no.
Speaker 1:You were just collecting birds. At the end of the day.
Speaker 2:That was a great job. Sherry Arkley, she is totally into the arts, really good and sweet person. I've always dealt with her. I know Rob a little bit, but not much. But when she first asked me to do something and I brought that image, she just are you serious, can you put this on that building? Oh it's fine. And I said I know I can. It's gonna take six months. Is that your biggest mural today?
Speaker 1:That's my largest project, yeah.
Speaker 2:And it was graded with two foot squares. I'd put six chalk lines, tape them up two feet apart and I'd drop all six chalk lines. Then I'd take the boom truck down and I'd snap each one and I'd pull it, wind them up, pull them off and I'd just keep doing that.
Speaker 1:So it's all sectioned, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So I drew it on and I think I painted a four inch brushes is all I use on that whole building and I used all those kind of throw away, the kind you buy at Pearson's, and there's those little throw away.
Speaker 1:Is that Pearson's on your hat? Yeah, yeah, shout out.
Speaker 2:Those brushes are better than people think. I can cut lines with those. I can do soft fades. You know they wash up good, they've got good bristles. And then I had to clear coat that whole thing and I did it with a brush four inches wide the whole building. I painted every single inch with a brush to clear coat it Because you can't spray, because it kind of makes a foggy. It makes it, gives it a foggy look, but when you brush it on you get in the cracks. You have to get in those crevices up close. You don't realize how many deep grooves there are in that building. So that's 100% you. You didn't have help doing it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, just myself every day, man, that's a lot of work. Yeah, beautiful though, dice art. So what do you see in the arts community looking backwards? So Humboldt's famous for a lot of things, many things. Yeah, one is our arts, our community.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:What did it look like 20, 30 years ago? And you were how is it different?
Speaker 2:from today. There were some amazing artists around and they're all out of the area now. There was Savoy Studios, which they did some of the most beautiful glasswork All the stuff you see in the Jacoby Storehouse all the sandblasted glass and all the work done behind the bars, like at the Ritz, and all they were the top notch.
Speaker 2:Oh really. They moved to Portland and started getting big. They're really big now. They went totally big Dan Legree and Sue Grottin, and then Becky Fletcher was one of the best, one of the best illustrators around here, and you had Chuck Ellsworth, all points.
Speaker 2:I was gonna ask if you worked with Chuck Nobody. Well, I wanted to. I tried to hire, I tried to get him to hire me, but he didn't want to hire me. So I was like, oh, I'm gonna start my own business. And so I started painting signs. And he came by one day and looked up at me and he goes come down here. And I was like, uh-oh, and he goes what brush? You shouldn't be using this brush. He said let me see your brushes. And he started going through and he goes this quill, this is the one you wanna use on lettering. And I went, oh, really, okay, thank you. You know, and you know I was inspired by him. He never taught me anything, but I was inspired by his work. I would go look at it, figure out how he was doing it. I remember sitting on San Diego, there was a guy doing like five different types of gold leaf on the inside window of a Swenson's ice cream parlor.
Speaker 2:I remember that the most detailed, beautiful workmanship, and you have to paint it all backwards on the inside of the window and then you fill it in the gold from the backside and then put a coat of black over the whole thing to seal it and then when you look at it front, it's the right way. But you gotta do everything backwards, it's a backward painting. I learned how to do that. So, savoy Studios I remember hearing that they got this big job and I went up and visited their studio in Portland on the way to visit my mom who lives in Seattle and I stopped by and they told me oh we got this good gig with the Taj Mahal for Trump.
Speaker 2:You know we're gonna be doing it all. And then, when it came time to pay him, he stiffed him for.
Speaker 2:He told him he owed him a million and a half. He owed him money. That was their biggest job they ever got. They were totally excited and they went to get paid and they go no, we can only pay you 10 cents on the dollar, Sorry, Okay. And they went no, no, you have to pay it. He goes, not him. But his company said, well, take us to court, get in line, that's what they told him. So they had to eat that job and that's way back. That's like in the 80s, that's pre-crime. And when I heard about all this stuff about Trump and I just went, I literally know people who got ripped off and there's a lot that just never got paid.
Speaker 1:How's that ever okay? And those are the workers.
Speaker 2:Those are the workers.
Speaker 1:We had an auto guy downtown, that was that way. He just he was a car dealer, he just ripped everybody off. He's long gone now in Erika. So there was a lot of art going on back in the day. Still is, but who else comes to mind that maybe still around or still creating?
Speaker 2:Well, I think one of the best logo people right now is Noah Sampson. God that guy is. He's great. Yeah, I worked with him. Now he's printing up all of our shirts and all of our sweaters and coats and stuff Visual concepts and he's easy to get along with. He's very knowledgeable on the computer. He takes my designs and he always fixes them. Or they go to press. I go. Here it is, he goes. Well, dwayne, you're the old school, you're the master man, I go. No, you're the new master.
Speaker 1:Nice.
Speaker 2:That's good, but he appreciates where I came from where? Because I started out before we had computers.
Speaker 1:He's digital and you're analog. Oh yeah, Well.
Speaker 2:I'm Photoshop, he's Illustrator.
Speaker 1:Okay, that's different and that's vector.
