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They like to glorify it today.  Welcome to Director's Cut.  I'm Charles Monroe-Kane.  That was a clip from "Westbound. " The documentary chronicles the life of hobo artist Adolph Vandertie, the Grand Duke of the Hobo Whittlers.  We're joined today by the film's director, Jim Rivett, and the film's producer, Shelly Young.  Thanks both for joining us today.  Thank you.  First, Jim, to you.  Who was Adolph Vandertie? Adolph Vandertie was a resident of Green Bay, a lifelong resident, who really had a passion for hobos and the culture of hobos.  He really started to collect and really obsess on the artwork that they produced, the whittling and the tramp art.  How did you find Adolph? How in the world would you know that Adolph existed? Adolph is kind of a legend in Green Bay.  I knew of him when I was a child.  My mother collected antiques, so we would go to the large antique show every year.  He would be set up, displaying all of his work.  He would talk to anybody who would listen about the artwork.  Never sold a piece, but would always talk about the artwork.  Subsequently, Jim was friends with members of the family.  And a few Christmases ago, a family member actually surprised him.  And his call out was, well, how old is your grandfather.  Well, he's 94, or 95? 94. 

 The next day, Jim was on the phone with me, Christmas day, we've got to get there.  We've got to get over there.  We've got to go meet him.  We literally went with the idea we were going to shoot a very short, 30-minute interview.  The rest is history.  I have a question.  He's called a hobo artist, and the Grand Duke of the Hobo Whittlers, which is probably the best title I can possibly imagine being bestowed on someone.  Was he a hobo? From my understanding, he had a family and he had a house.  I picture the stereotype of the hobo, and he doesn't seem to fit it.  Right, Adolph hung out in the hobo jungles when he was a kid.  That's where he first saw hobo whittling and he saw tramp art.  But what he did, was he did ride the rails for a while.  I don't think he rode extensively across the country looking for work, but he did ride the rails for a number of years.  It wasn't a long period of time.  He really just adopted their spirit.  He really took them in and could relate to their life, because he had a hard life.  Speaking of having a hard life, one of the stereotypes he does fit of a hobo is that he was a hard drinker.  Tell me a little about that, his drinking past, and how that connects into your film.  Well, it was one thing that I was really surprised about.  As an icon in Green Bay, and outside of Green Bay, really within the hobo culture and the tramp culture, he was the Grand Duke.  But we had never heard anything about his alcoholism. 

 We had been at his house for about 20 minutes, and he proceeded to tell us that he was 55 years sober, which was an astonishing fact in itself.  That's a big number.  It is a big number.  That's a long time without a drink when you are a raging alcoholic, is what I came to realize.  But what it created in him was this continual need to leave a legacy, to make a life better for his children, that did not have a great life.  It looks like he did, because the reputation that he has.  We have a clip from the film that we want to show.  This one does address the drinking.  I think it does show him being honest about his own past.  This is another clip from the film.  I think I can count on one hand the number of days work I missed because of drinking, in my whole long career.  I took a lot of pride in that.  And I blamed myself all the time.  I'd wake up in the morning and I'd be so goddamn sick an ordinary human being would've stayed in bed.  But not me.  I said, you son of a bitch, and so on.  I had good words.  You did it to yourself, now get out and get to work.  I had a good woman that protected me.  I didn't realize how much I drank.  She had a favorite stunt she'd pull on me. 

 And I never got wise to it.  See, I would stop in after work sometimes, and I'd have just a few cups.  And I'd come home to supper and then I'd think, geez, I'd like to go back to the saloon again.  Oh, so, she said, but she said, you know, you look tired.  She said, why don't you lay down on the davenport for a half hour and you'll feel better.  And the next thing I know, I wake up and the whole house is dark.  And I look at my watch, 2:00 in the morning.  The saloons are all closed.  Art probably saved me from total destruction.  That was the way I look at it.  Sooner or later, I was gonna die, if I didn't change things.  Art changed his life.  I like that.  We understand who he is now.  But what I didn't know-- I've heard about hobos.  I know a little bit about hobo life, but I've never heard of whimsy art, or hobo art, or tramp art.  What is hobo art? Hobo whimsies are where they take a solid piece of wood and they do a reductive process and remove the wood until there's a ball left in a cage.  They do a lot of ornamentation around it, but they do it with a pocket knife.  And they do it without any sandpaper.  They get this thing totally polished.  They release that ball, and that's the thrill. 

