A Boomtown Named Frisco

By Torben Bernhard and Travis Low

In 1875, the Horn Silver Mine was discovered in the red rock cliffs of southwestern Utah and the town of Frisco was born. Within ten years, over sixty million dollars worth of gold, silver and other precious metals were exported from its rich mines. Rumors quickly spread about the new boomtown’s six thousand inhabitants, its numerous saloons and its grizzly murders. Frisco gained a reputation for being one of the wildest towns in the Wild West. When the town’s main silver mine collapsed at the turn of the century, the tremors were so intense that, according to legend, it shook the structures in the town so intensely that windows shattered. In 1929, the population of Frisco dipped below one hundred. As suddenly as it shot up, the boomtown became a ghost town. Abandoned homes and shops, rusted mining equipment and a small graveyard were left behind as the only evidence of its existence.

Five years ago we were driving on I-80 towards Seattle, Washington, listening to a radio spot by Scott Carrier on This American Life. He vividly described the Western landscape. The ambient noise surrounding his voice felt mysterious. Looking out the car windows at the barren Idaho environment, we began to perceive a beauty previously unseen. The vastness of the land urged us to explore its possibilities. The western landscape, Idaho and Wyoming in particular, always felt boring and uninspiring. Suddenly, we found ourselves subject to the beauty of perceived freedom – the beckoning of open spaces. A sublime space which allowed for infinite possibilities and adventures, but also threatened to expose and erase you. That’s when we began to fall in love with the West. The seemingly limitless unexplored narratives available in the desert were laid out before us — past, present and future.

It was this moment that ultimately led us to Frisco. We initially went there to begin exploring ghost towns in the Great Basin. The first time we visited the old mining town, we passed by it on the road and later realized that we needed to circle back to it. This is significant because it is the main idea that compelled us to make the film as a part of this series in the first place. The idea that you could easily pass by a former boomtown, replete with life and memory, without even knowing it, was fascinating and disturbing. The place must be full of stories and mysteries, right? What was left behind to hint at them and to help us piece the narratives back together? How could we relay the feeling and appearance of desolation, but lead to the recognition of a significant loss? We ended up camping in Frisco that night and sleeping on old rusted sheets of metal underneath our sleeping bags.

After our initial ideas and questions had settled into our minds, we began researching Frisco in search of materials to help us build a perspective and scope through which to tell the story. After digging through everything that we could find, we tentatively settled on the idea to start interviewing some people. Maybe we could use their interviews in the film, or maybe they would help us with further research. The first person we contacted said that he could tell us some things about Frisco, but that it really wasn’t worth interviewing him. He said that he had a tape that we needed to listen to, and he was certain we’d rather have that. 

When he insisted on showing us the tape, we discovered the voices of the last generation of people that lived in Frisco. Recorded at some point in the Sixties, there were townsfolk, miners, outlaws and lawmen all telling their stories on this serendipitous tape. They were all in their later ages at the time of the recording, and they are all long gone now. They recalled their earliest memories, giving voice to the disappeared town of Frisco. We got to know the story of Sy Perkins, who “drifted in with a circus,” ran makeshift whiskey distilleries illegally, and may have killed his own wife. We heard about Sheriff Pearson, who’s “quick-triggered fingers” laid down the law “with the simple philosophy: the dead man gives no trouble.” We heard a sharp-witted old woman telling us about her coming of age in a bustling boomtown. The power of their voices began shaping the stories that we were to relay…and we quickly began capturing all the sounds and images left for us in Frisco to accompany them.

A Cowboy in Thailand

By Marissa Bernhard

As we began filming Thailand Cowboy we made friends with several cowboys and attended all their bluegrass gigs and cowboy gatherings.  At first, everything seemed as expected.  Yes, cowboys are sitting on barrels of hay and drinking beer with their buddies.  Yes, bluegrass bands are playing on a stage.  Yes, there is plenty of barbecue.  But, we didn’t expect the cowboy variety show (complete with lasso tournaments and fire dancing), the fire-roasted dog turning on a spit, or the groups of Indians, pirates, Rastafarians, magicians, Harley Davidson bikers, or cowboy-transvestites.  This is an accepting place for unique individuals within traditional Thai culture.  But, as one cowgirl explained over a loud speaker, even though they all looked different, they were all “cowboys at heart.”  

