To most local residents, “Hubbell’s Rubble” is just a pile of scrap metal, creatively fashioned into Jerry Hubbell’s idea of artwork.

Some may even call Hubbell a sculptor when they see him welding on an old bicycle or piece of farm equipment and squnting one eye to make sure it turns into something recognizable.

Regardless, the vacant lot loaded with Hubbell’s Rubble gains lots of attention for the community which boasts it as a tourist attraction on the town website.

But last week, Hubbell raised some eyebrows when his handmade collection of metal artwork gained the attention of the Wall Street Journal. A front page article featured several Kansas roadside sculptors, each one no doubt smiling at the honor.

As Wall Street Journal writer Stephanie Simon wrote: “For the most part, the sculptors of the Kansas roadside want nothing to do with museums or curators—or even sales. They’re not producing work for recognition or for money. Many laugh at the very idea that they’re artists. This is just something they do.”

Hubbell said he got the idea for his welded creations when one of his grandsons developed an interest in dinosaurs, so his grandpa decided to build one. It was a spooky-looking action character sitting on top of a motorcycle that Hubbell had found abandoned in a ditch.

And from there it is history. Hubbell would take some spare minutes each day after he fed his cattle to grab a torch and release his creative impulses. But, due to some health problems, Hubbell has retired his welding torch while maintaining Hubbell’s Rubble as a local conversation piece.

“It was my coffee hour,” he said, referring to those gaps in time between farm and ranch duties. “I started doing this thirty years ago and just never figured a way to stop it.”

Before long, Hubbell had quite a collection of brightly painted critters that he neatly arranged on a vacant lot along the highway.

He told the Wall Street Journal, “It’s just something that happens. I can’t explain it.”

One of Hubbell’s pieces is Snoopy who sleeps away each day atop a red dog house. There’s an old Model-A Ford body that he fashioned into a horse-drawn carriage — all of it metal, of course. There’s a Tin Man from “The Wizard of Oz” and at least a dozen other pieces of prairie sculpture.

Hubbell even pays to have the grass mowed and trimmed around his artwork.

The Wall Street Journal article also pointed to other roadside artists in Kansas. One of them, Frank Jensen, was an English teacher before his retirement. He now resides near Augusta where he, too, has turned into a metal sculptor of sorts. Jensen’s roadside gallery is best known for a large bison that greets passers-by when they drive along U.S. Highway 400.

Another one is at Lincoln Center, Kan., and another at Lucas.

Actually, Kansas roadside sculptors claimed top billing when PBS Television carried a recent series, “Rare Visions and Roadside Revelations.”  Of the 46 states visited by the TV crew, Wisconsin and Kansas revealed the most such torch-yielding artists.

Hubbell admits that farmers and ranchers tend to collect all kinds of interesting “junque” that offers a temptation to mold them into something fun.

Hubbell has stayed clean with his creative offerings, mostly just something to cause people to point and maybe stop in the town longer than they had planned.

Hubbell and his wife, Martina, a former magistrate judge in Elk County, reside on a farm/ranch located west of Howard where they run a cow/calf operation.