Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, May 18, 1990 TAG: 9005180216
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ed shamy
DATELINE: THAXTON LENGTH: Medium
Johnson's hands crafted - if we may apply that term here - the world's largest little apple.
The apple is the mascot of Johnson's Thaxton Market on U.S. 460, a shade west of Bedford. To avoid a trademark tussle with the Big Apple grocery chain, Johnson created the little apple. Little apples, though, don't draw much attention. So Johnson made the world's biggest little apple for the roof of his market.
Go figure.
This illogic dates to the 1950s. It is a telling glimpse into Danny Johnson's mind.
He runs an apple orchard a few miles north of Thaxton Market. In his free time, he sculpts gigantic apples, badly, of chicken wire, lumber, fiberglass, canvas and any other media he can grab. Johnson has made four of the fruit-beasts, maybe five. The weather rots them and he builds another. History works that way.
Johnson's studio is a packing shed at the orchard. Or a barn.
New, Johnson's collected works resemble abused kohlrabi or discarded turnips following failed genetic experiments.
Ravaged by time, the Johnson messes are reminiscent of strawberries that did not look both ways before crossing.
Johnson gets very metaphysical about it all. It takes little to launch him into a treatise on illusion - the illusion of apples he creates with his sculpture - but take my word for it, his defense is a pile of bulltwinkies.
Luckily for civilization, though, Johnson relented. He hired Mark Cline of Rockbridge Baths to build the newest apple. Cline's humility prevents him from calling himself an artist, but he is talented at creating wax and fiberglass sculptures that actually look like what he wants them to.
He earns a living creating monsters, gargoyles and dinosaurs for theme parks and haunted houses, so an apple is an awfully tame assignment.
Cline, who grew up in Waynesboro, remembers driving past the world's biggest little apple as a boy, and it is a thrill now to be able to fashion a new one. The apple is Western Virginia's Mount Rushmore, its Statue of Liberty. For a man not yet 30 years old to be handed the responsibility of designing and erecting a replacement is not an opportunity to be taken lightly.
Cline built a beauty, in 1988. It even looks like an apple. While Thaxton Market was renovated, the Cline apple languished in back of the store. A few months ago, vandals cut its moorings and rolled the 12-foot-high fruit around a bit.
Cline was back Wednesday, patching fiberglass and repainting the world's biggest little apple.
The hoisting of the apple back to its proper position is imminent. As Cline toiled through a passing rain shower, passers-by slowed their cars and shouted offers of encouragement to Danny Johnson. Not one mentioned his sculpting skills.
They love their apple in Thaxton, as they should. They're going to love it even more, now that Johnson has divested himself of the artistic process.
No one, anywhere on the planet, has built a finer biggest little apple than Mark Cline. Not even Danny Johnson.
by CNB