Broughton Quarterly - Summer 2008 - (Page 22) (clockwise from left) Natural art: inlaid abalone shells; a toilet seat picture frame reveals art beal’s eccentric reverence of old movie stars; Nitt Witt Ridge seen from the street; kitschy details pervade the house; open-air seating; even the water well served as a canvas for beal’s unique folk art; current owner Michael O’Malley. Miraculously bonded with cement, flour, and baking soda, the hillside wires, and whatever trash or treasures collector Art Beal—the eccentric, that he would be buried here and become food for the turkey vultures, and his ashes are on the premises, so I guess he’s still here.” A friendly, no-nonsense chap with a mellow voice, O’Malley leads visitors up winding staircases embedded with Busch beer cans lined up meticulously like little soldiers, through cement archways stuffed with kitschy five-and-dime ceramic squirrels. He enjoys unraveling the story of Art Beal, a crazy, moody fellow who lived in the house for over 50 years and would shake his fist when people drove buy and yet offer to take college students or nice-looking women on tours in exchange for a six-pack of beer. Wearing his signature baby blue bathrobe and who knows what else, the white-haired and white bearded Beal was also called Der Tinkerpaw, “because he tinkered with his paws,” says O’Malley. “I’ve had people come up here who tell me they met him before, and I collect more stories,” he says. Tourists say they like it because “things in this place remind them of their past, or things their grandparents used to have.” Yep. Things such as discarded beer can pull tabs or the Blue Chip stamp book in the kitchen are heirlooms of the past, O’Malley acknowledges. “My grandparents were people like Art. Today, those older people are just fading away.” Beal loved to take whatever he could and transform it into art. As legend goes, he died a bachelor in 1992 at the age of 96 in a rest home near Cambria. He had wanted to stay at Nitt Witt Ridge until 22 Broughton Quarterly Summer 2008 he died, but authorities forced him to leave the tinderbox, which was just waiting to go up in flames. According to O’Malley, the old man ran heat and electricity, but there was always a gas leak or two and exposed electrical wires throughout the house. Surprisingly, it never had a fire. To give visitors a sense of who Beal was, O’Malley sits them down in the home theater. It is actually the dining room, a cement slab floor with rows of folding chairs and two small TV/VCRs mounted on the walls. He puts on a videotape, and tourists see the feisty Beal on film. During the four-minute show, spectators learn Beal loved poetry and wrote a book of poems that is now housed at the Cambria Library. He would often wander into downtown Cambria wearing nothing but his blue bathrobe. He took a shower maybe once a year. At the same time, he was fastidious about cooking. Food in his old kitchen still remains on display, yet there is no stench from the cooking oil and jarred peaches, and the decades worth of rusted canned food has not exploded. “He was very proud of his zipper collection in the kitchen,” says O’Malley. “People really like seeing that.” On this journey through Beal’s life, there is much to see. In the makeshift patio stands a bird bath pieced with tires and car rims. Another piece of junk art is called the lighthouse, stacked with pottery saucers and a washing machine rotator at the top. According
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