Speaker 2:Okay, and I never went vector. I don't know why I couldn't do my art in Illustrator like I do in Photoshop. It's just, it's not intuitive to me.
Speaker 1:Do you?
Speaker 2:know Matt Beard. I know Matt well. Yeah, he's great. I gave him the Dixieland Festival job I ran out of. You know, every year after 20 years you just start running out of ideas how many more. So he did okay, yeah, and he took over that.
Speaker 1:I saw your Facebook page, the very first one, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, gosh, I remember when that was brand new.
Speaker 2:Actually, you know you want to see. Most of my art is on Instagram.
Speaker 1:Dwayne.
Speaker 2:Flatmow Okay, it's just hashtag Dwayne Flatmow and you'll see I've posted mainly all the my favorite art I've ever done and it goes way back, so it's on Instagram.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so that's where I post. So just your name, dwayne Flatmow, instagram. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Shout out, shout out to Noah Sampson too.
Speaker 2:Noah, what's up, noah?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so who else? What else is going on now? Well, here's the deal now.
Speaker 2:I remember back when we, when we first started doing murals in this town, it was hard. You could not just go put up a mural and have it passed really easy. You had to go through the arts and culture commission, Then you had to do the city planning department and you had to meet at a meeting where they discussed your mural and told you what they liked and what they didn't like. And I was frustrated many times. I walked out of there pissed off, you know, like hey, we're putting something up in a blank wall, that's nothing there.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And, and you know it used to be tricky and they used to say, okay, yeah, that can go up, that looks nice, you know. And my kids all said, well, it's freedom of speech, we should, you know, and I go well, you can't put a, you know, a picture of Jesus hanging on a telephone pole and paint that on a wall, you know you're gonna get people upset, you know. And little by little it's really lacks. Now, I mean, it seems like everybody's an artist, everybody's a muralist, and I see some of the murals that are going up and I'd say, you know, I like a lot of them, but I think there's a large percentage it's mediocre and I hate to say that. I mean people are like oh, who does? Dwayne Flatmore?
Speaker 1:think no, there's some stuff.
Speaker 2:I mean I'm not gonna name any of them, but there's some really good ones too. So we just and I'm trying to stress to them don't keep having this festival and getting more and more artists putting up more and more murals until you repaint the ones that are fading, Because, like I've got four or five that are fading, like the courthouse market with the animals. That looks really beautiful when it's fully painted and I think that's a good thing, and I think that's a good thing, and I think that's a good thing. That looks really beautiful when it's fully painted. It's beautiful, but it's fading and all the bums you know homeless people have been, you know putting cigarettes out on it, writing on it.
Speaker 1:Be it on the wall, yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, and so you know Finnegan and Nason beautiful artwork.
Speaker 1:I was gonna ask you about that. That's you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that was my third mural.
Speaker 1:That was beautiful, yeah.
Speaker 2:It's going to hell, and A while back Nancy Fleming was helping get that. Oh, what is it called? It's a animal shelter place, you know.
Speaker 1:Oh, Miranda's rescue.
Speaker 2:It's like a thing that they I forgot the name of it, but anyway she asked me hey, what would it cost to repaint? I gave them a great idea a great deal like 5,000, I'll redo that whole wall just cause I want it repainted. Sure, and time gone by, time gone, now it's peeling and it's almost too far. That's hard. And they just recently asked me can you repaint it again? I said well, I wish I could have, when you know it's been easier and there's a whole I'm sure there's a group of merchants association for Henderson Center, the auto all pitch in, you know, a little bit of money, landmark, and have that thing painted.
Speaker 1:So is that you also behind the Firestone Station and the old courthouse on H Courthouse? That painting that's behind it used to be the courthouse. Now it's the post office at 5th and 8th.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is the mural class the mural class. Okay, yeah, it was kind of normal, it's like a building.
Speaker 1:It looked like.
Speaker 2:And then, as you, there's a guy standing in front of a doorway. He came down and gave us $500 to put him in the mural and I used it for pizza, to buy the kids pizza Every day we had pizza, that's cool.
Speaker 2:And I said you guys, all we gotta do is put this guy's picture in there. Let's do it. You know he's a nice guy, yeah, why wouldn't you? He's retiring. And but then we got really crazy at the back end of it and I just let the kids Then it got real artful, really weird. I said, just go, just have fun, you guys show me the drawing and then I'll tell you whether you can put it on or not. Are these high school kids? College? These were. Let's see Libby Maynard and Cindy Trobits.
Speaker 2:And let's see Libby Maynard and Nancy Fleming asked me to do a mural project through the state of California, the California Arts Council, and they were paying. I think they pay me like $1400 a month and I worked two days a week, so I did eight days and it was all the weekends and it was at risk. Kids and kids that just didn't get enough art in school and they wanted to do more on the weekends. And then a lot of people came in. They needed to work off community service hours. Maybe they vandal something or they spray paint it on a building. So we called it the Rural Bureau Mural Bureau Nice, and Jack Freeman came up with that name because his daughter, leah, was in my class and we were all coming up with names that rhymed with murals. So we're going mural burl, rural. And we were trying to put the word in order and he came in and he just looked at me and goes oh, I was just calling it the Rural Bureau, mural Bureau, perfect, he had it. And I went oh, my God, jack, that's it. So he came up with that.
