Dude, where's my hot tub ?

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"I’m an artist. I’m on the edge," Launhart said in an interview this morning as he tried to keep his composure while workers tossed boards and wooden poles from his yard into a trailer. "But where does it become some kind of personal infringement on my pursuit of happiness?"

Quickly breaking off the conversation, Launhardt pleaded with workers to stop.

"I feel like some of those oak beams and stuff like that are part of my yard décor," he said. "I do temporary installations, I use those things, I move them around, I’ve collected them from old barns on properties my parents have sold."

Then he stopped again to complain as the workers began walking off with pieces to a dismantled hot tub behind the house.

"How am I going to be able to rebuild my hot tub when they’re taking part of it away?" he asked.

Health department officials say Launhardt had plenty of time to clean up his property. Environmental Health Manager Gerald Worley said Launhardt received four written warnings the past year to remove various things from his yard, including tires, building materials, unlicensed vehicles, trash and scattered clothes. The department also tried to contact him by phone five times, Worley said. Art or not, he said, the health department simply relies on the nuisance ordinance to determine when to clean up a property.

"If your artwork is pieces of dismantled barbecue grills, which is some of what we picked up today, no, we don’t consider that art," he said.
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COLUMBIA, Mo. - A man hunting for American Indian artifacts with his sons along a gravel bar on the Missouri River has uncovered an ancient fishhook that is making collectors envious.

"The first thing I thought is, 'I hope this isn't metal,'" said Eric Henley, who found the hook last month near McBaine. "When I picked it up, there was a pretty good jump for joy and a couple of 'whoops' and yells. It's the cream of the crop."

The hook is made of bone and covers his entire palm, making it much larger than most bone hooks.

Joe Harl, of the Archaeological Research Center of St. Louis, said the size of the hook suggests the fisherman who used it was after a larger fish.

Another artifact collector, Kenny Bassett, said the large size of the hook might indicate an earlier origin. American Indians used bigger rocks and tools in earlier periods to hunt larger game such as wooly mammoths. He said the hook could have been used to fish for pallid sturgeon or enormous catfish.

Bassett, who works with Henley, said he had to control his envy when he saw the oversized hook.

"I've been hunting" American Indian artifacts "for 30 years and never found anything so identifiably unique. I've never seen anything like it," Bassett said.

Because bone matter deteriorates rapidly, bone artifacts typically have to be buried deep enough in the ground to be preserved. And they are usually found during archaeological digs, said Bill Iseminger, assistant site manager at Cahokia Mounds State Historical Site in Illinois.

Harl said sandier soil in spots along the river might have kept the hook preserved. He said the hook could be anywhere from 300 to 12,000 years old.