A sudden sculpture inspires discourse over Salinas’ self-image.

The assemblage appeared two days before Thanksgiving, tongue-in-cheekily placed on the 300 block of Main Street. It wasn’t there the first time we came home from the grocery store, but it was there the second time we drove past just an hour later, having forgotten a half-dozen items on the holiday dinner list.

“What the… ” I said, shaking my husband’s shoulder. “Go around the block. I want to get a closer look at it.”

He rolled his eyes – there would be a lot eye rolling over the holidays – but hung a left on Alisal, turned down the alley, and then on to San Juan before making another quick left onto Main Street.

Sure enough, it wasn’t a shared hallucination. It was still there – a set of screaming yellow 55-gallon drums, welded together, standing there a little bit like the monolith from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. No plaque explained what it was, no artist’s statement was nailed to a nearby tree. (For more on that, though, see story, p. 26.)

I announced, “I’m going to call it ‘Oil Drum in Four Stages of Landing,’ because I’m betting someone did it as an homage to Hat Week and that Oldenburg thing.” (“That Oldenburg thing” is the rededication of famed sculptor Claes Oldenburg’s “Hat in Three Stages of Landing” sculpture, which was refurbished at a cost of $160,000 and placed back behind Sherwood Hall, where the majority of Salinas residents and visitors will go back to never seeing it.)

Another eye roll – I apparently have that effect – and we went home.

But the oil drums stayed with me. Someone had done something in Salinas. And it didn’t involve massive public funding, it didn’t involve political infighting, it didn’t involve guns or racial or cultural animus. Someone had done something and it was pretty cool. People were drawing on it with markers and paint pens – signatures, pop-art flowers, various shapes and figures – and it was still pretty cool. It was placed on its side – apparently it was meant to be an asterisk, and not an obelisk – and it was still cool.

But I would soon discover (just as I discovered who did it and why) it’s not to everyone’s taste.

Over the next few days, as I ducked in and out of the Cherry Bean (co-owner Todd Williams assumed responsibility for the sculpture and dragged it closer to his shop) I watched people interact with it. Pre-teen kids appear to love it. They immediately run to it. They weave around it, examining the artwork, beating on the flat tops of the barrels with their open hands, treating it like a drum kit.

Adults, though, aren’t sure what to make of it.

Or they are, and it’s not kind.

Says one friend: “It’s cool because kids did it, but I think it’s hideous.”

Says another: “You have people running around saying, ‘Why can’t we have this cool thing and why can’t we do that [event]?’” He adds with a shrug, “But in a town that has an ugly stepsister complex – and Salinas has one – you have to wear makeup. This is not that. This is an outlier piece. Hate’s a big word, but I think it’s inappropriate for the location.”

And still another: “It caught my eye because I’m into modern pop art, but it really doesn’t fit in with Oldtown. I wouldn’t mind having a smaller version at my house, but if they’re looking for something to blend in with Oldtown, this isn’t it.”

But then there was this, from a Facebook friend: “In Salinas, we have our own unique vibe that is missing in the more (ahem) monied and staid places. Oldtown really does have a vibrant community of artists, the kind who take risks like this, not necessarily with the la-dee-da crowd in mind.”

Public art naturally draws public opinion. I grew up with downtown Chicago as my playground, and great works of Picasso and Miró and Calder (my favorite) to keep in my head. And now there’s the magnificent Cloud Gate, better known as “The Bean.” It’s the stuff that makes childhood memories of place.

It has me wondering: If Salinas can’t have nice things, can’t we at least have interesting ones?

MARY DUAN is the Weekly’s editor. Send her your thoughts at mary@mcweekly.com or follow her at twitter.com/maryrduan.