Speaker 2:So I worked every for 12 years I did that project and I finally got burned out. It was just new kids coming in. Some of them are really tough. Some of them actually wanted to fight me and when I told them to, hey, wash out some brushes, go, wash out some brushes, they turned around and flipped me off Like, come on, come on, come on, watch me Show them how to. They don't pay me for that part, yeah, but it was fun because I felt like I was in touch with the younger group and all the music they came out. When Beck came out, they were playing Beck, they were playing all these albums by all kinds of groups and I was going man, this stuff's good and I'd mentioned to my friends they go. I've never heard of that stuff. That's cool stuff that's new stuff.
Speaker 1:So where do you find inspiration today? Where do you go or do you expose yourself to new stuff?
Speaker 2:Well, every day I'm inspired by everything I see, really, and I take photos of things I like. I've been in touch with other people on Facebook, on Instagram. Wayne White is one of my big inspirations. He did all the set for the Peewee Herman show, all those characters, randy, and all the sofas and the crazy stuff, and he's got a great Instagram page and I just get inspired by his work. Gary Baseman Gary Baseman's amazing artist from the 60s, and Robert Armstrong he did Mickey Rat. I don't know if you remember that it was like a rough Mickey Mouse, you know, right, the cartoon, or was it animated too? He might have done an animation thing, but he hung out with when I, jesse Crumb, lived up here. He passed away about, probably about eight years ago, as in Robert Crumb, robert Crumb's son he lived up here and he'd come to the mural class.
Speaker 2:he rode his bike all over Eureka and he'd always stop by the mural class and hang out and talk to the kids.
Speaker 1:And Crumb is Mr Natural and all the initial Mr.
Speaker 2:Natural, keep on trucking. You know Grateful dads, all that sort of stuff. What was his Cheap?
Speaker 1:thrills, cheap thrills with. Dennis Chaplin album. Yeah, was he Bay Area? Was he San Francisco? I believe he was mostly down there.
Speaker 2:What did?
Speaker 1:they call his art. That was kind of hippie early. It was a lot of cartooning. Did he do the Freak?
Speaker 2:Brothers comic book yeah, zap Comics, freak Brothers, that is a whole genre. In the day that was Well, he was like I grew up with the keep on trucking poster over my bed because I love those three little characters just walking with their big shoes. And that was it, man, we were into it. And so here I am going to Jesse's wedding up in Bayside and there's Robert Crumb and Robert Armstrong and they're both playing guitars and Robert Armstrong had a saw, he was playing with a bow and I was like man, I'm in heaven. You know, I was there with my friend Jeff Jordan and we're both thinking man, we're right here with Crumb, you know, talking to him and stuff. And so I kept in touch with Robert Armstrong because his stuff is really reminds me of my stuff, you know, when I find someone who's doing similar things and we kind of have a like-minded vision, you know, and it always gets me to you know, do stuff too.
Speaker 2:you know, nice, step the game up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So let's talk about some of the stuff in the envelope. Yeah, I brought a sketchbook, but the last-. So you've been on the Carson show, or was it late night?
Speaker 2:Let's see, I did. I was doing comedy at the Old Town Barn Grill. We did an open mic comedy night and I did it with my friend Bobby Klasper and he was just in town and we had played at the Eagle House a few times and did our whole show, the Dwayne and Bobby show. And when we played at the Barn Grill it was during Haley's Comet was coming. You know, going by and we said Haley's comics, we call ourselves, is about to hit the Barn Grill and it shows us a comet ready to hit the Barn Grill and we came up with so many good routines and I came up with the egg beater. I played the guitar with an egg beater.
Speaker 2:I did Flamingo. Oh right, Flamingo Right, Thank you very much. Then someone said you know, I brought the house down Every time I played it. They waited at the end of the shows. Okay, Dwayne, you do that last, so we get a nice big applause, you know, and it never failed and I did it. A couple of comedy clubs up in Seattle and I would tell them hey, I'm a Bay Area comedian, Can I do it? Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:Come on up. You know I didn't tell him humble Bay Area, bay Area Close enough, but anyway that routine. I went down to the mall and they were having auditions for America's funniest people way back.
Speaker 1:The Bayshore Mall. The Bayshore Mall, the New Sad Mall.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the New Sad Mall. And so I went down there and then I got the call and they said we're gonna fly you down and you're gonna be on the show. And I was third you know, the third best one. I didn't win first prize, I got a T-shirt. You know a flight down there. And then they said sometimes you send these to the Letterman show and they'll let you do it there. So I sent it there and didn't hear back for half a year. Then I get this call can you be on a plane tomorrow to the Letterman show?
Speaker 2:New York City, you stupid human tricks and I was like are you kidding? Yeah, you know. And then it went from there. I did an ad in Minnesota for a theme park, then I was on America's Talent, I was on the Leno Show Wow. And then I got asked to go on Telemundo TV to open for Carlos Santana.
Speaker 1:Hilarious.
