DUKE, LOCKED & LOADED, ROARS BACK ON THE ROAD

Rare are days like this. I feel compelled thus at long last despite the hour – 4 a.m. to relate the tale of Duke's first day back in the public eye.

That's right. Duke the art car is alive and well and finally residing in Bisbee, AZ. I had lost what few chest hairs I have worrying my mind (for years) about how to get him here from his opiate dream inertia in Hotel California and had at last given up. Or given it up to God, the Universe, etc. The moment I gave up trying, the solution arrived. Within weeks, with the aide of Patrick Dailey and Bruce Endres, Duke was loaded on a formidable trailer and towed the 600 miles of desert heretofore separating us.

That trip was NOT a result of the philosophy that states: Where there's a will there's a way. Today's endeavor, getting plates on Duke despite the odds, will be.

It started with my receiving bad or at least partial and all together too vague intel on the how and the where of going about getting Duke inspected for a second VIN number. I wanted Arizona plates for Duke, wanted him legal, and I had heard there was a way – despite his missing dash VIN (the entire dash was stolen in Duke's roofless early 1990s period).

So I followed the course I'd understood to be correct and entered the lions den, literally and without fear for I trusted my sources. I couldn't have been more wrong.

I should have smelled a rat when the tow truck driver refused to get too close to the inspection building. Knowing my car ran, albeit poorly, he dropped me about an eighth of a mile off and wished me good luck.

[Aside: dawn is coming and those who know me well know my fear & loathing of the first pale light of day, so I'm gonna make this quick and stoke the fire and slide back into my nest of blankets.]

Officer Long greeted me at the station. He was congenial and would spend a good hour searching for that f-ing VIN number allegedly stamped into the metal of the frame somewhere unbeknownst to the consumer. But his diligence would be undermined, WAS undermined by the pouring out of every officer in the building to come have a gander at the freaky and, as it turned out, extremely dangerous road menace of a car parked in their midst. Poor Officer Long didn't stand a chance. Even if he had found a second VIN, the number of inspection infractions and outright horrors were mounting with the poking and probing of one officer after another.

Turn signals poorly visible; mirrors obstructed; jagged objects protruding in every direction; loose objects merely sitting on the car amidst the hood menagerie waiting to fly off and maim unsuspecting school children. With Duke sitting idle so long, what was it? Four years? I had yet to get around to regluing.

And the list went on. Bruce arrived from nearby Douglas to lend a hand with poor wiring and much-needed moral support. And amazingly, another friend, Shawnee, designer of Dead Men's cover, just happened to be driving by in his big old blue work truck and stopped to help out. And both men DID help out.

Bruce got all but one of my lights functioning properly (thinking I was just going to see some guy about the VIN number, I had failed to think about any of that turn signal/brake light shit). I mean come on! This is the Wild West. We don't need no stinking inspection. And car registrants don't get inspected out here.

I had come to the wrong place, and the badge wearing men and women around me had the ability to pull my car off the road. Permanently. What stopped them?

Why the Jedi Mind Trick, of course.

No matter how closely a cop may scrutinize Duke, they are always overcome with sheer awe at the vehicle itself, the tenacity of its maker, and the plain twisted logic that no one could possibly get away with this shit yet somehow has for fifteen years. In the end, they just don't know what to make of me or my ginormous car.

Shawnee was a big help I think, too. While Bruce and I were out diddling with wiring, he was inside the office showing the cops my copy of Harrod Blank's Art Car book and photos of me at various highfalutin functions posing with city officials and cops of every ilk met in my travels. Shawnee was the Jedi master on this one. And he was the one to tow me out of there on a five-foot length of chain at fifty mph (quite exciting tailgating that close at that speed – try it some time!)

So yeh. No pass on the VIN number. But no tickets or fines or impoundment either! Which by the time we left felt purely miraculous. And here comes the zinger.

In addition to all the other things found wrong with the car, backwards passenger seat, no seat belts, too tall, yada yada yada, some guy, and I don't even think he was a cop but the cops were all there listening in, pointed out something I, in my artist mind, had never noticed as being of any danger at all. Heck, these were my voodoo dolls, my protectors: two dolls, one black, one white, mounted on the front bumper pushcarts and thus protruding further forward than anything else on the car and wearing bandolero belts to show off their badass-don't-tread-on-me-ness.

The artwork on Duke includes tons of empty ammo cartridges artistically arranged. So, who was to know? Turns out my little makeshift bandolero belts for my girls were comprised of LIVE ammo. Blanks, mind you. But live nonetheless. Twenty-four of them in fact. No projectiles, but most certainly in the case of a simple fender bender, a machine gun-like volley of resounding RATTATTAT BOOMS!  - RSM