I grew up in Bangkok, Thailand in a mixed-culture home.  My American father loves Chinese folk-ballads and speaks fluently in three Asian languages.  My Thai mother drives a truck and loves American bluegrass.  I loved growing up this way, but I often feel lost between languages, cultures and continents.  I think this is why Chet’s story resonates with me.  

After one cowboy gathering, I was invited to travel north to the “Wyoming of Thailand,” the hilly area outside Khao Yai rain forest.  We pulled up to a small horse ranch and were met by Chet, a tall, dark and confident horseman.  He showed us his horses and shared insights on what it meant to be a cowboy from within.  Chet is what he calls a “365-day cowboy.”  He’s a straight-talking, hard-working horse trainer.  Chet says he was born in the wrong country.  He’s a classic American, rugged individualist and he stands out like a sore thumb.  He loves John Wayne movies and bluegrass music.  He eats eggs and sausage for breakfast.  He always wears cowboy clothing.  However, from his ranch, “OK Corral,” you can sometimes hear monks chanting.  He rides his horse in the taro fields surrounded by tropical trees.  He explains to you how his Buddhist beliefs are conducive to living peacefully with the animals.  He begins a sentence in English and ends it in Thai. Thailand Cowboy explores how Chet navigates his traditional Thai roots with his desire for the individualism of the American dream.

Trash Collector

By Torben Bernhard

Once in a while, you find someone who is lost and they change you. This happened to me when, after following an artistic whim, I got off at a hectic bus terminal in Nakhorn Ratchasima, Thailand and asked a motorcycle taxi to help me locate someone who collects trash for a living. I wanted to follow them for a while and get a sense of what their life was like. 

I jumped on the back of the motorcycle taxi and we drove through town, trying to spot the familiar site of a person with a cart. We didn’t quite know where we were going and I had absolutely no idea where to direct the driver. Finally, a bit defeated, we stopped in front of a market to make a plan and get some direction. As we were sitting in a huddle discussing where to go, a man stopped by on a motorcycle and cart and, after a brief conversation, invited me to hop on. 

I’m still trying to understand the world Chaan introduced me to. He and his family live in a slum along the train tracks that snake through northeast Thailand, with no running water, no address, and no official representation or assistance. Living off the grid, he supports his children and adopted family, seven in total, by collecting recyclables from public trash bins each day. His children attend school for free at the local Buddhist temple and help their dad sort trash when they return home. Even though the slum is near a large city center, the slum and the people in it, are invisible to the broader community.  

Despite his hardships, Chaan is still optimistic and dedicated. He told me that he believes that he could find a lump of gold in a trash bin. He dreams of a day where he will own a truck so that he can collect trash from greater distances, or maybe even own a shop. He is wise and insightful and is able to break through the inevitable judgments he faces each day with remarkable resilience. Shot from his side cart, I hope this film reflects what I found in Chaan — I hope it reveals his quiet courage and wisdom.

The Story Behind “The Gospel According to Ralphael”

By Travis Low

Like all of the films in this series, this one has been brewing on the back-burner for a few years. A number of years ago, a friend of mine told me of a strange man that called himself “Ralphael” who was creating heaven, earth, and hell in a warehouse on state street in Salt Lake City. I thought…“this isn’t even possible…that’s about a mile from where I live and I haven’t seen anything like that before.” I was timid, and I’ll admit, a bit scared, when I went there, knocked on the big wooden front doors to the unassuming warehouse, and Ralphael greeted me and proceeded to take me down in the basement that he had burrowed down into. He took me through “the mouth of Sheoul,” into “the watery depths of Hell,” and on into a concrete spirit prison. Was this man insane?!

