Minions made of hay delight millions driving on California’s I-80. Meet man who made them

Uniquely is a Sacramento Bee series that covers the moments, landmarks and personalities that define what makes living in the Sacramento area so special.

As motorists hurtle west on Interstate 80, the landscape blurs. The Sacramento Valley’s farmlands lose their features; the oleander blooms on the median become a haze of whites and pinks. Then, snapping passersby out of their freeway-induced doldrums, a strange pair emerges by Dixon. Painted arms flung wide, eyes ringed by giant goggles, they are grinning crazily.

The I-80 hay bale Minions are a zany and unexpected delight for Northern California travelers.

More than 100,000 vehicles carry people past these cheerfully hulking figures each day, Caltrans data shows . And although the state agency does not measure how many smiles the two banana-evoking members of the “tribu” elicit, anecdotal evidence suggests the number is high.

The Sacramento Bee spoke to the man who built these family-friendly villains: Juan Ramirez, 40, a father of three and farmworker from Sinaloa, Mexico.

Ramirez has worked for the Cooley Family Farm for 18 years, he said. A trained mechanic, he spends seven or eight months annually in Dixon, often fixing machinery on the sprawling property.

But when spooky season rolls around and the Cooleys open their pumpkin patch and corn maze, Ramirez becomes a virtuoso.

He is the mastermind behind an enormous fanged spider — made mostly of a 1,000-gallon liquid storage tank, PVC pipe and paint — that menaced visitors at Cool Patch Pumpkins. He is the person who suggested building an Instagram-ready backdrop for people who wandered through the enormous corn maze.

“As a farm, we don’t hire people for artistic ability,” said Seth Cooley. “But it’s a great benefit to us.”

And so, as they were preparing to open up the pumpkin patch three or four years ago, Ramirez recalls, the Cooleys pulled up a photo of another Minions hay bale project and asked him whether he could make them, too.

Ramirez responded, “Why not?”

He has a 17-year-old and a pair of 8-year-old twins — he’s well aware of the despicable canon.

He thought to himself: I will paint the cylinders of hay in yellow, blue and black, I will make their hair and hands out of plywood, their arms out of pipe and their goggles out of old motorcycle tires. Their eyes will be the caps from a piece of corn equipment, painted blue.

He took two or three days and did it. He’s done it each year since, and now Kevin and Stuart — part of the original trio (with Bob) that rose to fame after the 2010 debut of “Despicable Me” and their eponymous hit film in 2015 — live by the freeway.

Ramirez said his work shows people “things that are in the trash” can become something more. “In this case, as Minions.”

A new life for two old bales of hay

The Minions were initially intended to amuse the Cooleys’ customers: Most of the farming operation is commercial, so the family likes to put on a show for their autumn interactions with the public. They get a kick out of watching city kids realize that pumpkins don’t just magically appear in a pile outside Trader Joe’s; they grow from the ground on vines. People plant them there. The Minions were part of what Seth Cooley called an opportunity for “families to celebrate the harvest season.”

The hay bales were so big that moving them would be a pain — easier to rip them apart where they stood. Still, Seth’s father, Matt Cooley, thought they were just too good to destroy when the pumpkin patch closed. Each year, he’s had the new crop of Minions moved to the side of I-80, at the edge of their property, for all the world that is Bay Area-bound on I-80 to see.

After facing the elements for a year, the yellow pill-shaped creatures are sagging. The painted pocket on Stuart’s blue overalls has ripped open, exposing unpainted hay. Kevin’s dry insides are spilling out on one side. New sprouts have created a layer of fuzz on top of both their heads.

If anything, the wear only serves to underscore their charm: Someone made these with their hands.

Ramirez seemed tickled when two Bee journalists traveled to Dixon to discuss the Minions. But when asked whether the Minions and his other whimsical projects were a creative outlet, he said, “In some ways, yes, because I do this outside of work. My work is mostly mechanical. There are a lot of creative things I’d like to do, but there isn’t enough time.”

How does it feel to know that his creations have brought a glimmer of joy into the hearts of hundreds of thousands of people?

“It feels good,” he said with a small shrug and a big smile.