The motel owner makes us coffee, barefoot. We leave Tulsa and snake over half-ice covered roads all morning. Stop and buy crackers, avocados, and taffy. Breakfast is the key to our success on this trip. 66 runs alongside 40 and we pass through Oklahoma junction towns all day. Driving on 66 means you get to see all the main streets. Someone ought to write a book about all the scaled-down modern architecture in little towns.

  

Near Depew, I spot a homemade UFO in someone's backyard, so we pull off the interstate and knock on the door of a man named Craig McGuire. Craig looks to be in his 40s or 50s, and is friendly, with a large blonde moustache. He welcomes us into the front room of his house, which is floor-to-ceiling covered in Garfield paraphernalia.

He gives us a backyard tour of his UFO-inspired art, a series of scenic constructions of an alien invasion. A flying saucer, made from two satellite dishes, chases a couple of dolls in a child-sized Barbie car. The saucer is covered in old CD-ROMs, with a Laserdisc mounted to a refrigerator shelf as an antenna.

There are some miscellaneous objects and giant balls strewn across the yard, which McGuire calls "mobile art pieces."

 

We especially like his use of aluminum foil. As evidenced by other self-taught sculptors, the trick to working with foil seems to be: don't hold back.