Howard, home of some wild junk

[genealogynut]

I am posting this for Joanne.    Although I not sure which board to put it on.  This involves a newspaper article from the past, but to pertains to something still present today.  The article appeared in the Wichita-Eagle, date unknown, and is written by Bob Getz.



Howard--I have a new favorite Howard.

Howard, the town.

Forget all the other great Howards.  They must all scoot down into a tie for second-best Howard now.

Cosell.  Mandel. Johnson, the New York Met.  Wooden, the former Wichita art museum boss, Inglish, the journalist-about-town.  Howard, the university, Howard, the duck.

Howard the town is really surprising.

It's small, just 815 humans. It's out of the way, southeast on K-99.  But it may have one of the greatest, most compelling roadside attraction you can find loose out of a museum.

Amazing metal sculptures are what I'm ranting and raving about. A whole herd or flock or little field of them. Large ones, small ones, weird ones, weirder ones, painted ones, rusted ones.   All made out of junk.  Prime junk.  Postmodern scraps.  Neo-debris.  Pieces of various machines.  Scrap metal.  Springs, Parts of farm equipment.

You come rolling unsuspectingly into town on K-99, thinking you're zipping through just another basic, small Kansas town, when, all of a sudden, sitting there on the east of the road, there they are:

A big, wild, weird gathering of super all-junk metal art!

A giant one-eyed, one-eared, grounded purple people eater. A dinosaur.  A sea serpent.   An amazing metal-caped, metal masked Batman on a motorcycle.  A towering tinman.  Indians by a teepee.  A woman with a mandolin (or something) on a scooter.  A supercool metal rabbit wearing sunglasses and playing a strange horn while sitting on a motorcycle with a sidecar.  Other stuff.

Jerry Hubbell--farmer, rancher and real estate salesman--has been creating his metal menagerie for about five years now.

He does it for fun, not funds.

"It's just a hobby," he says.  "I have a lot of fun with it.  It's relaxing."

His work is crudely unpolished, but that might even add to its appeal (if you tend to like this sort of funk-junk art).

Hubbell can't be too selective.  He uses whatever he can find, whatever people give him or tell him about.

Spotlights.  Gear shifts.  Spouts.  A silage cutter.  Axles.

Take one of his smallest works, a peacock.  Or pheasant.

Whatever, it is amazing how he created this remarkably bird-like bird.  The head is a trailer hook.  The tail is a hub cap.  The legs and feet are the end of a shovel handle.  And the wings are big old hinges off some barn door or shed.

Hubbell--who has a sign up calling his collection Hubbell's Rubble--has no art background, no training.

"None," says his wife.  Her Honor Martina (Tina) Hubbell, district magistrate in Howard.

Hubbell didn't even take welding in high school.  But when he got into welding on his own, he took a course in it at Independence Junior College.

I asked Judge Hubbell if any actual art critics or collectors had taken note of her husband's brillant creativity.

"If they have," she said smiling, "they didn't admit it."

Hubbell himself is humble.

"My welding instructor has seen it," he said.  "I don't think he was terribly impressed."

Hubbell sold one of what he calls his "critters" some time ago, then decided not to sell any more of them.

He wants to keep each piece because he doesn't like the idea of making more than one of anything.

"I don't like repetition," he said.  "And I really didn't go into this to make money on it.  But sometimes, I guess anything might beat farming."

Alert travelers do notice and appreciate his work.  He knows because some have left notes and even found ways to mail him fan letters.

"It's just something I hope people enjoy.: says the laid back-sounding Hubbell.  "If it gets people to grin, it's worth it."

Tina Hubbell grins.  She says, "No junk pile around here is safe anymore."

Howard the town........

Tourists, art critics and junk dealers would all have to love it.

Note:  For those that live out of the area, if you will go to this URL, you will see a few pictures of Hubbell's Rubble. http://www.kansastravel.org/hubblesrubble.htm