No. He was a kind and gentle craftsman, a good natured and nice man with an inquisitiveness and genius that is hard to come by these days. He was friendly, and I warmed up to him rather quickly. He went on to tell me all about his personal thoughts regarding long forgotten versions of Biblical theology, the mother goddess Lady Wisdom, and he brought me through the Garden of Eden which he had elaborately constructed. He took me up into heaven, replete with stringed instruments and paintings of him with his family on a naturally lit ceiling! He had even written his own “Theory of Creation!” A thousand years ago he’d be a monk or a hermit studying illuminated texts, or a commissioned sculptor and builder of temples. That first visit stuck with me over the seasons and I often went back to it in my memory. I returned again periodically and came to the understanding that I had to make this film. In modern day Salt Lake City, the warehouse is pretty well ignored and Ralphael is an outsider — a novelty to some and “a quack” to others. To me, he is an absolute local treasure. Every day he can be found in that warehouse on state street, in his temple, doing his work, building with used tools and materials (“I like used stuff…it fits my budget!” he says). I have to try to preserve this place in the only way I know. What will become of this place in fifty years? My desire is to prevent this place from being erased by time and to preserve a small portion of this remarkable person — to take careful note of his stories and constructions which have made a profound impression on me. If the film can share just an inkling of that impression, I will be proud.

New ‘FILMS’ page

Please explore our new FILMS page, where you can learn about the upcoming films of OHO Media’s ‘Lost and Found Series’ and stream ‘Tarkio Balloon,’ the first installment of the series. Check back regularly, more updates to the site are forthcoming, including the streaming online releases of more films!

The Story Behind ‘Tarkio Balloon’

by Torben Bernhard

A few days before going to Cinequest International Film Festival for my first documentary ‘The Sonosopher: Alex Caldiero in Life…in Sound,’ I was sitting at a local café, resting from a long flight from Bangkok, when I suddenly felt the intense urge to get in my car and drive to Tarkio, Missouri, where my little brother Dane Morgan Bernhard is buried and died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome in 1985. My body pulled me towards the door, while my mind scrambled to assemble the logistics involved. With ‘The Sonosopher’ world premiere approaching, I reluctantly put the idea to rest.

The next day, Travis, the co-director of ‘The Sonosopher,’ and I had a wonderful conversation while driving down I-80 West through Nevada en route to San Jose, California. We were discussing travel writing, hobos, and Werner Herzog’s trek, on foot, from Munich to Paris to save his close friend and film historian, Lotte Eisner. As we talked, the previously vague impression began to take form. I was supposed to go to Tarkio and make a short documentary, five minutes maximum. I was to use an audio recording I did with my mom for the sound underlying the images. I could hear her voice – the clip from the candid, five hour conversation I recorded with her a year earlier for oral history. I was to shoot the film on super 8mm. 

When the conversation lulled into a brief pause, I shared my experience from the previous day with everyone in the car. I told them I knew I had to go. As soon as I finished my sentence, Travis told me that I had to do it. Marissa, my wife and co-producer, in the back seat, hearing this for the first time, also responded. I asked her if it was reasonable. She responded “no, it’s definitely not reasonable, but we have to do it.” We agreed to make it my birthday present. 

Throughout Cinequest, I escaped the pressure of the festival by fantasizing about the upcoming trip. One day, while everyone else napped, I sat awake, ideas pouring. It would be called “Tarkio Balloon.” I would spend a lot of time shooting in the cemetery. I would shoot a balloon floating in the air, juxtaposed with the audio of my mom telling me that, as a kid, I would try to make her feel happy, after the loss of Dane, by telling her that I would get a balloon and go get him for her. While at Cinequest, we ordered fifteen rolls of 8mm film.

When we got back from the festival we went to visit my parents, who now live in Wyoming. While everyone was gone one day, I scanned Dane’s entire, small, but lovingly constructed, photo album. When the day came, we left their house, telling them that we were headed home to Utah, and instead drove from Wyoming to Missouri. Months later I presented the film to my parents as a surprise gift.

The following is an excerpt from my journal, while in Tarkio: 

There is something significant about driving down the hilly roads my parents drove down at my same age. Here I am, 27, still a child. My mother, at 27, was driving unexpectedly to the sudden death of her fourth child. 

I contemplated their hopes. I thought about my own. I intuited the darkness that lies beyond bends or in the lowland obscured by hills.

It felt like stepping into a myth. My mind sought to contrive the experience. It wanted me to make “sense” of the experience, structure it like an aimless road trip movie, where I leave my journey, resurrected by exhaled breath making ashes dance again in scattered procession. I knew that worshipping the moment meant having reverence for the ephemeral — letting it slip away was the only way to be with it. 

