Bo Huff, the Guru of kinetic sculpture by Jerry Prater

The first time I saw Bo or rather the first time I saw his work, was mid summer of 1999. My family had just moved back to Utah. We had bought 10 acres with a small dairy farm that suffered from 20 years of neglect and the first year was spent just cleaning up.

My wife had recently been hired by Early Head Start and frequently made contacts with families in East Carbon. One Saturday she asked me to accompany her to East Carbon and Sunnyside and take a look at some of the custom cars she had told me about. To take a day off from working around the place to look at custom cars was like having the dental & health plan of the U.S.Postal service offered to you. So naturally I agreed and we enjoyed the leisurely 45 minute drive to Sunnyside.

As we approached the old gas station that now serves as Bo’s fabrication shop I could see a number of old cars parked out front. In various stages of development were a 55 Buick 2dr.HT, 51 Chev convert., a 49 Merc 4-door, 64 Lincoln, a chopped 34 Ford pickup, a chopped 49 Ford coupe and a 51 chopped top Merc. The 51 Merc was most complete and held me spellbound.

It at first, seemed longer than it should be, but I dismissed the notion thinking that all chops appear longer because they are lower. The Merc was a masterful metamorphosis of different parts from donor cars of the same period. The welded and molded in grill housing was from a 49 Chev, tail-lights from a 55 or 56 Packard, the back window from a 39 Ford coupe and the chop was so radical that the roof line seemed to blend with the trunk without any deviation. It had tunneled headlights, molded in side-body scoops (like 56 – 62 Corvettes) and molded in permanent drag pipes. In time I would discover that although I had yet to meet the man, I had met the man. His work and he was one in the same; a masterful, searching for artistic completion. He, like his work, goes from one project to the next. It proved that to know Bo, it would require openness and a willingness to look for something new.

It would be a few weeks later when I purposely took off a weekday so that I would be able to meet Bo. Not only did I get to meet Bo but also John, his master make-it man, Kendall, one of his sons who is learning the trade, DJ, or as Bo calls him "Cod Willey" ( it never has been explained clearly to me why he gave him that name or what it means), and as work pressures demand, some additional part-time workers.

As I drove up to the shop that day it was a scene of much activity. Cars were being sanded, others being stripped of parts or welded on. There were 2 Harley Davidsons parked out front and 2 turn keys, one a 60 Chevy Impala lowrider, white with scallops and pinstripping and the other a primer black 36 3-window hotrod Rock-a-billy style. I could not have chosen a better day, it was a smorgasbord for the eyes.

Not wanting to interrupt a man’s work, I looked quickly over everything but with a mission. I would end up at the 51 Merc where I would feast upon her. She was so beautiful, a vision of Marilyn Monroe filled my eyes. I would start at the front and lose myself in her beauty. Some time passed, I have no way of knowing how much, when a voice broke my meditation. "Hey man, how’s it going?" I looked up half irritated trying to remember to be polite, besides this was my plan, to meet Bo. "Just fine, how are you?" I knew I was caught between cross-purposes, I wanted to meet Bo but I wanted to be left alone with this beautiful lady. "What do you think?," Bo asked. I thought to myself, what do I think? How could I possibly tell him what I thought. She’s beautiful, not beautiful like a diamond, a painting, a sunset or so many other things that people call beautiful, but beautiful like God creating woman. Woman is the most beautiful thing that God has ever created and gifted men with vision spend their whole lives trying to measure up to His best art. The closest they have or ever will come is the custom car. Where the hotrod or muscle car is an ode to some part of man’s ego, the lines of the custom car reveal man’s search for woman’s sensuousness through his own creations.

Often I need to try and catch myself before I become an Elmer Gantry and raise my love of cars to a religion or embark upon some tent-top revival but something that is felt so deeply always reveals our passions. "Yes, yes, she is a beautiful 51 Merc." I replied." Hi, my name is Jerry"

"Hi, I’m Bo. She’s not finished but she’s beautiful even though she’s not a 51 Merc"

My first inclination was to argue the point but since it was his car I thought it better to let him explain himself. "What is it?" I asked.

"It’s a 51 Lincoln with a 51 Merc front clip grafted on," Bo answered.