Speaker 2:And I was on the show. So I got to do my bit. And then come out and here's Carlos Carlos coming right up. I had my Sharpie pen already with a cap off. Sure, so you sign my guitar Absolutely. And he's just looking at me shaking his head how in the hell did you come up with that, you know? And I just said, hey, I went, yeah.
Speaker 1:Oh, I don't know. I just thought about it, carlos, he's a great guy, though, right, oh, he's so great, he was so warm, you know nice. Say he's the real deal.
Speaker 2:And so I got a picture of him doing the peace sign next to me and then he signed my guitar for me and that was a big moment because he's one of my heroes.
Speaker 1:Wow, so you branched out of way, out of murals.
Speaker 2:Boy yeah, you're way out of me Now. I'm a carny. Basically I go. I take this El Popo I could take three times a year and make more than I used to make in my whole doing jobs all the time. Now, popo means?
Speaker 1:does that mean octopus El Popo?
Speaker 2:yeah, it means octopus.
Speaker 1:And that's by you, yeah.
Speaker 2:And there's two of them. I sold the first one. I built one out of junk metal and it started getting really funky. It started breaking down. A lot and pieces would fall in this machine while we were working it and it was so heavy and I just you know, we could have been better, we could have done it better.
Speaker 1:So you redesigned yeah, I built the brand new one. So describe it because, for folks that never have seen it, maybe you have a sketch. No, I don't have you seen the El Popo. So you had a Dick Taylor chocolate several months ago, right?
Speaker 2:So it's a 28 foot tall octopus made out of old discarded kitchenware and aluminum pots and pans and muffin tins and pie sheets. It's shiny, it's silver, chromey, yeah, and a lot of people look at it from a distance and they don't even realize their kitchenware. They look at it and think, oh, that's a beautiful texture. And then they get close and they start looking at it what? And they have all the different cake pans and these things. So we built a beautiful one.
Speaker 2:I sold the first one for like a lot of money, like I put it in my retirement so, and I took part of that, and I bought a little car. I bought a car I wanted to have. It was a little NAS, metropolitan, a little two-tone red and white, and it's just a little. It wasn't really expensive but it was. It's a great little toy. And then I built the new machine, which is El Popo Magnifico Instead of mechanical. It's Magnifico and people see it and they want us to go to these different things all over. We've been to Telluride, wow. We've been to Calgary, canada, burning man. We've been to Burning man like 16 times With that. Well, yeah, now with the new ones, they've only been there three times.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but the old one, the Taylor chocolates festival. We did that. It was amazing To see this at night.
Speaker 2:It blows fire, it shoots 30 foot, 30 foot flames in the air 400 gallons of propane.
Speaker 2:every night we shoot at Burning man. So it's propane, propane, yeah. And there's a giant bin inside the machine, like one of those troughs, where you fill up and the horses can drink out of and stuff. And there's four 50 gallon tanks sitting in that bath with a cover that holds them down and we fill that with water. And then there's an on-demand water heater that heats that water up to 105 degrees so it keeps that propane. It never freezes. See, if you ever use a weed burner, they freeze up and then they don't work.
Speaker 1:So you figured that piece out? Yeah, so it heats the water up and there's a no smoking sign right there.
Speaker 2:You know what. You don't need to worry about people smoking because we're shooting fire.
Speaker 1:It's already on fire.
Speaker 2:The fire department told us that they put all these no smoking signs. Don't you think that's a little redundant? I mean, we're shooting 30 foot flames here and you're saying no flames near the machine. It might blow up, wait. But the beauty about propane is it's a good, clean burning fuel. That's why they've used it in all our barbecues and things and it's not real volatile. I mean, if you have a small leak in a can, it dissipates if you're not indoors. So when you're outdoors it's not going to be a thing. Yeah. But if you have it in a room and it starts building up and then someone lights, that's where you get the explosions, because of the condensing.
Speaker 2:And so I've been around this kind of fire for a long time and never even been burned, once, not even touched something hot Do you have a picture of it?
Speaker 1:I don't have. Oh well, I don't have. No People can go to your Facebook or your Instagram and look at it, it's amazing, so Well so the latest sketch I just did.
Speaker 2:I got that yeah what's late I got that card from. I got the card which was a Krusty the Clown drawing from David Silverman, so I did my own little version of Krusty the Clown and this is the guy from Simpson, from the Simpsons, yeah.
Speaker 1:So I sent this to him. I bet he loved it. Yeah, he liked it.
Speaker 2:But I, you know, I sit there in the evenings and I watch TV, and then I, just you know, I start drawing bats, you know.
Speaker 1:And then I.
Speaker 2:Here, right up there. Then I just do like, oh, that's creepy.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, nice, I wanted to do a machine that was kind of rabid and scary you know, I wanted to have there's one Raccoons popping up out of trash cans with glowing red eyes, and the other thing yeah, whatever that is, yeah, and the rats. Then I do normal stuff. I was sitting there.
Speaker 1:Nice yeah.
Speaker 2:I drew a statue that was in the center of the square. That's gorgeous, yeah, yeah so let's see I'll give you some.
Speaker 1:Some of us do our phone on while we're watching TV. You're creating.
Speaker 2:I do that too, yeah.
