(male announcer) Production funding for Rare Visions & Roadside Revelations has been provided by: (female announcer) YRC Worldwide and public TV are natural partners.

We share the very important goal of connecting people, places, and information.

In this big world, that's a big job.

YRC Worldwide and public TV can handle it.

YRC Worldwide: honored to support the communities we serve.

(male announcer) The DeBruce Companies, proud to serve agricultural communities throughout the Midwest with high-speed grain-handling facilities, fertilizer, and feed ingredient distribution terminals.

(male announcer) And by Fred & Lou Hartwig, generous supporters of KCPT and public television, urging you to become a member today.

(man) ♪ Welcome to a show about things you can see ♪ ♪ without going far, and a lot of them are free.

♪ ♪ If you thought there was nothing ♪ ♪ in the old heartland, ♪ ♪ you ought to hit the blacktop ♪ ♪ with these fools in a van.

♪ ♪ Look out; they're driving hard, ♪ ♪ checking out art in their own backyard.

♪ ♪ Randy does the steering so he won't hurl.

♪ ♪ Mike's got the map, such a man of the world.

♪ ♪ That's Don with the camera, ♪ ♪ kind of heavy on his shoulder.

♪ ♪ And that giant ball of tape, it's a world record holder.

♪ ♪ Look out; they're driving hard, ♪ ♪ checking out art in their own backyard.

♪ ♪ Look out; they're driving hard, ♪ ♪ checking out the world in their own backyard, ♪ ♪ checking out the world in their own backyard.

♪ (Don) Dear TV Mailbag: what exactly do producers do, anyway?

Shoot some stuff.

Make some pictures.

(Don) That's what I thought.

Hi, Don the camera guy here, taking the shots as those two TV weasels call them, and this time, they're calling Clovis.

I know, let's go see a memorial to a famous TV guy.

(Don) Well, kind of famous.

Let me give you a clue.

I'll go get the doc.

He's over at the Long Branch.

Next street over.

(Don) Then again, judging by these crowded streets, perhaps Ken "Festus" Curtis is bigger than we knew.

(Randy) I'll go get the doc.

He's over at the Long Branch.

(Don) Turns out we've landed smack dab in the middle of the annual Clovis Fest, and that's okay.

We're glad for the company, especially Mike, who may have been on the road a bit too long.

(Randy) It's ice cream.

Whoo.

(Don) And sure enough, back behind the kettle corn and barbecue, we've found our man, though the badge-wearing sidekick seems kind of ignored.

He's got a sort of zone of safety around him.

He's somehow above it all.

He's got his eye on all this.

(Randy) Yo u remember Festus?

No.

No, I don't.

No.

No, no.

(Mike) Here's a little-known fact you don't know about-- (Randy) Ke n Curtis?

Ken Curtis.

He was a singer.

He sang with orchestras.

He sang with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra.

Really?

(Mike) You know, he was on the Gunsmoke series from '62 to '75.

Gunsmoke was on the air, actually, for 20 years.

(Randy) I kind of feel like I'm right there on Gunsmoke.

I can practically smell the smoke.

It smells kind of like tacos.

(Don) For such an auspicious occasion, the least we could do was de-web Festus and one more time: (Randy) I'll go get the doc.

(Don) Then wade back into the crowd, pile into the Freestar, and make the short drive to Fresno, where a close encounter of the subterranean kind awaits.

I'm not sure what that means, but it has something to do with this guy, and we're about to find out what.

(Forestiere) He was an immigrant from the island of Sicily, and he was the second-oldest brother.

His name was Baldassare.

He was my grandfather's brother.

He had come out here-- the older brother had come out here to buy land to farm, and he couldn't farm it because in the ground out here with all the rock, the famous hardpan rock that people in the valley know about, the San Joaquin Valley.

What you don't realize is that, when you're walking on the street here and you see a few old trees, a little house is that below ground out here, there's this big complex, and it's like a little maze, or it's actually a maze or a labyrinth of rooms and tunnels that were hand-carved into the earth out here in the middle of the San Joaquin Valley in the early 1900s, the whole idea being that, when it gets hot out here-- and we get into, like, 100s, 105, 110 or so-- in the afternoons, you can come down into the earthen site, and suddenly, you've dropped about 20 degrees.

(Randy) Ba ldassare a little guy or-- Not too little for his time.

He was 5'6" or 5'7".

So for his time period, 100 years ago, he would've been average height, but for you-- you know, do be careful.

You will have to duck, but it isn't--he wasn't-- it's not that short.

No, it's really not.

(Mike) Wow, he really was busy.

(Forestiere) It's between 10,000 and 11,000 square feet, and so it's like a maze.

Everything's interconnected to allow the airflow to flow during the summer.

This is an early tunnel that he planted trees along.

That's why, every so often, there are little alcoves with trees, fruit trees, and what had happened was, he was discovering, in building his home, that the hardpan wasn't many, many, many feet thick.

It was only about two or three feet thick, and so his idea, then, was to carve through the softer layers, below the harder layer of hardpan, and that harder layer above you would form a natural roof.

(Mike) Sure.

(Forestiere) It has the architectural flavor of his homeland, and that's exactly what it is.

It's a sort of recreation of his home environment, which means it's a site that's built of native stones that uses Roman arches that has point-terraced landscapes and trees and vines.

It's very much a recreation of a Mediterranean environment right here, and so there's, like, a little oasis.

(Randy) Visitors were encouraged?

Visitors were what?

Well, it starts off as a small cellar.

So it's not intended to be any sort of public or, you know, a home space.

It's really just a small retreat with little rooms, and then it keeps evolving over the years.

So for the first years, only he would use it, first year or two.

And then, in time, friends would come by and then friends and their families.

