Hubbell Rubbell

The small grass lot along Highway 99 is packed with Jerry Hubbell's welded folk-art creatures, a whole menagerie built from farm equipment, scrap metal, and whatever else he had lying around. The cowboy, the dinosaur, the tin man, the giant insect and the pig in glasses all sharing space in this rusty universe.Jerry Hubbell was a rancher who learned welding only to repair farm implements, then he turned that skill into decades of outsider art until health issues finally forced him to stop. Many of these pieces have been freshened over the years and some even appeared new as recently as 2020.What struck me most was how familiar the impulse behind it felt. I've been to the Toilet Garden in Potsdam NY, the Apple Valley Hillbilly Garden and Toyland in Calvert City KY, and Fort Apache near Oak Island NC. Hubbell Rubble fits right into that lineage of one‑person creative universes built out of time, talent, and a welding torch.It's the sort of place where a stagecoach, a teepee, batman, and a purple dinosaur can all coexist without explanation because the point isn't coherence. It's expression. With Toot's Drive-In next door and the light dropping fast, the whole thing feels like a roadside exhale. A reminder that the best stops are often the ones unplanned, seeing art made by someone who simply could not not make them.