Speaker 1:I do that too. I saw the yeah, love to see more of that. But don't forget the card, because I think people would love to see your Christmas card oh okay From Silverman.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, he walked up in Mexico. We have a house in Mexico, nice, stay in for like three or four months out of the year and this guy walked up and he had a bottle in his hand and it was a bottle of rubbing alcohol.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, it was half full, okay, and he goes I need some water, I need some water. I go oh good, you should be drinking some water. Yeah, and I went and got him a bottle of water and he filled the half full bottle of alcohol. He filled it with water and shook it up and started to drink it. He started drinking it.
Speaker 2:He was drinking rubbing alcohol Right, and the next year he died. They told me that guy's not around anymore. He died, didn't make it. I go. No wonder, that's what he looked like when I saw him. Yeah, you know, and so it's kind of fun. When I'll see people that I can draw that, I go oh, that's a good face, I want to draw that. Yeah, certain people.
Speaker 1:Nice memorial, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's a good one, that's right. Yeah, I love to see that. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I get David Silverman from the Simpsons. They first asked me when I was out there. He got up on the machines. He plays a flaming tuba. I've seen him for years, before I even started going there much, and he has a tuba that has flames coming out of the ball, the builds or whatever it is, and so I was talking to him a bunch. But then after we did all polpo, he caught up on the machine and we had a couple of whiskies. He's a whiskey drinker and he said, hey, the Simpsons, we're doing an episode and we want to use El Popo as the main character in it. Oh really, we'd like your permission. And he says, even if you don't give us permission or sign this, we're still going to do it because it's a parody and we're allowed to do that. It's satire and clarity.
Speaker 1:It's legal.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're legal to do it, but we'd love your grace.
Speaker 1:How nice of you, respectful yeah.
Speaker 2:And I said, well, for sure, and he goes. Well, you do get bragging rights, that's what you get for it. I'm excited because I'm a Simpsons fan. He sends me a card every year now and he sent me this card. That's pretty cool. And then he did a little drawing of Krusty the Clown inside of it, which is really cool. Gosh, that's personal, which is basically it looks like Homer with hair on his breast. That's Krusty the Clown. I drew him and I drew him on and sent it back to him.
Speaker 1:So what do you see for the future of arts here at Humble?
Speaker 2:Well, you know, there's a great art community here. I mean the young kids that are coming out, they're doing I mean I go to the different galleries, especially the Epitome Gallery. Is that an old town? That's an old town, right near right, by Eureka Books.
Speaker 1:Right over here on my map you could show your map. Eureka, California, right there.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, north of San Francisco, the other Bay Area, yeah, the real Northern California, the real Bay Area, yeah, come on.
Speaker 2:Oh geez. So anyway, I go in there and it's so funny because there's all these young kids I call them kids, but they're 40 years old and under and there's a lot of younger ones and they'll see me and they'll go oh my God, you're a legend, Nice. So I get this legend thing lately, People calling me a legend, and I hope that doesn't mean, hey, you're out the door now. No, but I've always had. I always stay busy and I always like to build things and I like to outdo myself. I think my whole life has been trying to outdo what I just did and do something a little better. And then I see what everybody else is doing. I'll go okay, what's going to be different than all of that, what they're doing? And when I get around other artists that are really good, it usually pushes me to be better and I push them to be better. Love it, A yin yang kind of thing that allows you to keep growing.
Speaker 1:I love it. We're talking about that with DeMark and music. So musicians, Paul, hey, there's musicians in their 90s that are still creative and doing it and doing it better Really good, and Tom Brady's pretty much done with football at 40 something but you're still creating.
Speaker 2:You'll still be able to draw and paint and stuff like that. I do a lot of sketching and then painting. I want to build one more machine. I think I have another machine in me. Still, you start to get where you don't want to. You're bending over in your knees.
Speaker 1:I do know that yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm feeling pretty strong right now, so I'm feeling great. So I still can do it. I'm 66 years old. I was just saying you're 40, what I was gosh 20, 22 when I moved here.
Speaker 1:Wow, yeah, I just turned 64 this last week. Yeah, so the Beatles song when I'm 64, hey, I should just play it.
Speaker 2:No, Right now, I'm not going to feed you, I'm not going to.
Speaker 1:I should better get us singing for you. So yeah, I get it the aches and pains, but you could still go on creating.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and we were getting get back to college of the Redwoods I had Roger Sinman. Was a great teacher, very easy going, didn't you know? Very kind of spiritual kind of he always wore sandals into class and very cool, very cool teacher.
Speaker 2:And so high school I had Mr O'Hare, then I had Roger Sineman and then, I Roger Sineman, and then I heard about this guy, jerry Smith, that was teaching a cartooning and commercial illustration class and so I went and joined the class and he was my big mentor who got me started At CR. Yeah, he was at CR and he was doing local work, designing stuff for a lot of people, and he's the one who actually gave me the Old Town Bar and Grill job, because he left town and went to go to Seattle and he's up there now and he inspired me. He was doing all this stuff for heavy. You know, we were all into heavy metal magazine and we were into all those different cartoon magazines. You know Mad and all those. I grew up on Mad Magazine and I learned how to draw the body by looking at Jack Davis's work and Mort Drucker, the Kings cartoon. Those are the guys, yeah, and I got a lot from that.
