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August 6, 2002 Mary: How long have you and Rick been traveling together? Duke: Rick and I have been together a mighty long time. We go way back, that boy and I. I’d say it was around my twenty-fifth oil change, I reckon, when Rick found me abandoned in that field in Northern Cali. Although to say 25 ain’t exactly correct, on account of in the eyes of Rick’s predecessors I was your basic forgotten stepchild Cinderella type. Nah, those poor suburban pre-yuppie martini-gulping white trash cracked-head boob tube Wesson oil lube jobs.. mind you I’m talkin’ about my previous owners, well, I guess they figured me for a Leap Year Baby, see, because unlike all the other kids on the long-block they only celebrated my manufacture date once every four years instead of the usual, yearly oil change. Anyway, yeah I’ve been with Rick now for almost 80,000. And I tell you, they’ve been Goodyears. Michelins, too, with a few Tijuana damn-near-sandal-soles thrown in when Rick was at his poorest. I never get tired of transporting Rick, even though we have been all over the friggin country. I’d never have known a person could pack so much living into every trunk-and-toy-encrusted mile. Mary: Where have you been invited to visit? What was the most unusual invitation that you received? Duke: Let’s see, we started out bustin’ into uptight yuppie parades back in ’92. Let me make clear that we WERE NOT invited. “That’s okay,” Rick would say, “cuz invitation spelled backwards is noitativni, and we’re chock fulla that, eh GonzoCar?” Mary: GonzoCar? Duke: Yeah, that’s what he called me in the beginning, you see, after the initial graffiti and splatter paint party on his 25th birthday in which a bunch of his amigos and family, even his 85-year-old grandmother Selena, gave me my first art makeover. Beautiful woman that Selena, softest hands of any human ever to pat my hood, God rest her sweet soul. Anyway, noitativni is an ancient Mattole Indian word meaning “the courage of the outcast.” Very appropriate for Rick and I. The Mattole Indians inhabited the lonesome, wind & rain-swept coasts of what is now northern California for thousands of years until disappearing at the first site of white man. Anyway, so one day Rick and I pick up this really hi-octane Yurok Indian guy, huge, must have had about a 440 cubic inch heart under his crazy hood, and somewhere between beating out the percussive thumps of some thunder chant on my passenger door and howling into the wind (mind you, this is back when I didn’t have a roof), the Yurok gives Rick this word, as a gift, like some magic can of carburetor cleaner. Bizarre. Then this Trans Am cop car that I noticed had been behind us for a bit throws on its siren and lights and I’m thinking, oh shit, I’m going to impound for sure, and poor Rick’s got a beer in his lap. So the whole time the cops are making Rick stand on one foot and touch his nose and all that, this Yurok is chanting at the top of his voice and beating on my door and it’s kinda starting to hypnotize me, you know, all that drumming and chanting and the flickering red, white and blue lights. And just when I realize that I AM HYPNOTIZED, totally relaxed and no longer afraid of the Trans Am or impound or anything, whammo! The Yurok stops drumming, turns toward Rick and the cops and says real quiet-like, “Noitativni.” (Duke goes silent) Mary: And then what happened? Duke: (snapping out of his reverie) The cops let Rick go. The Trans Am roared off into the moonless, star-filled rural north-coast night, and was gone. Mary: Wow. Duke: And that’s not the strangest part. While Rick’s bloodshot eyes and my tired headlights are glued to the Trans Am’s receding red taillights, I feel myself getting lighter on my passenger side. Rick must be tapped in to what I’m feeling, because he turns around and damn-near jumps out of me from the shock of what he sees. Or doesn’t see. May God make me throw a rod if ain’t telling you the honest truth when I say, that Indian just plain vanished. (pause) Well, heck. I haven’t answered your questions at all, have I? Sorry. It’s all the miles. I’m a rambler. Let’s see, invitations. Well, I guess my buddy Cami’s driver, that guy Herod or Horrid or Hoodicky, he was the first to invite along on a caravan. And wow whatta caravan. The first and probably the most worthy of legend. Rick wrote all about that for Dave the Dusty Dolphin over there at artcars.com. Then later that year there was that weird gig in LA where Rick and me and Glassquilt and Coltmobile and the California Fantasy Van and Flux and Oh My God! and some others where on display for some convention of cable TV execs from all the country. The highlight of that gig having