When I made a living selling metal sculptures, I went through a dragon phase. Not sure how many dragons I sold. Three to five is my guess. I made a big one that lived on the lane for a year or so, before it was purchased by an eccentric art collecting couple over by Chicken Bridge.
My son Arlo was in middle school when the deal went down. I tore down the dragon on our lane, and reassembled it in the customer's yard. I cashed the check and called it a good day.
Until Arlo came home from school and wanted to know what happened to "his" dragon.
Dammit. Sorry about that, kid. Trying to keep the sculpture business popping.
About a decade later, Jonathan at Lee Iron and Metal hooked me up with a pile of remarkable "digging wheels" from an antique trenching machine.
They would make a perfect, "yard dragon." Four giant half circles that could rise from the earth in serpentine fashion. Yawn. When Jonathan loaded my trailer in Sanford, he suggested they would make a great dragon.
When Arlo saw them arrive at the Plant he said the same thing. I was thinking, "Planter." Kersten suggested "Merry-Go-Round." When the story of Arlo's missing dragon shot through our project, "dragon," became the odds on favorite for what I'm guessing is about four thousand pounds of rusty steel.
Tonight I decided I would assemble a metal working shop at the Plant. To make a dragon. Each piece is so huge, they can only be handled by our skid-steer, and that machine is hard to leave sitting around at Summer Shop.
So I'm going to build a "Dragon Shop" at the Plant to take a swing at transforming the pile in the yard into a piece that the cocktail-drinking public might enjoy. Stay tuned...
Glad to see you're finally righting this wrong. Though I can probably outbid Arlo for whatever you end up making. 😉
I can't wait to see it!