ALAN GORSUCH DISCUSSES ONBE OF HIS EXHIBITS >>>

Of course, I don't actually know the whole story of Bruce, only the final chapter and some of the earlier skirmishes he'd had with worlds far away. Strange worlds such as Vietnam - he was a waist gunner aboard the Chinook choppers and carried with him all the scars that that world had to offer.

The World of UFOs

Bruce's dad worked for the government in the '40s and '50s in "Area 51" outside Roswell, N.M. and inculcated in his son all of the firsthand accounts of "inverted tea saucers" (his dad's words - later morphing, with the help from the media, into "flying saucers.")

The Art World

Although I do know he'd experienced occasional brushes with the oftentimes hard-to-reach, far-off world of art, to my knowledge Bruce was not invited in. Not in the sense that he should have been. If ever there were a guy who lived his art, created art based on his beliefs, while poking fun at those same beliefs, this would be the guy. Space guns and Buck Rogers and aliens and laser lights and 1950s flying machines come to life from old vacuum cleaners, hood ornaments, sprockets, Art Deco lamp parts, Harley handlebars, bells and whistles, timing lights and gauges, Tesla bulbs and Studebaker spinners - all become a collective array of ancient futurism.

I told him that his art is now called "steampunk," to which he blankly said: "What's that?" Being unsure myself, I intentionally didn't elaborate.

Bruce is gone now, a victim of himself, daily non-subsiding pain in his legs, bad news from the V.A., out of work as a highly respected finish carpenter, and whatever else causes a person to carefully and quietly plan his own suicide. But he left his art here, with me, at Sanford and Sons Antiques.

There's "Little Wing," a snub-nosed airplane that he spent more than years assembling, arguably the centerpiece of his art "career."

Then there are the robots: the male one, named "Peace or Death"- he never gave me the name for its female paramour, or counterpart. He also didn't tell me if they were a couple of not.

There were lots of things that Bruce neglected to tell me.

What he did tell me though, about three months ago, when he first brought into my shop what was to be the bulk of his work, was that he needed money and that he "might only have a couple of months left." He seemed to me to be in the same reasonably good health as always, and I didn't pry.

After agreeing on a price, however, I did, with a straight face, ask him to hold the check for 60 days. With a slight grin hidden mostly by a thin, drooping, gray moustache, he replied, "No."

I will miss Bruce because, among other things, we shared the same off sense of humor.

It did always hurt me to watch him walk; I could feel the pain when, in his bowlegged hobble, he would negotiate my stairs. Now in the room where we displayed his assemblages, and where we negotiated the price, whenever I walk in and look at it, I hurt even more. Even so, every time I go in, I say out loud: You BASTARD!"

One of the strangest ironies about Bruce, considering his propensity toward all things alien, Mayan, otherworldly, and far out - and by the way, did I neglect to point out that Bruce was an extremely intelligent man, not some crackpot? - was his deep affinity for 2012. He was thrilled to see 2012 bearing down on us; he could barely contain himself. He could hardly wait.

Turns out, he didn't wait. And that has left his daughter and all his friends, with me among them, wondering.

Art by Bruce

Sanford and Son Antiques
Noon to 6 p.m. Wednesday-Friday
11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday
noon to 5 p.m. Sunday
743 Broadway, Tacoma
253.272.0334

LINK: Meet Alan Gorsuc