Bud Hurlbut's Puddin - The Calico Mine Train and Much More

so our story begins actually in watertown south dakota yes sir bud was born june 13th 1918 he was the only child of ray and emma hurlbutt yep eventually the family moved to whittier california and ray hurlbutt managed a successful oil tool company So, mostly like machining drill bits.

Now, this sort of background is really, really important to what's about to happen.

Yeah, because one of the things that makes Bud Hurlbut different from a lot of theme park and attraction designers is that he was trained to machine his own parts.

Right.

Yeah.

He could actually make things from the ground up.

And this came into play a lot.

Mm-hmm.

So, yeah, Bud started off, yeah, working with – he worked at a printing company.

He was very much an industrial guy.

Mm-hmm.

And here's the interesting thing about industrial people.

A lot of people – and I'm very guilty of this as an artist and as an illustrator, as a performer.

Sometimes you look at people who are engineers and machinists and you go – You know, they're all about numbers, and they're all about the exact measurements of things, and geometry, and trigonometry, and they're not very creative people.

Oh, no.

Over time, my opinion has changed dramatically over this, where we know darn well, like, people like Bob Gurr.

Yeah.

And even my own dad, who was a supervisor of construction, when he retired, he started doing sculptures and puppetry and all this, and he never did that before.

But he's actually very creative and very, very industrious in his – but he just does stuff with more precision.

And unfortunately, that also leads to perfectionism.

So there you go.

Well, I mean, you know, math is a creative enterprise.

It can be.

Yeah, it can be.

Absolutely, absolutely.