 That's what Adolph saw when he was in the hobo jungles as a child.  I think that's what hooked him.  Sure, and then there's other forms of hobo art, as well, right? Hobo whimsies are the basic one, then you get into tramp art, which is made from cigar boxes.  There's a differentiation between the two.  That makes sense, because there's a story about the cigar boxes were the first-- cigars had to come in these boxes, and you had this wood.  You couldn't reuse them.  But what happened with tramp art, it was oftentimes given as a way to reward or pay somebody back if they gave you a meal or if a woman fed you, they would make a jewelry box for them, or some sort of frame made from these cigar boxes, and notch and layer them, and create that kind of artwork.  That's how it's entered in our culture, right? That's how people would see it and know it, because maybe your grandmother has this really different shaped box.  Where'd you get that jewelry box? Oh, I fed a hobo a sandwich X amount of years ago, and it enters the vernacular.  The hobo art was really to see if they could outdo each other.  Okay, how many balls can you release inside of that cage? A lot of times, it's called ball in cage.  How long can you actually make these, how intricate, how carved, how tiny.  And made from one piece? One piece.  With only a pocket knife.  You said that when he was a child, he would hang out in the hobo jungles.  Can you describe for me what that would've been like.  That must have been a huge influence on him.  Well, we know where it was.  It was right across from the old Fort Howard Paper Mill that was called Shantytown near Allouez.  I remember as a kid a little bit of the remnants of hobos hanging out on the railroad there.  You'd see smoke coming up, they'd make a fire. 

 But he would go there with his friends and hang out.  That's where they would get exposed to the carving.  But he was also, it was really an area where transients came.  There was a hierarchy within hobo culture.  Sure.  There was a hobo, a tramp, and there was a bum.  And you would go to the hobo jungles, you would go to the camps.  It was kind of like a stopping point as they would ride the rails.  They were always close to water, so they could bathe, if they chose to bathe.  They were also near the rail lines, so they could hear the train coming from miles away, and they could prepare.  They slept there.  Yeah, they slept there.  I could imagine, as a young man, it must have been a huge influence on him, to hang out with those guys, and then see their art.  So later in life, this is what he does, falls back on.  Right, but he did start doing it when he was younger.  He tried doing the art.  Right, he tried doing it.  He loved the stories, too, and that's the beautiful thing about Adolph.  When you start to really get into the film, he's a storyteller.  That's really what he is.  He talks about how they were great storytellers. 

 Liars, but storytellers nonetheless.  We have another clip from the film I want to show.  This one is a beautiful montage that explains what hobo and tramp art is, and we get to see some of it, which I think is very exciting.  Let's roll that clip.  We're talking about somebody who has really learned on their own, apart from any other tradition, and come up with a style that's highly unique, highly individualized and created a visual vocabulary that really doesn't have things in common with other works.  Tramp art is a wonderfully unique form of folk art.  It encompasses small pieces of whittled wood, carved by untrained artists with simple tools.  It has three basic elements.  One is that it's made out of wood, primarily the wood of cigar boxes and packing crates.  Two, the wood is stacked into layers as embellishment.  And three, the outer edge of each layer is notch cut.  I believe that it began right around the time of the Civil War.  That's about as close as I can date it, because my grandfather made tramp art.  My grandmother used to get pretty mad at him.  He's be sitting out on the porch whittling when he ought to be doing his farm work.  That is so beautiful.  All right, we have some of the art here today.  We have some amazing stuff here.  I would love if you could show me some of this.  Let's start with the box.  What I think is important here to show on the box, is that this is obviously from? A cigar box. 