Speaker 2:But, jerry, one of the class projects was to design a business card. So I made my own business, flatmobile Graphics, and had a bottle of ink tipping over with. The stopper was flying across the painting with ink following it, you know, and he said that's a weird thing. You're putting an ink bottle spilling on a card that you're supposed to not be spilling ink on the stopper. I go well, it gets their attention, it's creative, but I use that. I printed up those cards like 12 bucks down at times, printing for 500 cards.
Speaker 2:I started giving them out and my business just started coming in and you know it made it look like I was a company, you know, but I really you were official. I was learning. You know, I'm still learning. I learn every day new stuff, you know.
Speaker 1:I love it. Yeah, I have a saying let's get curious, let's do some new stuff, let's discover. Hey, I don't see what they're about, let's go find out.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, we can get curious and not have to buy it. We can find out where they're coming from.
Speaker 2:Well, youtube is so great for that I go on YouTube. Yeah, mickey. Oh my God, there's a whole thing about, you know, this kind of clover that grows in this area of Ireland. Let's go look at it, boom, get the whole story.
Speaker 1:There's so much on YouTube.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, so a couple of personal questions, if I may. So what are you super proud of that you've done or doing? When do you think of?
Speaker 2:Well, I'm proud of my relationship with Mickey and my home life, nice, and I'm very proud of my family and I think the most you know, doing kinetic, the kinetic sculpture race, for 33 years.
Speaker 1:I wanted to talk about that. You're every year.
Speaker 2:Back when I was Mr Pencil head back in 1982 when, I started and went through 33 years and I knew Hobart really well and we were always talking. I always ask him so, Hobart, how do you do it when you're in front of the camera? I always get seized up, you know.
Speaker 2:And he goes well, you just built a pencil, so know that there's gonna be people coming to you and talk to you, so have a couple of good one-liners ready. And so he says like, hey, man, I'm just trying to get the lead out, you know.
Speaker 2:Oh I don't need an eraser, because I never make mistakes, you know, and just say funny things. And I did. That's the way it worked. I see one come up. I started using those and then it led to them asking questions and he he was a showman, right, I love Hobart. We had our ups and downs. He wanted to spread the race over all the states and overseas. I said, just concentrate on this race, make this the best one, cause it started failing when you started doing other ones and he had to keep going to those. Ventura, you know, klamath Corvallis this one diminished as a result. It did a little bit and now it's run by a bunch of really good people and it's still got a crowd.
Speaker 2:But I always felt like I did it all those years and we brought, you know, ken and June, ken Bidelman, june Mokson, and the art was going downhill. Everybody was building pontoon bikes. We call them A bike with two pontoons and they run really fast. There's no art on them and we're like God. So we, we made it a point to bring back the art. So we started really building big art pieces and I felt like we did that. You know, once I got up to the dragon that I built out of the pots and the tin pans.
Speaker 2:That's what led to me going to Burning man and building that, you know, building the El Popo but that I'm proud of all my years in the kinetic race and all the people I met and I just didn't want to be. I wanted to get out at a time when I'm not hobbling on the stage like you know. Hey, this is Dwayne Flatmow. He used to be a racer and you know, say hi to everybody. I don't want to be that guy on a dolly being wheeled out and I told him that I'm going to. I'm going to get off the stage, graceful, and let young people come in and take my spot and get the accolades and get all the spotlight. You know I'm not going to drag myself out in that.
Speaker 1:So you've done every year 33 years straight. Was the big giant bus back in the day? Was that? That was Hobart? That was Hobart.
Speaker 2:He never built stuff that really worked very good. It was. It looked cool and, you know, just out of the plaza he would be pushing it already, you know. I remember if they're broken already.
Speaker 1:Two blocks, that's still human powered.
Speaker 2:It's still human powered if you push.
Speaker 1:But I'll tell you that's how.
Speaker 2:I broke my. That's how I got my chops to go to Burning man. Once I built something big. I'll tell you it was like a. It was like a wide awakening, because you don't have to race to a finish line, you don't have trophies that you're arguing on. Why did he get trophy? Why did that? You know there's no trophies at Burning man. You know there's no time schedule and you can build something really heavy and you don't have to worry about it has to float.
Speaker 1:All of our machines, all of our machines in the race.
Speaker 2:We would get them all built. They're beautiful. And then we go oh, now we got to put two sleeping bags, pond tunes, a pump for the, and we'd load them down so heavy that they just he didn't want to pedal them in the sand. It's too much. And so at Burning man, you know I'm getting a big truck and I'm going to build something huge on it. Stay in the RV, I don't care how heavy it gets, sleep on a mattress. And I remember the first time at Burning man we're cruising across the Playa we had some cool music on, we played mellow music during the daytime and just cruise out there. And I remember looking Jerry, my buddy Jerry, who raced with me for those 30 years, and Mickey, we're sitting in the front seat and I go, this is pretty nice, huh. And we all just put our feet up and started pretending like we were pedaling. You know.
Speaker 1:And you had a good laugh, flintstones.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's just like we don't have to do it. You'll get the gasp now. I mean, it does all the work, that's great yeah.
Speaker 1:So I imagine that looks really amazing on Popo at night in the Nevada desert.
