The next morning, we lingered awhile in the seemingly near-abandoned downtown stretch of Sierra Blanca. A reporter from the diminutive local paper came to take our pictures and interview some of the drivers, and townsfolk started coming out of nowhere to get a closer look at the cars. The people of Sierra Blanca were very friendly and our unplanned stop in their town created a bit of art car folklore. In the coming years Sierra Blanca would become an important stop on every caravan. It was as if the town held luck for us, or we for it, and the townspeople sent us away with gifts of praise, talismen like antlers and skulls for The Grape and The Funk Ambulance. Sierra Blanca added to our story, a story made up of many stories of the people and events of the coming days.

Like the story of artists Tim Johnson, 25, and Gretchen Baer, 31, drivers of the 1973 Olds 98 alternately known as The Funk Ambulance and Soul Patrol. Also from Bisbee, this couple will have moved back East and built an art boat by the time I got to Arizona, but I'll never forget witnessing Tim's mastery of manifold-baked potatoes, literally the process of baking potatoes on the engine of their mobile disco.

It was the Quantum Reality of the Art Car in America, and that day cinched it for me with fourteen crazy cars rolling stoned and happy together in the Texas sun, and me, driving sitting up on my headrest and steering with my toes, 'good-visuals' for David's documentary film.

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Last update April 1, 2004