After packing up and getting reorganized, we headed to the Bigfoot4x4 store, home of the 1st bigfoot and the largest, widest, and heaviest Bigfoot 5. Totally rad, for those of you from the 80's.
Next we drove to Independence, MO to visit Leila's art museum made out of hair. Unfortunately, it is only open Tuesday thru Saturday, so I am going to hit it on the way back. Alas, the exit was not wasted, we found the Community of Christ, aka, the RDLS church. We took the picture standing in the LDS visitor center parking lot.
Along the way we found the world's largest shuttlecock (I wonder how big the 2nd largest shuttlecock is?)
And a freaky spider
Next we grabbed lunch at Waldo's Pizza because I had read about the memorial bathroom tribute to Joel Stephen O'Laughlin. Joel worked as a waiter and got fed up with his average waiter life and decided to go to California to become an actor. On his last day of work, he got his coworkers to distract the boss while he snuck away to the bathroom to set up a memorial to himself including museum like tags and pictures from his life hanging them all over the bathroom walls. When the boss discovered the bathroom, he thought it was so funny that he never took it down.
His career in Cali didn't pan out and as it turned out, he still works here and he happened to be working that day. What luck! Meet Joel:
Later we came across Mr. Lessman, creator of Trunkhenge. He's the classic "stick it to the man" redneck. After the county told him to get rid of his junk (old cars, trailers, etc) in his yard, he decided to stick it to them by turning his metal crap into art. These so-called pieces of art are unmovable, making it untouchable be the county officials. He won his battle.
What I love about this man is that he has found joy in simple things, mainly junk, animal bones, and rocks. He is passionate and happy about what he has created.
He shared his wild cherries and peacock friends with the kids (not to mention the mosquitoes) while he continued to tell us about Truckhenge and his other works in progress. He apologized for the beer cans lying haphazardly in the road. He told me, "if they're going to throw their cans on the ground, they should at least throw them in the road where I can at least run over them. " That is profound folks, and I like it.
After putting X’s in each of my mosquito bites and after a few head shakes, we concluded that Dude was crazy, but completely satisfied with his life.
We stayed in Topeka and enjoyed their bathtub temperature pool.
2 comments:
Wow. Random!
The giant Hershey Kiss, you found it! Jeff served his mission in Independence MO and that was their nick-name for that temple. Becket seems to be afraid of the toilet, poor guy. Keep coming west!
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