Lava lamp lands on Soap Lake soil

Sign structure to be stored at Port of Ephrata until site selected

SOAP LAKE — Anyone who happened to be passing through town at about 7:30 a.m. saw something a little unusual Monday.

Three trucks bearing pieces of the long-talked about lava lamp sign structure, donated to the city of Soap Lake by Target Corporation last year, wound their way through Main Street before heading to the Port of Ephrata, where the structure will be stored until funding is raised to put it together and a site is selected.

Irrigators, Inc. unloaded the equipment from the trucks.

The three trucks, and a fourth that was scheduled to unload at the Port later in the day, arrived in Moses Lake Sunday. A fifth truck will arrive later this week.

"It's sort of a fulfillment of the big idea and a way to allow it to happen, a way for Soap Lake to get the giant lava lamp that we've been talking about for two years or more," said Brent Blake, president and CEO of the Giant Lava Lamp Project, Inc. Though the lamp doesn't quite fulfill the original idea, to have a giant and fully functional lava lamp, Blake lauded the mechanical sign structure.

"The point is, it's just like having a big dream and then having a portion of that dream come true," Blake said. "There's nothing really wrong for that. You shoot for the moon, but you get a couple of stars. So you're getting something that is pretty amazing, especially considering all the factors, and maybe the money is the biggest factor."

The giant lava lamp concept would require millions of dollars to build, he said, while the mechanical sign structure satisfies an element of the original idea, and the concept that Soap Lake is a home of the giant lava lamp.

"It would be a spectacular, amazing, astounding sort of something to happen …" Blake said of the original concept. "That's great, but then the generosity of a corporation like Target says, 'Hey, we recognize your dream as rather amazing, but we've got something to help that along, and it's 50 feet instead of 65 feet … and we're going to give that to you.' That's a pretty amazing thing. To me, that allows the dream to come true, and it doesn't keep us from continuing to dream about the real (lava lamp)."

Blake said that the project requires repair work, choosing a location and building a structure to support the sign, as well as reassembly.

"That part of this dream can be realized, because all of that effort is not insurmountable, like the real lamp, which would take so much money and so much effort by so many people that it may be in the distant future," Blake said. "But we've got one."

The drive through a mostly quiet downtown was a last minute decision, and allowed Amy Elliott and Elizabeth Donius, co-producers on the in-development documentary "World's Largest," a chance to record some footage.

"Every other town we've been to has a statue that claims to be the world's largest something, and we heard about Soap Lake and that they were trying to build the world's largest lava lamp a few years ago," Donius explained. She and Elliott have been coming back to Soap Lake every year for the last two years to follow the lava lamp's progress. "Amy lives in New York, so she filmed the lamp coming down in Time Square and then we figured we'd be here for its arrival."

Elliott said that it was exciting to go from having been aware of the lamp when it was just a concept to following the truck bearing it. The documentary will not be finished for at least another year as they sort through hours footage, she and Donius said.

The Soap Lake lava lamp is the only one that's in progress.

"It'll be decided in the editing, but it's guaranteed that Soap Lake will be a big part of our documentary, definitely," Donius said. "It's the city we've visited the most, by far."

The Soap Lake community has proven to be welcoming to the documentarians, and willing to be interviewed regardless of their feelings about the project, Elliott said.

"Some have been pro- lava lamp, some are quizzical, to say the least, not sure what their feelings are about it, but everybody has been very, very nice to us," she said. "We've grown very attached to the community."

Truck drivers Louis Martin of J.F. Lomma, Inc., based in New Jersey, and Scott Littrell and Kevin Colestock of Smokey Point, based in Arlington, Wash., said they had no idea what they were carrying during the four-day, approximately 3,280 mile-long trip from New York City. They only found out upon arriving in Moses Lake Sunday.

"I wish they'd have told us," Littrell said. "I talked to people on the phone and they said something about a lava lamp, but I was like, 'What's a lava lamp?' I didn't know anything about its significance."

"It's another exciting load," Martin said. "There were no special orders or extra precautions taken for the lamp structure, he said. "(We were) just told to take care of it, as usual."

Littrell and Colestock said their trucks were carrying about 4,000 pounds each, which they said was not much. Martin said his truck was carrying about 8,000 pounds.

Several Soap Lake residents turned out to see the lamp, and watch it get unloaded into a building at the Port of Ephrata.

"There's been an awful lot of synergism that's happened with a lot of community things around Soap Lake," said Don Johnstad. "This is just an example of, if you let your mind go and network, things happen."

"We've been watching the project all along, ever since Brent came up with the idea of having a lava lamp, and it's just getting close to the reality of it," said Eileen Beckwith. She had her husband have been involved with the Soap Lake revitalization project, and view the lava lamp as a boost for putting the town on the map.

"It's just a dream come true," said Kathi Trantham. "We have believed in it all along, supported it and now we're going to get to see how cool it is to have it."

Trantham said the whole point of the lava lamp was to garner more attention to the town and its healing waters.

"The lava lamp was an example of how ridiculous we have to be to get people to pay attention to us," she said. "We don't get it, because it's such a cool place, and it has so much to offer with the healing properties of the lake, the sunshine and the eccentric, cool people."