 That's obviously the inside of a cigar box.  Tell me about this kind of box first.  What kind of art is this? It's called tramp art.  Okay.  It is a notch and carving of thin pieces of discarded wood.  All of the notching and carving is done with a single pocket knife.  Wow.  No glue, no nails? There are some tiny nails that have to hold the pyramidal design together.  But the interesting thing, true tramp artists would go into cobbler shops and steal the tiny shoe nails, so they could affix the wood together.  That would've been a sewing box.  Of course, a cushion for the needles.  If you look at this, this is actually built, these pyramidal designs are built around the bottom of the cigar box.  That's beautiful.  Then you have, let's go to these first.  I'm going to hold this one up.  These are the whimsies.  Those are the hobo whimsies.  I'll do this so people can see it here, that there's a ball inside of it that moves.  It's all from one piece of wood.  These would just be whittled.  This is basically whittling extraordinaire. 

 I've whittled before, but I certainly haven't made this! And what Adolph would do, a lot of times, is he would hang these from mobiles.  The bedroom was just full of like 500 of these hanging from the ceiling.  So they're moving around in space.  Those are some of his more freeform things he did a little bit more in the '70s.  They're just real organic.  He would just draw them, he wouldn't have a pattern or any preconceived ideas.  You were telling me earlier that these were, or that this is garbage.  This is garbage.  Yeah, this is the stuff that was thrown out.  Oh, my! His garbage is better than any piece of art I'll ever do in my whole life.  That was going to go on the curb.  These are a few of his knives.  It was interesting.  One of the things I really liked in the film, as we open up a pocket knife here, he went through how many, he wore down? Dozens.  He wore down dozens.  You can see, he wore down knives.  That's a lot of carving.  Soft wood.  He had big tool kits just full of knives.  What is it like for you? I can imagine, I know what it was like to interview him.  That must have been powerful. 

 But what was it like the first time you walk in this man's house, and discover thousands and thousands of these pieces of art that he made in his lifetime? What was it like for you, not as filmmakers, just as people? Just walking in the house, it was so small, and to be inundated with so much art hanging from the ceiling and the walls.  It was very unique.  It was like you wouldn't think you would walk in and stumble into something like that.  It was enchanting to meet him, but also his environment.  Was it everywhere? Everywhere.  And under the beds.  Not only were there great pieces on display, but when he got to the point where he could no longer really whittle, and he considered himself a whittler, he was not a carver.  He would whittle.  He decided he wanted to collect something else, so he started collecting these tall ships, you know, kind of duplicates of tall ships.  He was showing us the house on our first trip there, and he opened up this huge old chest freezer that was no longer working.  And it probably had 40 of these tall ships stored.  You would find this artwork hanging from the ceilings with wonderful spider webs and dust.  There's a cuff link.  He made earrings.  Shelly has a pair of earrings with a little ball and cage.  This big.  So he had to use a really tiny knife.  It's interesting, he never sold these.  No.  That was like a rule for him.  He would gift a few of them to some people lucky enough. 

 If you were lucky, you got a small gift.  But he wouldn't sell.  Why do you think that is? Well, we have what he told us, and we have what we feel, as filmmakers.  I really believe that when this became his outlet, this is what he turned to when he stopped drinking.  It was the idea that I need to become obsessive with something else.  He became obsessed with the art form.  As you begin to create and you get better and better at something, and you start really seeing the art, now it's how do I preserve it, how do I carry it on, how do I leave, as we mentioned earlier, the legacy? That sets up our next clip perfectly.  I did want to talk about his legacy.  Let's roll another clip from the film and then we can talk a little bit more about his legacy.  This is another clip from "Westbound. " I think he was in awe of the carvers that had come before him.  And although he became passionate and absolutely prolific, I never once heard him say that he thought his work was nearly as good as any of his heroes.  Adolph really was the first one to dig in and say, this is important.  This is part of our cultural history.  This is a part of American life.  He's the historian of the hobo and the tramp artists.  They didn't keep their own history.  They didn't write it down.  They were living lives.  They weren't conscious of taking a role in history.  If anything, they were looked down upon by many members of society. 