Speaker 2:Oh, the desert makes it, Because there's no light competing with it. Oh, and you're like, and even the daytime you go, you know there's people say, oh, there's tons of people. It's too many people for me. And if you look at a lot of the pictures from Burning man, they're just wide open space. It looks like another planet and you can pull your machine. We'd pull our machine out and take a leaf blower and we'd blow all the dust off. Every day in the morning. We'd blow all the dust off, clean it up, nice, and then we'd take photos. And when you take a photo there, you've got the playa in the foreground, these beautiful purple mountains in a blue sky, some great clouds. Wow, it's great for photographs.
Speaker 2:You know Like that, yeah, and that night it's just. People see us clear across the playa. They always know where we're. At what time of the year is it? It's Labor Day, which is the end of August.
Speaker 1:So it can still be pretty darn hot, it gets hot.
Speaker 2:I've never seen it over a hundred. Yeah, you know, it gets up to 90 a lot and we have a shade. Mainly what we do is we shade structure. There's a huge one in the middle of our camp and all of our vehicles that people sleep in in motor homes or we sleep in the back of our truck and we have a tent over our cooking area and we all just we meet in the middle usually hang out in these chairs under a shade structure most of the day and just like camping you know, hanging out, talking, going off and seeing stuff getting ice, go out and buy some ice and then, right when it starts to get dusk, we're all getting in our clothes.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry. We're getting ready to leave, you guys and I put on. There's a special song I play. They know we're gonna go pretty soon. What is it? It's a sheep. It's like a hip hop sheep, you know.
Speaker 2:it's like boom, boom, boom, boom boom, you hear this little all these lambs in there and it makes everybody laugh when I play it, you know, and so they know that. And then we're all getting our outfits on or getting all primped out. You know, we got our propane already and we're getting ready. And you go out at dusk, you know, right when the light is perfect for photographs and stuff, and we just go out there and then we do a big thing about lighting. All the legs and people are crowned and the funny thing about our machine is it's become like the burning man machine that's never been seen out there before.
Speaker 2:Really, it's by said by many people. I wouldn't say it if I didn't read all the blogs and how many people?
Speaker 1:So it's the signature act.
Speaker 2:It's a big act.
Speaker 1:Is it every night? Do you let it?
Speaker 2:We do. Every night we go out, yeah.
Speaker 1:So you just have to truck in tons of propane.
Speaker 2:No, they have a propane out there.
Speaker 2:Oh, they do, they have like a main big truck, yeah, huge trucks, and they get, they come in and then they have also petrol you can get, and so there's two lines and there's chain link around. It's very stringent out there, and so we're the only machine. They let fill up twice, so we have 200 gallons which will go about four hours. And then they said at midnight the guy Chris who works out there, him and his girlfriend live out there in a tent or a building, I guess, and he said come out at midnight, honk the horn and come out and fill you a second time so you can go till four in the morning if you want, which we do a lot. So we do nighttime like vampires. We're kind of out at night, we get back in in the day, sleep and then sit around the camp all day.
Speaker 1:You can't imagine at 66.
Speaker 2:Oh man, I love it. No, it's not. That's energizing, damn I'm so. I get so excited. So it's all costuming and oh yeah, we wear outfits that are black coats with flames on them and our logo on the back, and then we wear black hard hats with our sticker right here. Hard hats are for getting banged by the legs or by anything metal Cause a lot of us have hit our heads and I just said, well, we're wearing hard hats on board.
Speaker 2:And then these jackets are fire resistant, so a little spark can land on it, it won't burn, won't hurt you.
Speaker 1:So people probably love it so it's all free right, it's kind of completely a free. Yeah, we look really different too.
Speaker 2:We're different than anybody. You see out there All of a sudden these guys come in. We look like we work in the oil fields. You know we're all in black with the flames on the arms and our logos, and then we got those helmets. What's going on? It really has a nice stands out from everybody. It's an oil dirty yeah.
Speaker 2:In the middle of burning man, and then those helmets stay off your head a little bit, so there's about that much air in there that keeps your head cool, and when you're shooting fire I can take my helmet off and have someone touch it. It burns their hands.
Speaker 1:That's how hot it gets up, so it insulates, it's true, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's pretty funny. That sounds cool. I want to go now.
Speaker 2:I think Johnny would love that Well, by the end of the week it's like $8,000 worth of propane We've bought you know. So I usually do a go fund me before we leave and say, hey, if you guys want to see some fire, you better help pitch in. You know they're pretty good about it. Oh yeah, we make our money every time. That's cool.
Speaker 1:Did you ever do any of the structures along the bay like the dragon? Remember those on the 101 coming into your area? I did, the airplane Did you ever see the airplane? I think so yeah.
Speaker 2:It crashed. Well, it was buried. It was not crashed Right, but it was cross-bred. You know, I saw those, those out in the desert. They got those Cadillacs. You know they're buried.
Speaker 1:Yeah, West Texas, and I thought oh, I'll bury a plane. Cadillac, not the Cadillac ranch, that's a mouth. Yeah, no yeah, it's the Cadillac.