I felt vindicated. Such a masterful mating helped greatly to reassure me of my ability to recognize the cars I grew up with and love so much. Bo then remarked, "Yes, there are two major differences between the 51 Merc and the 51 Lincoln. The front clip of a Merc is noticeably different in design as you view it from the front but the sidelines are the same. The second difference is much more subtle. The body of the Lincoln is 6 inches longer." My vindication was complete, my intuitive feeling for its length which I had dismissed earlier proved precise. I don’t recall all the questions I asked Bo that day or all that we talked about. I just remember realizing that I had met a man whose vision of the styling of the 40’s, 50’s and early 60’s was sharper and more complete than anyone I had met before. As I left that day, the sounds of hammering, grinding, welding and cursing all mixed together with the music of the Rock-a-Billy era, blended together like some main course meal that would be served up and savored day after day at this little shop at the foot of the Bookcliff Mountains. There was no question that the sun would rise again tomorrow or that I would be drawn back again and again to this mecca of mud.

It was a week or so before I could get free from all the work I was involved in at home. On my next trip to East Carbon, again I decided to leave early so I could spend more time looking things over. It was sunny and clear but still cool for the noonday sun had yet to make his full presence known. As usual my trip would take about 45 minutes giving me plenty of time to anticipate the hours ahead. On the way I notice 5 or 6 old cars of interest so I made notes in my tablet about make, year, location and the need to contact the owners to see if they were for sale. The time passed quickly as did the coolness, the temperature was on the rise. It was going to be another really hot day. I had taken the East Carbon turnoff almost without remembering it and was approaching the 55 mph speed sign near Hunts’ wrecking yard. Randy Hunt, also a significant and colorful figure of East Carbon was busy working out front. I thought to myself I was glad I didn’t have to work out in the hot sun like he did every day. He waved as always as I drove by. Next came the 40 mile speed sign and the 50’s style drive-up car hop just across from Bo’s museum.

I slowed down and turned right across the railroad tracks and parked in front of the museum. I tried the door but it was locked. I knocked hard a few times while looking at all the stickers in the window, still no answer. There were a number of really cool project cars parked around the building so I began to check them out. I walked all the way around the museum until I had seen all there was to see then I headed towards the cedars just east of the museum. It is in this area where Bo keeps most of his old cars and parts.

I headed out towards the chained off driveway kicking up dust and here and there causing a grasshopper to take flight. I was distracted for a moment thinking how few grasshoppers there were and how hard they would be to catch although Edith, our pet tarantula, needed some to eat. As I grabbed for the chain, I noticed how hot the sun’s rays had become. I carefully lifted the hot chain and stepped in, like an afterthought I noticed the sweat trickling down underneath my Harley ball cap. As the late July sun beat down upon me I thought "what could possibly distract me so thoroughly from Utah’s southeastern desert’s overpowering heat?" Cars, lots and lots of old cars!!!

With no effort at all I ignored what my body was saying and followed my heart, a heart whose beat quickened faster and faster as my eye caught the bullet nose of a 52 Studebaker, the fat fenders of a 47 Chevy coupe, the Godfather stance of a 55 Chrysler Imperial, and at each turn a different make and year. Now and then I would begrudgingly notice the growing torrents of sweat running down my back and chest as I was drawn from one car to another like Ulysses and the Sirens of the Iliad.

Eventually I would have to seek shelter from the Utah sun just as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid did a hundred years before. I made my way to the larger of the two outbuildings that served as storage places for all sorts of parts. As wrecking yards go, this collection could not be considered too impressive. In fact, wrecking yard is a misnomer. A hundred or so cars and countless parts does not a wrecking yard make. As the sweat began to dry in the coolness of the shade that I had found, my thinking became more clear. It didn’t matter how small or large such a collection was , it only mattered how it would be used. In my new found clarity I could feel the prick and the bitter taste of a small amount of shame, this was not a wrecking yard, this was a resurrection yard.

In Genesis 1: 1-25, it says "God organized all things and called them good". Then in verses 26 – 27, it says …"and in the beginning God created man in His own image, male and female created he them and called them good". In the Book of Henry Ford chapter 1:1, "Man created car out of necessity and called it the model T". As some men have corrupted God’s creation almost all continue to corrupt the works of Henry Ford. Of course I’m sure most would find solace in the notion that, of the two creations, Ford’s is the least sacred. There are a few of us however who hold all things sacred. For all those who corrupt there are some who keep the vision alive such as Barris, Winfield, Roth, Blackie and the infamous Bo Huff.

