- Hey, hey. - Hey, Audi!
- Hey, which one of you guys is Bob?
- I'm Bob. - Hey, I'm Mike.
Hey, nice to meet you. - Nice to meet you.
- Bob, how you doing? - Hi, Mike. Mike?
That's easy to remember. - You talked to Danielle
on the phone? - Yeah, I did.
My name is Bob Russell. We're in Eagle Point, Oregon
at the Butte Creek Mill.
It was the only water-powered flour mill
still operating west of the Mississippi River.
- When Danielle told me about this on the phone,
I just couldn't imagine it being this a project.
This is a big project. - It's a big project.
The joists up there are exactly the same
that were put up in 1872 dimensionally.
So we had them all sawed local.
- So was the whole building built in 1872?
Or were there additions... - This center section
was built in 1872. - Okay.
- They added the store on in about 1880.
The rest of it was cobbled on over the years.
So when that fire happened, it was Christmas Eve.
We shut down the mill.
And at 4:00 in the morning, Christmas morning,
I got a call, and I just live across the street,
and ran out here, and it was about 20 degrees out, and, uh...
- Wow. - It was fully engulfed.
I can see the entire mill engulfed, and it just
was from some surreal dream, and I was just seeing
all these dreams crumble just in front of my eyes.
I ran out there, and I was the first one there,
and I snapped a couple of photographs.
- The community turned out in droves
to help clean up and sift through the ashes
trying to find and save anything they could because they knew
right away and Bob knew right away too
that they were going to rebuild this structure.
Bob realized that this wasn't
just him and his wife's dream.
It was always a community's dream as well.
- The beauty of this is the Butte Creek Mill Foundation
has raised the $2.1 million, and we're going to get
that other million dollars to get this finished.
We've got the community behind us, and we're going to work
as hard as we can to get it done, and it's gonna be awesome.
- All right, hey, I might, I might have to peel
a couple of bucks off before I walk out the door.
You got me pretty excited about it.
- Okay, Mike. I want to show you around.
This Mike's gotta get back to work.
He's the supervisor around here. So, let's get it done.
I'll give you a tour around this place.
- All right, man, good work.
Thank you very much. - Thank you.
- So Dani told us when the mill burnt down
that you lost like 50% of your collection.
- Yes, I did. - Okay.
- I loved to put stuff up that was interesting.
So, I had some great country store stuff
and antique stuff all over the mill, and I had a large office
upstairs with my very favorite best stuff and...
But I have the back room of my junk store and my house
full of antiques, and I'd like to sell some of those
to help defray the cost of getting this last push done.
- Absolutely, yeah, sure. - That would be great.
- Okay. - I'll show you.
- All right. - Okay.
- Bob loves the mill so much
that he's willing to sell off some of his personal collection
to meet the Foundation's goal.
- All right, I want to show you a few things in here.
I got into this old barbershop stuff.
- Oh, yeah, you did. - Wow!
- And, you know, I found a barber pole, barber bottles.
- Bob might have lost a lot of stuff in the fire but, man,
when you walk into his house, you would never know it.
I mean, the whole place is like a museum, it's incredible.
So, how long you've been collecting this type of stuff?
- So, I started collecting barbershop stuff
when I was 11 years old. I was riding my bike
through Old Town in Portland which I always did
looking for old stuff, and they were tearing down a building.
And there's a wooden barber pole there, and so I asked the guy
tearing down the building if that was going down with it.
He said, "Yes, you can have it if you want."
Went home, got my dad. Tied it to the family
station wagon and drove home with it.
- Bob and I are a lot alike. We both started collecting
when we were kids.
- I've had that barber pole now since 1961,
and I started looking for barber mugs...
- So that one pole is the reason - That one pole...
why you started collecting
all this barber stuff. - Yeah.
- Wow! - Yeah.
- The whole thing was barbershop related.
You couldn't have staged it any better.
I mean, he's like an art director in my eyes because
if you look at the shelves with the mugs and the product
and the placement of everything in this room,
you really think you're walking into an old-time barbershop.
But, you know, a lot of collectors will pigeonhole
themselves into like one thing. - Yes.
- And obviously, you haven't done that because,
you know, there's a lot of barber stuff here.
but there's a lot of other things, um...
- A lot of different advertising.
- And you do really well at displaying it.
- I just like to see my stuff so I make room for it.
- Exactly, which I can see can be difficult sometimes.
- Yeah, yeah, it is sometimes. - Wow.
- What do you see these going for now?
- Oh, you know, they used to be 12, 1400 bucks, I think.
I think they're more down in the $700 range or...
- Yeah. - Or so, I don't know.
- And this one works? - Yeah, yeah.
In fact, I'll turn it on.
There we go. - There we go.
God bless her.
- Now I've always been told that the ones with the arms
that go like that are harder to find because they broke off.
- Sure. - You know, it just makes sense.
- She stopped, she stopped. - Oh.
- She stopped hulaing it. - Come on.
- Come on, baby. - Well, she probably
hasn't been fired up for a while.
- I haven't fired her up in a long time.
- Yeah, I mean, you're trying to just...
Hey, she's-- - Oh, she's trying.
She's trying. There we go.
- Tiki culture has been around since the '30s,
but it became really popular after World War Two
when a lot of the American GI's came back from overseas.
- She just needs to be wiggled a little bit.
- There you go. - Yeah.
- Oh, yeah. So, would you sell this one?
Would you consider selling that one?
- Sure.
- Frank, what do you think of that?
- It's sexy.
[chuckling]
- 650.
- I was kinda hoping for seven.
- The price of some of this stuff has gone up and down,
but this piece to me is timeless.
All right, let's do seven. It's going to a good cause.
- All right, thanks. - All right, thank you.
I appreciate you. Look at that, Frank.
- I like it. - Frank, get your eyes off it.
Turn away. Turn yourself. - I'm turning away.
- There's nothing to see over here.
- Nothing to see here.