Unemployment rise checked
Jobless ranks cut by 85,000 in February
…
Rambling Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
MOUNTAIN AIR, N.M. – Pop Shaffer lives in his own hotel here in town. You know, the one Ma Shaffer slaves in to keep Pop in the luxurious retirement to which he has become accustomed. But Pop’s hobby workshop is a mile out of town, at his Rancho Bonita.
It is out there he has his big “zoo” of the preposterous animals he has been creating the past four or five years – his wooden animals made from gnarled treetops or twisted roots, and sawed and polished up a bit.
If you ever drive out to his ranch, you’d better go to the doctor and get a shot of nerve-pacifier first. You’re due for a shock when you pass through the gate.
For there in the yard is the craziest, weirdest, crippledest, laughingest herd of nightmarish animals you could conjure up from your worst case of indigestion.
There are dogs and monkeys and lions and mules and dragons and deer and elephants and snakes – oh, almost everything. There is hardly a one which isn’t easily recognizable as some species of animal, yet there isn’t a one that looks normal.
They’re shaped in all forms of hysteria. They’re distorted and cartoonish. They’re funny and they’re sad. Nobody in the world could pick them out of treetops except Pop Shaffer. I hope he never has to have a brain operation. I’ll bet they’d find his head full of square fishworms, all smoking corncob pipes.
Full of finished animals
The big yard is full of finished animals. And in the distance, back of the buildings, are acres and acres of dull-gray monsters, seasoning and waiting for Pop to work on.
Pop calls them all his “monkeys.” Whether it’s a cow or a dinosaur, he calls it “one of his monkeys.” He says his whole zoo consists of animals Noah wouldn’t take into the Ark.
Actually, Pop’s animals are marvelous. No words can describe them. They have to be seen, that’s all. They slightly resemble the more fantastic of the animal cartoons, but only slightly.
As we were walking around among lovesick dragons and deformed moose, Pop said: “If you know of any cartoonists who have run out of ideas, why don’t you send them out here?” I looked at him sideways, and saw to my astonishment that he was dead serious. (I was going to suggest we send out Scripps-Howard’s Talburt, but was afraid once he got out in the herd Pop would never be able to spot him again.)
Pop’s Rancho Bonita would be a sight even if there weren’t any “animals” on it. There are many buildings, including a crazy house for his tenants, a showroom for his smaller pieces of animal art, and a barn and a chicken house.
Most of the ranch buildings are of stone, and every one is inlaid with rock pictures of everything from Uncle Sam to a cross-eyed owl. And the whole ranch is wildly colored, like a carnival.
Pop has a kind of patriotic complex, which runs to red, white and blue. The front of his barn is in three colors, and his showroom windows are alternate red, white and blue.
Pop loves to fish; loves it so much he has built a lake at the ranch. It isn’t much bigger than a barn, yet Pop has a rowboat and rows out into the middle of it and fishes.
Keeps own fishworms
He doesn’t depend on nature for fishworms, either. For this arid country dries up so hard in the summer you couldn’t find a fishworm with a witching-stick. So in the barn Pop has five washtubs full of moistened earth, and this earth is alive with fishworms.
Thousands of tourists have come to see Pop’s animal collection. But his “work” has been displayed only twice outside of the ranch here. Once was last fall in Washington during art week (and his stuff is art, despite all the fun). The other time was in Block’s store at Indianapolis.
Block’s put some of Pop’s animals in each show-window as a background, and then formed their regular window displays around them. People stared so the police had to put two extra patrolmen in that block, and finally traffic was tied up so badly the police asked Block’s to take them out of the windows. That’s what Pop says, anyway.
Pop hasn’t confined his artistic talents solely to the ranch. In town, alongside the hotel, there is a garden. In 1931 Pop built an elaborate concrete fence along the front of this garden, all inlaid with dark rock pictures. Like his animals, it can’t be described. But you can find in that fence practically everything in the Western Hemisphere or the Sears Roebuck catalog.
In the center panel of the fence there is worked out in dark rock this inscription – “Built by Pop Shaffer in 1931.”
“And do you know,” says Pop, “there are 931 rocks in the whole fence. And to use every number in the year, there are 131 rocks in that center panel. I didn’t do it on purpose either, it just turned out that way.”
I remember saying in yesterday’s column that Pop wasn’t crazy. Maybe I was a little too hasty in that remark. I’d like to see if he’s got any papers to prove he isn’t.