To most a car is a tool, a means of getting from point A to point B, a thing that allows you to preach religion, push politics, stick your Garfield to the back window, use bumper stickers to declare all those things you can’t, take out your aggressions and countless other acts that require no commitment and little if any courage. You can make love in the back seat, be born in the front, you can die under them or in them and still not catch the vision that these select few seem to have received by divine declaration. Yes, divine, for as these men know as few others do, it is their love of the car that gives them the vision needed to create their works of art. The sensuous quality of a Renoir, the abstract nature of a Picasso, the strength of a Michelangelo, or the completely indescribable power of a VanGogh, in the hands of anyone of these custom car designers, not only will you find these qualities captured in their works, something much more sets their works apart from all other artists, past and present. Their works can literally come to life with just the turn of a key. Offering power to move, to sing and even speak to us. The car; the single greatest creation from the hand of man. The custom car represents a shrine, a marriage of the creator’s heart and soul infused into a machine, a machine we call an automobile.

To some like Bo Huff this love affair is a daily experience. The car is his palette, a palette of steel, rubber, glass, fabrics, body fillers and paint. As in all works of art there are periods of time, taste and style. And just like all artists, Bo tries an idea and if it doesn’t work, he cuts it out or grinds it away and tries something else. He’s always looking for something, he’s not always clear on what it is he’s looking for, he only knows when he finds it. Throughout art history it is documented that these are the wanderings of all creative people, painters and writers alike. Why do you think they invented the eraser. With people like Bo it’s the torch and the grinder that’s his eraser.

Like the wanderings of the children of Israel who searched for deliverance for 40 years, they didn’t know where they were headed either. But then they had Moses. The truth of all of it is that Moses didn’t have a clue either, that’s why he looked for inspiration from God. All men of vision are as lost as anyone else is except for one unique quality, that is, they remember the last vision they had and therefore, if they try, it might happen again.

Speaking of vision, my thoughts were broken as I noticed a horny toad taking shelter in the shade of a small cedar bush. I slowly reached down and grabbed him. When I opened my hand he stayed very still in a flattened out posture. I looked very closely at him and marveled at his beauty. I mused over his design and purpose and once again began to feel the heat of the early afternoon Utah sun. I became aware again of the sweat that was now running down my forehead and neck. I became dizzy, I realized I’d stayed out in the sun much longer than I should have and that I couldn’t see all that I wanted to see in one afternoon. And if I didn’t get out of the direct sun soon, I wouldn’t be able to see at all. I would return in a few days.

Upon my return, this thought kept running through my head, "every day is a new day". I think every day is a new reality but it’s also been said "that as much as things change, they stay the same". Such contradictions seem to be right at home in the Utah desert. When you think of Utah you think of Mormons, cowboys, Indians and all those old John Wayne movies filmed in Moab or Goblin Valley. When you think of premier custom cars, everyone naturally thinks of southern California. When the obscure Bo Huff becomes the famous Bo Huff, such myopic perspectives will be permanently shattered like all the Corona bottles that glitter like thousands of diamonds along the desert highways.

Yet like the horny toad you have to look in the right place at the right time to find a thing of beauty. Like in the scriptures when Christ was being questioned by the Sanhedrin, "what good thing cometh from Galilee?", one might wonder what good thing cometh from East Carbon? It is the purpose of these few and feeble words to put to rest once and for all any such doubts and uncertainties from the hot rod and custom car communities, from coast to coast. This horny toad analogy becomes a highly focused and keen haiku when you first meet Bo Huff. You realize somewhat abruptly that beauty can and often is found in the most unlikely places. As you discover the many rough edges and somewhat disagreeable nature of a horny toad you no longer have to be told that God moves in mysterious ways his wonders to perform. What makes Bo’s creations of beauty so remarkable is that they rise from so many imperfections. His creations seem to find Genesis from his fertile mind and passionate commitment to his vision to the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s. Like the horny toad Bo redeems himself in the same manner, for once he gets to know you the rough edges become smooth, even though he looks formidable he is not. And like the horny toad he is kinda strange looking and even kind of threatening but when he feels safe, he flattens right out.

He is just as quick to put a freshly cooked breakfast taco that Liz has just made into your hand as he is to put in a $20 bill. His time is divided by only two loves, his children and his cars. I think that if much were changed about Bo his vision might die. To see Bo is just to see Bo. To see his work is to look into his soul.