Kitch Factor Five, Captn

Rosie has been adorned. The collection is ever-growing, and not all of it is welcome. The more prevalent is the dust. Yellow from certain areas, red from others, brown from yet others: mud, several missing pieces of tire, a large dent in the roof from a rock and a growing crack in the windshield. Everything still works fine though. Rosie is a trooper. Well, she’s an element actually (groan). She can hold everything we pack, along with dogs and leave enough room to shuffle the things while we reach for the thing “at the bottom” that is inevitably the most needed at the moment.

We decided to document our travels with cheesy other pieces of kitch as well. Although it pains me to convulsions to walk through a shop of ugly “local art” – once in a while we indeed browse the most backwater places we can find. Although most of the things we see have “Made in China” stamped on the bottom (local art?), we have chosen a rare few to leave the shelf and adventure along with us as part of our new group.

Our kitch so far:





“Bell” – heavy metallic bobble ladybug, acquired from a dusty stop along the 40 from Mohave. She is adorned with small silver ring found on a picnic table outside Prescott, AZ. She makes a tinkling sound when we drive over extremely bumpy roads – letting us know that we’re in adventurous territory, or off-track!




“Green” – Ceramic turtle, also from the stop in Mohave. He likes to take it easy. Doesn’t say much. Until he was taped down, he was unusually fast for a tortoise, darting left and right along the dashboard, and once in a while jumping into our laps, kinda like a pug.



“The Brain” – Hollow ceramic iconic cow skull. Acquired when we filled the tires back up on a stop along Route 66 outside Flagstaff, AZ. Hasn’t made an impression yet, but I’m sure he/she has a lot of good ideas brewing. Mess with the brain and you get the horns.



“The Faith” – Our token piece of Christian kitch to let believers know that our car isn’t to be messed with – or Jesus will strike you down like a testosterone-fueled marine cadet. It’s also been rumored to help avoid traffic tickets in the more religious communities in Utah.