LETTERS FROM HOME: ENCOUNTERING DISNEY AT EVERY TURN

Dear Pat,

DC and I are going to the Arcata to Ferndale Cross-Country Kinetic Sculpture Race this weekend. It was started about 25 years ago by two sculptors who wanted to see who could make the fastest work of art. From that goofy sprint down Main Street in the Victorian village of Ferndale, it has grown into a three-day ordeal in which about 100 bizarre-shaped, pedal-powered sculptures traverse 35 miles of city streets and highways, beaches, Humboldt Bay and the Eel River before finally coming to rest in Ferndale.

What with the sand in the gears, the bay in the britches and obstacles like the Disneyesque ride down a mountainous sand dune called Dead Man's Drop, few sculptures or pilots arrive there in one piece.

At the end of each day of racing, welding torches burn far into the night. Sore muscles are tended, libations imbibed, officials' interpretations of the incomprehensible set of rules that have evolved are appealed. Kind of wacky and intense at the same time.

A few people take it quite seriously -- the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena used to enter -- even though there's nothing to win. Every racer knows the stock answer when the inevitable question -- Why do you do it? -- is asked. "For the glory."

I was in the race in 1982, which people still recall as the year of the hurricane-force winds. Many of the sculptures had to be towed across the river by the sheriff's marine posse. We didn't even make it that far.

The leader of my three-man team was a fantasy artist -- ceramic gargoyle mugs and knickknacks sold at Disneyland -- who called himself the Great Razooly. Wore a black top hat and cape, hosted a midnight horror movie TV show, and prided himself on finding new ways to cheat. One of the race rules states that "Cheating is not a right, it is a privilege."

When the noon whistle sounded on the square in Arcata, the signal for the race to start, our glorified bicycle-built-for-three jerked into motion from its hiding place in an alley along the route. So, for about 11 seconds, we led the race. Of course, since this deception was duly reported by me in the newspaper, we were duly penalized. (Getting caught cheating is the only offense not allowed). I think we placed last among the other sculptures that didn't finish.

Some people don't like the race anymore. For awhile it was sponsored by Miller Brewing and the founder was reaping lots of publicity. It seemed to have become like so much else in America that was once meaningful or original and is now simply for sale. That same beer company now uses the '60s commercials.

I'm going to the race to see if perhaps it has evolved beyond that phase. Maybe it's possible.

You can't be far from the place where they want to build "Disney's America." Quite a controversy. I liked the San Francisco Chronicle editorial headlined "Mickey Mouse at Mahassas." Began:

"One score and nineteen years ago, Walt Disney brought forth on this continent a new theme park, conceived in cartoon studios and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created goofy. Now the Disney Co. is engaged in a great civil war, testing whether another theme park, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure."

I'm afraid "Disney's America" will be the sanitized version that long was the only version of American history. Now we have "The Haldeman Diaries" verifying Nixon's bigotry, his willingness to blackmail, and the blind ambition to become president that may have derailed a Vietnam War peace plan that could have saved thousands of lives. For the glory, I guess.

Will that exhibit be in "Disney's America"?

I want your little Alan to grow up with as many different versions of the truth as possible. Then he can find his own.

Love, Sam