Doctor Demento sit in me for a photograph. Then there were more caravans here to Houston, great town! Never felt more at home anywhere, I tell ya. Another “invitation” that was a real thrill for me came from Director Michael Mileham, a fan of mine and friend of the late British shock comic Peter Cooke. Michael always said Peter would have loved Duke. So when Peter’s American friends gathered at the Comedy Store in LA following his death, Michael asked Rick to drive me to the Chateau Marmont where we picked up Peter’s widow and drove her to the wake. I was star-struck that night, let me tell you. Dudley Moore opened my door for the widow, and later in the evening Eric Idle, Lynn Redgrave, Stephen Stills, and Weird Al Yankovich all autographed my hood. Wow! What a night that was! My full resume of the past decade’s honors and appearances can be viewed on our site, Jigglebox.com. No doubt the most thrilling in recent years was getting to cruise the track at the Indianapolis 500 with Ripper, Miss Vicky, the Roachster - yep. It doesn’t get any more ironic & cool! Mary: Not until they make a Matchbox model of you, anyway. Duke: Right you are! That day’s coming, isn’t it? I can feel it in my struts. Mary: What was your first thought when you found out Rick was going to be traveling w/o you this time? Duke: I was a little bummed at first, for sure. But I understood. That poor bastard has put up with more police “curiosity” and paparazzi harassment and put more blood, sweat and tears into me, and I MEAN REAL TEARS I can’t tell you how many times he’s sat inside my safe embrace and just cried and cried. That boy carries the weight of the world with him, and come on! If this 1000-pound thing he built on my back isn’t just one huge, howling metaphor for all that weight, I dunno what is. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind carrying it. There’s nothing like it in the world. Nothing like us! Me and my 12-foot tall, trunk-encrusted Gonzo Writer’s Sacred Refuge, Alter & Ark of the Artist’s Covenant on wheels. Mary: But now you’re parked. Doesn’t that bother you? Duke: No. It’s okay. It’s what Rick needs right now. We’ll roll again. Oh, yeah. Just a matter of time. Until then, I’m happier than a clam in Galveston Bay down here in Houston. I’m surrounded by friends, both Rick’s and mine, the best. Plus I got Bob the dog, and Frida, and a car couldn’t ask for a better host than the Hunterman, a more cozy refuge than his yard here. Mary: How have the Houston art cars been treating you during your recovery from heart surgery? How about the women? Duke: Mary, I am in Hog Heaven! These Texas girls are some fine-tuned machines. Hmm! Extraordinary upholstery, bodies that won’t quit! And the grills on some of them, wow! Whoever said California girls were the best obviously had four flat tires and a cracked windshield! Not to change the subject, but during my most recent heart transplant back in May, I was hatin’ life. The psychic bond that has developed between Rick and I over the years is intense. I knew he was just barely holding it together then. Shattered love, Matilda’s death, and then my crappin’ out on him, all in just a few months. Well, it was his sadness and not my heart problems that scared me the most. But we made it through. And from what I hear from him in his recent travels, it sounds like he’s gonna be okay. Mary: You and Rick talk? Duke: Oh, yeah. We had a long talk just yesterday through my CB radio. He says his interest in women is slowly returning, that he may even be capable of an occasional hug soon, which is a little pathetic, but progresss I guess, and which brings me back to ME and all your HOT HOUSTON MAMAS! You see, Mary, I’ve taken it upon myself to carry the torch, as it were, of Rick’s legendary Scorpio sex appeal, you know, just while he’s laid up.. er, not laid.. up.. getting, you get the picture. Cuz I tell you what, for every yummie Little Debbie macaroon human babe that he’s left high and dry and pining in his absence, there’s two or three little Jetta Jills and Rhonda Rabbits and Betty Boop Beemers that the Great, The One, The Only, His Highness Lord Duke the LOVER is running rich, roaring high rpms and ready to rub bumpers with, Baby! Mary: You like Barry White, I take it? Duke: Baby, I am THE Barry White of four-wheeled art-official internal combustion luuuuuuv limousines! God Bless my beautiful black chassis, I do believe the Duke is on the HUNT! Now, if you’ll excuse me, I gotta go! I smell a fox on my fender! [Reporter’s postscript: At this point, Lord Duke tore off, tires screeching, in the general direction of fox tail leaving yours truly coughing in a plume of purple exhaust.]
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