We drove the final hill and entered Tarkio, Missouri. The sign, still in tact since we left it over twenty years ago, felt inviting. The cemetery stood a few yards before the sign, the brick wall forming its entry aged and decaying. The cemetery that I had once visited in a nine year old’s dream, surprised me now. In my blurry memory, the cemetery was tiny and unkempt. This time, with the light of concrete experience extending its borders, the cemetery was large and labyrinthian. We got out of the car, camera in hand, determined to find Dane’s grave as the sun slowly set.

Marissa, with meticulous precision, swept through the cemetery, row by row, looking for the marker. I, fighting my mind and the compulsion to contrive the whole experience, argued with myself, walking erratically through the rows, hoping for a chance encounter. As the minutes dragged on, and the grave lay hidden, it all began to feel like a dream. Maybe none of it happened. It was a nightmare, illusory, but haunting, in the recesses of my family’s collective identity. That day in September, my sister Heidi slowly walked up the stairs, dutiful as ever, to retrieve a healthy, cooing, infant. The tale of Dane simply served as a boogyman story — a folktale told to instill gratitude and compassion in young parents. My mother never performed CPR on her two month year old son. Mom never ran out of the apartment into the snow, feet numb, child in arms, to alert the volunteer ambulance drivers in town to bring Dane to the nearest hospital. 

After forty minutes, we decided to split up and systematically look for the headstone. Using the picture of two devastated individuals and a naive two year old as a guide, I looked especially close around trees and combed two rows at a time. Fifteen minutes into our new approach, I found it. 

It was strange to see my last name on a grave. I was looking at my own marker. The headstone was humble, bought with scraped-together funds. Dane was surrounded by strangers, a war veteran and other miscellaneous people, randomly placed anomalies in an otherwise small town gathering of family members who lived and died together. The grave should have been bigger. The miniature stature of it, hidden in the shadow of the large space left in our family as a result of it, seemed incongruent. Something that takes up so much mental and emotional real estate should tower physically. I can picture Tarkio, eclipsed by a grave the size of our loss. 

I placed my index finger on the camera trigger and made attempts to catch the essence of a moment from the inside out. 

We left the cemetery and drove through town. Main Street was full of abandoned buildings and century-old architecture. The city mourned with Dane. This is not an odd relationship in Tarkio. The dead seem to mingle seamlessly with the living. The dying buildings are filled with kind people, knowingly caring for their sick economy. The college died in the early nineties, ashamed and bankrupt. The famous “Mule Barn Theatre” my father ran during his stint at the college, burned down in the early nineties. Tarkio is replete with buildings that collectively tell a story of loss. 

After a long day, we settled down in the Big T Motel and tried to sleep in preparation for the next day. I awoke, sometime in the middle of the night, to a vivid 8 mm shot of the dramatic hills leading into Tarkio. The image was hypnotizing. I knew this was how the short film was to begin. 

The next morning was bitter, Missouri cold. We set out to complete the actual documentation of the film, in heavy winter coats. We covered the small town for hours, shooting thirteen rolls of film, our faces stinging with the gusts of sharp wind. We purchased two red roses and put them on Dane’s grave. His grave looked beautiful for the first time in many years. Around three PM, as snow began to fall, we drove away from the city, this time the hills an exit. Images of Tarkio slipped in and out of my rear view mirror. 

The trip has changed me in a way I still do not quite understand. I was altered by the pilgrimage. It is inside me. The actual moments may have evaporated, only evidenced by crude film, but they accrued in my body like an organism. I imagine I will carry this new being with me for the rest of my life. There is so much I have left out. My only desire is that I have somehow left bread crumbs for a future self to find his way back to Tarkio. 

The Lost and Found Series

Every film in ‘The Lost and Found Series’ has a similar tale. Each story spoke to us, in one way or another, and we tried to listen. I hope that you will continue this journey with us, as we explore the theme of losing and finding through five remarkably diverse subjects. Our plan is to release three of the films (including ‘Tarkio Balloon’) online for free and include the last two in a DVD set with essays and meditations on each documentary. ‘Tarkio Balloon’ recently premiered at the 8th Annual Big Sky Documentary Film Festival. I encourage all of you to contact me and let me know ways that you are finding what has been lost in your own lives. Here’s to your personal quests.