 Adolph was an important part of this community.  People respected his work and came to view his work.  That gave him also a sense of importance, and rightfully so.  He never sold a piece.  He would never sell a piece.  He's interested in making sure that this art form is not forgotten, and that it can be appreciated, and represents a type of artist that maybe has never been represented before.  I think what's amazing about his legacy is that he's self-made.  Subconsciously, I'm probably aiming for that.  By insisting on this stuff be preserved in a museum, because if it falls to my kids, it's going to be scattered all over hell.  And it'll be completely meaningless.  This is something that can benefit them.  They can brag to their friends, my dad has all this stuff in a museum, you know.  They'll have something to brag about, instead of the drunk that I used to be.  See? Now I'm still an old drunk at heart, you understand, but I'm improving some.  That is honesty from a great artist.  Where is his collection today? He didn't give any of it away.  He has thousands of pieces.  What happened to it? Most of it is in the John Michael Kohler Art Center.  He did sell most of that collection.  He lived off of that money, he and his wife did, in small payments yearly.  But he also gifted a lot of it to the Ashwaubenon Museum. 

 It was almost 1500 pieces of his.  Wow.  His tramp art.  There were about 4,000 pieces.  Most of his tramp art, I think is in Ashwaubenon.  But the Kohler has everything.  They even have his hat.  I'm definitely going to go.  Next time I go in that region, I want to go check out the exhibit.  I think that would be really powerful.  One of the narrators says in this great moment that, "You carve your way out of hard times. " I thought that was such a powerful statement to say.  Do you feel that, when you look at the art, do you feel that he's carving his way out of hard times? Or is that just something that people bring to it from the outside? He literally did, but how do you look at that statement? He did.  Adolph, not only was he a recovering alcoholic, he also quit smoking.  He was a three pack a day smoker.  They lived, really, an impoverished life, and four children.  You know, he was a welder.  His wife Adeline stayed home.  So all he knew from the time he was born, and growing up with a divorced mother in 1920, which is almost unheard of, he only knew hardship.  So when he had an outlet, it became all he could focus on, beyond getting up every morning and going to work, and being the best father he could possibly could be, as the man he was, it was all about creating that art.  It was a meditative process for him. 

 I think it really got him calmed down.  It ramped him down.  It probably was almost like a tranquilizer for him.  I agree.  It got rid of the stress that he was feeling, especially if he wanted a drink or have a smoke.  I don't want to over extrapolate here, but speaking about the fact that he wasn't literally a hobo, or was only for a short time, but it seems like as he's carving, that he's remembering that and being part of that life, that he was a hobo in his mind during those times.  Am I going too far with it, or is that something you think? He's being the persona.  I think he really adopted the persona.  He was that persona while he was whittling.  And they adopted him.  What happened there? The moniker, it was really interesting, because when we met him, he kept talking about Britt, Iowa.  What is Britt, Iowa? Well, the National Hobo Convention is in Britt, Iowa.  So we started doing some research.  It's been going on for 100+ years.  He wanted to go back to Britt.  So we made it our goal that we were going to take him back to Britt.  He was 96.  You did it on camera.  It's actually very powerful.  Yes.  He was better than the rest of us, traveling. 

 He kept going.  But the weirdest thing was that we arrived, and there were women standing on the street waiting for us.  They knew he was coming.  They were crying.  They treated him like a rock star.  It was unlike anything I have ever experienced.  A folk hero.  He was really sort of a folk hero.  And it was all attached to the art, what he created, what he was leaving behind as the story of the hobo whittlers.  Let's see another clip from the film, a great film of a great man.  I think this one just kind of gives us a feel of what his art is like.  This is another clip from "Westbound. " * * I ain't got no money * But I got a friend * We've been ramblin' * * Ramblin' * All around the bend * We'll be ramblin' * * Ramblin' * Through the end * We'll be ramblin' We'll be ramblin'.  Tell me about the music.  I really liked the music in this film.  Where did it come from? That's an interesting story.  We did a lot of work with Steel Bridge.  One summer, I went up to the Steel Bridge concert in Door County, and started thinking about how we could maybe get connected to some musicians, and met Pat MacDonald through a friend who introduced me to him.  And started working on some songs around them.  But then I met Victoria Vox.  She did the title opening song. 

