HIGHWAY BEACON — Jeff Bochart created this whimsical timber tower near his driveway at 39 Mile Haines Highway. It serves as a mailbox and Jurassic-size lamppost.
By Tom Morphet
“Pythagoras came to me in a dream” is how Jeff Bochart explains the nearly three-story roadside structure out front of his home at 39 Mile Haines Highway.
Or this: “I had a bunch of leftover four-by-eight beams I needed to do something with.”
A person speaking to Bochart may not get a straight answer on why the tower is there, and might start thinking the mystery is part of its purpose.
“Some people really like it and others get – I wouldn’t say angry – but confused because they can’t catalogue it in their minds,” said Bochart, a retired schoolteacher, in a recent interview.
Technically, the three-sided timber structure stitched together with triangular framing serves as a mailbox. Bochart built his standard mailbox into the tower’s lower corner, along with a custom-made small red flag to signal outgoing mail.
It’s also a lamppost of sorts, as a floodlight under its peak serves as a beacon marking Bochart’s driveway after dark and in foul weather.
The eye-grabbing tower does match some of Bochart’s other creations, including a Jurassic-scale pole barn nearby made with three-foot-diameter logs as uprights. Suspended from it is an art mobile featuring a forked, 1,000-pound tree limb.
But what about the “Eye of Providence,” looking out from each of the three sides of the tower’s peak?
“The eye on a dollar bill was always interesting to me,” Bochart explained. That one hovers in a triangle at the top of a pyramid representing the original 13 U.S. colonies. Sometimes used to represent God or divine providence, the symbol is found on various logos and currencies around the world.
Maybe because of the eye, people who’ve seen the tower since it went up a year ago have attached deeper meaning to it, including the Christian trinity or the three gods of Hinduism, Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva.
“I like to think it’s Larry, Curly and Moe,” Bochart said.
The tower isn’t a surprise to Bochart’s three adult children, each of whom create art.
“He’s a guy who likes to dream big, quite literally,” said daughter Hannah Rose Revenaugh-Bochart, who writes and acts in plays and is working on a film with her brother, Micah. Sister Merrick painted several of the town’s downtown murals.
“He’s got a pretty boundless imagination that he feeds with (science fiction writers) who operate on a cosmic scale,” Hannah said. “I think a lot of this structure is just his attempt at getting as close to an on-earth space station as possible. He also likes to inspire curiosity in others and I think his art definitely accomplishes that.”
Since retiring from teaching, Bochart has also been busy with more traditional structures. He built a two-story bell tower for a church in Klukwan and recently fashioned seven timber arches to serve as entrances to village gravesites.
His next project, he said, is building a deck for a neighbor.