I needed those tears. They gave me faith and trust and a deepened sense of camaraderie with my art car friends. Somehow, between the carrots in Chiquita's nose and the tears in tired Ned's eyes, I knew that everything was going to be all right from there on out.

That night Ramon led us on some wild goose chase for a campground that should have been just a few miles outside of Minneapolis. It was my first inkling of Ramon's brand of lost and baseless, dictatorial leadership that would run a red streak through his so-called "documentation" of the caravan like the lines of blood-poisoning up a diseased limb. Following blindly as it is so pleasurable to do in a long convoy of colorful brethren art cars, I just went with it at first. But then I began to notice the passage of time and even sense that we were back on some stretch of highway we'd been on an hour before.

I imagine Ramon, bald and somewhat more portly than he already is, squatting in the middle of some overgrown temple in some Minnesota jungle that he's guided us to saying, "Do you.. question.. my methods, Duke?" and my replying, "I don't.. see.. any method, sir." It was crazy, and it ended first with our being turned away at the campground we'd long been searching for due to the late hour of our arrival and finally crossing over into Wisconsin in search of someplace that would take us.

That night wandering out beyond the cluster of tents and motorhomes in some anonymous campground we'd picked, Chiquita, Ned and I found ourselves on some long and steadily narrowing woodland road way out past any campers. I was entertaining some spooky notion of a haunted forest when we came upon a sign that read Sleepy Hollow. No shit.

That night Ramon cooked up a fine feast and all the musicians joined in on a quiet jam by campfire light. For the first week out, he kept us well fed. If nothing else, Ramon cooked well. So, I imagine, did Marlon Brando's Lieutenant. Kurtz.

A Twine Ball World

Darwin, MN

The toys are coming in like Santa Claus with his pants on backwards. Toys are Us. Tunes are us. The Art Cars have descended on Twine Town. Darwin, Minnesota, home of the largest ball of twine in the World. And tonight, our home.

It's good craziness on a Tuesday night in some farmland paradise west of Minneapolis. It's Jim and Merrill, the brothers on guitar with our Big John joining in and Bird on sax. It's "bye-bye Gertrude" and hello lakefront property for the night. It's Cheryl and Sam and Buck. It's Betty and her daughter Sue in a booth seat here in the back. Sue says "This is the best thing to ever happen to Darwin."

Back in the Ball of Twine gift shop there hang several photos of Weird Al Yankovich, who visited the ball some time ago and even honored it with a song. Could it be that we are cooler than Weird Al? And how cool for me, to be able to show the folks of Darwin that the Great Weird One has also touched my car. I show the children the autograph on the hood. Wow. They are amazed.

And so are we. In the space of a few short hours the 1998 Art Car caravan across America has taken this town by storm. And, as I say, the town has taken us. In, that is. And out comes the Ikagami, Ramon's filmmaking baby. Out come the instruments, the guitars, the sax, the maracas, the cameras, my laptop.

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Last update April 1, 2004