Speaker 2:it has a name though it's like Cadillac Hens or like Stone Hens. Yeah, they're all. They're all sideways. So I saw those and I thought, oh, I'll bury an airplane, That'll be cool. That's an easy thing to build, Cause there's. I built two wings, I built a fuselage and a tail and we built them under the Smoa Bridge. There was an old mill where all those boats are now the crew boats.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, there was a big mill down there. It went inside thousands of nails everywhere Big freaking nails this big, and I got people. They're all bent so I had. I had like 10 people. We were from the marching mail show in this big band. I don't know if you remember that band, kind of do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they were like the lumberjacks. People mistook us for the lumberjacks and Big band. I had one person over there bending nails making them straight, cause once you've got them fairly straight they're not going to bend when you hit them cause they're huge Right. And so we made a big bucket and then I made little hexagon rings like a small one for the tail of the plane, boom, boom, boom, bigger. And we nailed long boards along it and built that, put it on a trailer, built the tail, put it on a trailer, and then we built two wings. I laid boards down, we put crisscross boards. So it came in one, two, three, four big pieces and six. In the morning it's dark. You were out there. Yeah, we went out there really early. I bought everybody McDonald's.
Speaker 2:You know we put big boxes full of big hamburgers, cheap egg McMuffins and stuff, and we put that thing together. But the pilots really did not like it. They thought, you know, it's close to Burry Field, right there. Yeah, gene Rakowski was the main guy and he said you know, they went out and cut it down. They went out after, was up for about a month and then they went out with chainsaws and chopped it up how about that? And then we went out and rebuilt it and put it back up. And then they went back out and chainsawed again and I said, well, this thing ain't gonna go anywhere. And you know, he said well, I've scraped my friends off of runways. It would have crashed Coming in here when we're flying in. You know, it's not really good to see a downed plane, you know. And I go well, I'm sorry, I didn't really think of it like that. And then it was oh, who was the judge up here? He retired judge. I wish I could think of his name. One of the judges up here, ryan Haltson.
Speaker 1:No, the older guy. He's older.
Speaker 2:Big guy. Anyway, he quoted in the paper when they did the story about this whole thing we were going through. He goes well, it's kind of like building a coffin out in front of a hospital, but it put me on the map. I mean, I was nobody, I was just a little guy working at Sears.
Speaker 2:And now all of a sudden, dwayne Flatmode, blah, blah. So people are. You know that the kinetic race in the murals really just started snowballing me. You know more and more advertising kind of. I've never advertised, never did an ad, never did any of that. It's all word of mouth.
Speaker 1:Business cards yeah, yeah, so you have three ending questions for you.
Speaker 2:Okay, I'm gonna give it to you in order. You don't have to answer them in order.
Speaker 1:Who are you, what do you want and what is it gonna say on your gravestone?
Speaker 2:Well, I'll tell you who am I I'm Dwayne Flatmode. I'm a giving, nice person who loves to teach the things I know, and I don't hold long grudges.
Speaker 1:I life too short to.
Speaker 2:I let things go under the bridge After a while. You know you get it over. You know you face it and get it over with. And I care for others a lot and I, you know I pray for people and you know, yeah, I have some friends that are going through some tough stuff right now and let's see what was. The second question was who are you? What do you want? What do I want? I want peace in the Middle East, amen, and everywhere else. Yeah, I want a good president, a good, caring president, you know, and I want people. You know, to help other people. That's what I want. I want people, you know. You see people that are on the streets and one day I'm sitting here just like God dang, they're all everywhere they're messing up in. And then I go home and I get in the house and our house is cold. I put the heater on it's not even warm enough yet and then I think of those people out there trying to find someplace.
Speaker 2:In the rain, let's go.
Speaker 1:I see cold and it's cold, yeah, freezing less than.
Speaker 2:And some of them are sitting in ice cold bed. Then I just my heart just melts and the next day I'm usually out, I carry, I have poker money that I, you know, chains that I have and a big thing. I'll just roll up quarters and $10 things and I'll come by and I'll just carry them in my car.
Speaker 2:And I just give them, to them, you know, just to help them out. And I've heard when I'm in my shop it's right down there by Schmidt Bauer Lumber and it's a metal wall and they sit there sometimes smoke pot or talk, and I'll hear someone crying, you know, and two people fighting and then the girl crying and the guy leaves and it's just so sad, you know I hear the whole thing, and then I'll go out and I'll say, hey, what's wrong, are you okay?
Speaker 2:And then I'll just give him a little bit of money. It's awesome, go get some soup or some food or something Good for you.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And then on my tombstone yeah, what's that gonna say? I'm not gonna have a tombstone, I'm gonna be cremated, okay. And I don't wanna be putting the ocean. Okay, you could put me in a river.
Speaker 1:River's okay, river's fine.
Speaker 2:But you know, after you're done. I don't know. I don't know what it would say on my tombstone. Let's see, Do I in flat mo? I don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 1:That's right. I don't know what it would say.
Speaker 2:Get back to me on that one. I hope I'm looking down. How's that? How's that At the fish and the river?
Speaker 1:Love it, hey. Thanks for coming. Yeah, yeah, I think there's a kindness to show up for me, a guy you didn't know from Adam, and yeah, I appreciate that a lot.
Speaker 2:You seem like a pretty nice guy. Appreciate you coming.