Shop Doors...and Bad Movies...

Promised some pics...first off, here's the doors that I am building for the shop. They have been a "long time coming"...been wanting to do them for almost 2 years, now. Finally got all of the "ingredients" together...they are made out of old lumber that once were the floorboards of the houses that once made up what was referred to as "Mexico Town" locally. They were all torn down/dismantled over 30 years ago. My buddy, Desert Don, and his brother, dismantled and "stored" some of the materials out at his place. Don heard that I was looking for old lumber, and generously "donated" it to the project...hee hee...Thanks, Don!

Over the past 2 years, I've also been looking for the "large headed" tacks, with which to hide the screws holding the antique boards onto the modern substrate (plywood)...about a month ago, Steve (the stucco guy) came by with a large bucket of them...AwwRight! Thanks, Steve!

The "diamond shape" in the center of each door will hold a tile/mosaic piece that my potter friend, Armando is creating for me...hee hee...each will have a Lizard on it. Armando was by yesterday, and showed me one of them. It came out great!...however, the "matching" one, cracked in the kiln during firing...sigh...so, it'll be about another week before delivery; as Armando has to start all over again from scratch.

Tomorrow, I should be able to get the doors cleaned up, and then coated with a good, thick layer of West System fiberglas resin...with these boards as old, and dried out, as they are, the resin should soak right in real nicely...and when "set" will bond them tightly into "one unit". It will also give them a deep, rich, high gloss, "non-maintenance" finish...least ways, that's what I'm hoping...hee hee!

Also, here are a couple of pics of the wall mural that Bev and I have been working on the past few weeks...

Back in 1972, there was a simply awfully "bad" B-grade movie filmed here in Ajo...It starred Rory Calhoun and Janet Leigh (uh, wasn't she in the original "Psycho" that Alfred Hitchcock made??)...anyway, I think it was probably towards the "end" of both of their careers as "stars"...The film was called, "Night of the Lepus"...and was about a DNA modified nightmare gone totally wrong. It involved some really bad special effects (even for that time period) and some really cheesy script writing...oh, yeah, and a lot of "domestic" rabbits miss-cast as supposedly being "man-eating giants" of the Sonora Desert...running amok thru Ajo.

This mural is my "tribute" to that glorious, but short lived era when Ajo was a "filming" destination. There was also another film made here at about the same time ('73 if I recall correctly)...one called "Pocket Money"...starring Lee Marvin and Paul Newman...regretably, it was also almost as bad a movie as Lepus was...despite Lee Marvin trying to inject his own special kind of humor into it. People in town still tell stories of him hanging out in the local bars and instigating fist fights during his "off time"...hee hee...I'm currently working out a drawing that will become a wall mural "celebrating" that film as well.

Two other films were made near here: Burt Reynolds and Vera Miles did "Man who loved Cat Dancing"which was filmed a few miles North of here near Black Gap (also during the early '70's)...and Glenn Ford and Angie Dickenson made "The Last Challenge" down in Organ Pipe National Monument ( back in 1967)...both of these were Westerns...I'm also thinking of possible murals to commemorate them.

Well, time to get off of this thing...and back to work...

Ya'll try and have a Great Night!...ya hear?