 And that was, she did it over her phone, did it like a half an hour.  I said, yeah, I love it.  It was just great.  And all of a sudden, these musicians all started coming forward, volunteering all of their music to the project, which was great.  That was a high from it.  Do you think they knew who he was, or they just liked the idea? Some of them met him.  Victoria came down.  Pat came over and jammed with him.  Adolph got his little harmonica out.  I can see that.  I can see Pat MacDonald meeting Adolph, and that's that.  You're going to get some free songs out of that.  We would get, it was really interesting, because people would meet him, and it was immediately, what can I do, what can I give you, how can we be a part of this? I think it was probably eight or nine musicians, all of whom have had some successes in their own right, that just wanted to continue to give.  Jill Sobule was a one-hit wonder in the '80s.  Flew out from Los Angeles, met him, sent us a song.  Wow, that's amazing.  And Pat has some of his cigar boxes, and he's making a purgatory harp from them.  He makes a guitar from these cigar boxes.  He's got six of Adolph's.  They came out of his garage.  They came out of Adolph's garage. 

 That's very cool.  If you ever see Pat play it, it's amazing.  Since the making of this film, Adolph has passed away.  Can you tell me about that? You told the end of the film.  ( laughs ) He did get to see the first 20 minutes of it, when he was in the nursing home.  He only spent a month-- That's what I wanted to know.  I wanted to know if he got to see anything.  Yes, he did.  He was only in a nursing home for a month.  He stayed in his house for the rest of the remainder of the time.  But he got very ill from cancer.  He had bladder cancer.  But he got to see some.  Unfortunately, we didn't get the whole thing completed for him to see.  He got to hear some of the songs.  Yes, he loved the music.  We have some beautiful pictures of him and some of the musicians visiting him in the nursing home, coming to see him one last time.  I think the irony of the whole film is we knew that he was ill, and we had finished all of the interviews.  We interviewed 33 hours with Adolph.  We wanted to pick up some final shots.  We were in his home, which was very close to our office, very close to the nursing home. 

 We were going to leave the home and go visit him in the nursing home and got the call.  So we got to sit with him until the end.  It was great.  Wow, powerful.  You know, we're talking about legacies, and obviously, his art is a legacy.  Your film is a legacy.  But what about the art form itself as a legacy? Does it continue, or is it done? Is it a dying art? There are artists who are doing it, carvers, but you don't see a lot of it.  You still run into a few pieces in antique shops.  But you don't see somebody reinventing and saying, I'm doing this over.  If they are, it's not real visible.  And not only is it not visible, but what is very interesting, is there are levels of these artists.  You look at Adolph's work and it's very fine.  Yeah.  It's very elegant.  And some of the work that you see, they were truly untrained artists, but they were expressing themselves nonetheless.  Thank you very much.  It was kind of an honor to watch the film.  I think the idea of making a documentary about one man and his life, I really appreciate it.  That's great, thank you for having us.  Thank you very much for watching Director's Cut.  For more information on "Westbound," please go to: www. 

wpt. org and click on Director's Cut.  While you're there, send us an email, because we love hearing from you.  I'm your host, Charles Monroe-Kane.  And for everyone here at Director's Cut, thanks very much.  Check the gate.  I'm not a religious man.  I have my own religion.  That sun up there, and the earth, that's what I worship.  And I don't give a damn who knows it.  And I've got proof that it's there, too.  Funding for Director's Cut is provided by the University of Wisconsin System eCampus, providing access to online degree programs and certificates offered throughout the 26 campuses of the UW System.  Information is at: eCampus. Wisconsin. edu