If this brings to mind pleasant visions of bucolic farm life, think again.

Cute and rural this ain't.

It would be easy to dismiss the riot of debris in the backyard of the midtown Memphis home that he shares with his sister Lizzie Williams as a pile of trash. Chitlin buckets and tin pie plates are scattered across the ground. Scraps of wood are piled next to the fence. Garden hoses hang like snakes from the trees.

Despite the jumble, a closer look reveals an order -- of sorts. The vegetable plots are well tended and precisely divided. Tomatoes here, collards there. And everything is in its place.

But what about all this junk?

Take a closer look. Like a Polaroid picture coming slowly into focus, Hawkins' backyard begins to come alive. Where before you saw a functional tomato stob, now appears a woman with an impaled teddy-bear for a head and twin pie plates for breasts. On a nearby pole, a No. 5 orange juice can sports eyes that have been gouged out with a screwdriver and a scrap of beige shag carpet for a tongue.

Hawkins' creatures bear a stark beauty. You can't help but marvel at his ability to capture a form with such simple lines and simpler materials. What is more remarkable is that this unique artistic vision belongs to a man who lost his sight at age five.

Lizzie explains: "Reason Hawkins got sick was they would go out and play ball all the time. So one day, Hawkins was catching. He was catching and his brother swung the bat and the bat got out of his hands and hit Hawkins across the head. He didn't stay down long. We thought he was all right. But then he started going blind kinda gradual like. But that didn't stop Hawkins from getting in all sorts of devilment."

Now, 82, Hawkins has slowed down a bit. He still tends his garden and makes his "men," but he no longer "makes up radios like he used to."

At an early age, Hawkins, with the help of his older brother Monroe, learned how to make radios out of crystal sets, spare electrical parts and cast-off refrigerators.

Again, Lizzie explains: "He did it so he could listen to the St. Louis Cardinals. Yeah baby, he loves the Cardinals. He would take an old wooden cigar box, and he'd fix him up some wire with a crystal set and get some earphones. It wouldn't talk loud, but he could hear fine. He'd put them things on and listen to the Cardinals. If they got a hit you could hear him just a holler."

The wires that Hawkins strung up to improve reception still crisscross the backyard, but he no longer can be found there fine tuning the reception with a piece of refrigerator coil. Nowadays, Hawkins is more likely to use that coil for one of his sculptures.

"I started making things when my niece told me I ought to make something to keep the birds out of my garden," Hawkins recalls." I like my scarecrows. I make 'em out of milk cans and orange juice cans and pots and pans. Skillets, I use them. Garbage can lids. I make them up. I got an electric drill out in the back. I be making eyes for them to see."

As the cars zoomed by on a recent Friday morning, I talked with Hawkins and Lizzie. The beans were reaching "Jack and the Beanstalk" heigth. Tomatoes hung red and plump on the vine. Melons hugged the ground like the belly of a pregnant sow.

"Had any trouble with crows in the garden this summer," I asked.

"Now what do you think young man?" answered Lizzie as she stooped to pick a tomato.

Hawkins' work may have scared off the birds, but a steady stream of folk art collectors and curious tourists continue to seek him out. His work has been featured in books like "Passionate Visions of the American South" and "American Primitive: Discoveries in Folk Sculpture" as well as exhibits throughout the country.