So he wasn't a hermit.

Wow, this just goes on and on and on and on and on.

(Forestiere) The term "integrated"-- it's a very integrated space, and the divisions between outside and inside, beginning and ends, aren't well-defined.

So think about the site not so much in terms of all the labor and the rock and the home, but think of it as, you're transforming the dark earthen spaces into spaces for light, because that's where you're going to live, and you realize, "Oh, my gosh.

This is very creative, what he's doing."

And he's doing it not from a sophisticated point of view of someone who has a lot of experience with architecture, engineering.

He's doing it from a very slow experience of living here and relying upon his own imagination.

And slowly, light sources are added, and tunnels and things are connected, and everything is sort of melded together, because it makes it easier for life.

I think if he had stopped, at only, let's say, three or four or five rooms, just to have a small little basement space, you'd say, "Okay, oh, very nice, very interesting," but he made it a lifelong project.

(Don) That kind of passion is what this show salutes, and, no, we've never seen anything quite like the underground gardens.

Speaking of dirt, our vehicle is wearing a thick blanket of it, prompting a quick car wash from some local cops in training, though training for what is hard to say.

Sure, I've been hosed by the authorities before, but never like this, and it feels just fine.

(man) He's going to clean up your driving record.

Oh, good.

(Randy) I'm hoping to get our records expunged.

Those bugs have been with us since Oregon.

I was getting kind of used to them.

(Don) With generous assistance from viewers like you, we pass some 2s which pass the bogus-bill test.

So cleaned and legally green, we resume the cross-country portion of this show, trading fields of fruit trees for far less fertile ground.

Wildlife, though, does abound out here-- or so we've been told-- in the form of oil field art, which does require some off-the-beaten-path investigation.

I spy something, I think.

Oh, yeah, this is one.

(Randy) It's just a pump.

(Mike) It's got a tail on it.

You can definitely see it from here.

(Randy) Someone's been decorating oil pumps.

(Mike) Exactly.

Well, now, I don't know if they really are, but I'm seeing animals everywhere.

(Mike) Look, that's a billy goat.

See the billy goat head?

There, that's the one I saw.

It's a giraffe.

(Mike) It's a giraffe.

(Randy) Well, look, there's a bunch of-- it's a whole freaking zoo.

I like that.

"Entering potential place that is gas area."

(Don) Okay, mixing toxic chemicals and folk art is new to us too, and not to worry.

I'll be fine, once we find that antidote.

(Mike) We're going to have a lot more room in the van.

(Don) But further down the road, some high-profile death and destruction did occur back in 1955.

As knowledgeable movie buffs know, this road was the very last one that James Dean drove down.

(Mike) How did this go?

I think he drove too fast in a Porsche.

That's why we don't do this show in a Porsche.

At least he never lived to see these outrageous gas prices.

[chuckles] (Don) Randy is a very good driver, and we soon made it further than Jim ever did, pausing and reflecting, as many of his fans do, at the shiny parking lot marker at the Jack Ranch Cafe.

(Mike) Three movies, only one of them released before his death, East of Eden.

Rebel Without a Cause and Giant weren't released until later.

(Randy) Actually, the question is, how would James Dean have been in Journey to the Center of the Earth?

You know, I don't know that anyone could've played that role better than Pat Boone played.

That was a classic.

I'll still watch that movie any time it comes on.

(Don) It's things like that that keep us going.

Somewhere, a cheap motel beckons.

Guess we should buckle up.

Now, as you probably know, just a few miles up the coast, a man named Hearst built quite a castle.

And here in Cambria, a man who hauled Hearst's trash created a showplace of his own, which we're about to see at the top of this hill.

(O'Malley) This is Nitt Witt Ridge, and the man's name was Art Beal, but now, in town, they gave him two nicknames.

One was Der Tinkerpaw.

Now, he said he liked that nickname, because he said he always liked to tinker with his paws.

But back in the '40s, a lot of these folks started calling him Captain Nitt Witt.

(Randy) He was born in what year?

(O'Malley) 1896 in Oakland.

He said his father was Irish, which he never knew, and his mother was a Klamath Indian.

He's a cook.

He did a lot of different things--steel worker.

But basically, he was known as the garbage man in town for about 30 years, and building this place, that's really what he is.

But you know, he came here in '28.

He said nothing was here.

He claimed he bought this property for $500.

It was a bare piece of land, and then the collecting started.

Now, you guys can still find a lot of these rocks around the beach and the creek area.

That's where he's getting them.

But then he said he collected the pipe.

He said he collected all the wood.

He said he even collected the electrical parts and wiring.

Now, you see those pillars?

Those are car rims.

(Mike) Sure, tire rims.

(O'Malley) Stacked up and concreted together, and that's what's holding the place up.

Watch your head there, Randy.

I'm going to.

(O'Malley) And he did like the abalone shells, you can see.

There's days he'd run out of abalone shells, and he started resorting to toilet seats.

These things he would actually use for picture frames, and one of his idols was Will Rogers, so he put him in there.

[chuckles] This he called "the woman's room."

You know, the room kind of explains itself.

He'd plastered it all in pink at one time, and he built his-and-her everything around here, but he was never married.

So what I'm taking you guys through right now, these are his gardens, and it was real nice.

They say he would grow corn, artichoke, squash, all throughout here.

Over the years, while he was building the place, he'd take a coffee break every 15 minutes.

He said that was a coffee cup filled with a Busch beer.

There's more beer cans on this place than abalone shells.

That's a Fresca.

Yeah, see, something must've been wrong with him that day.

He wasn't feeling-- feeling a little under the weather that day.

(O'Malley) And you know, all these handrails did carry water, up until 1997.

That was his water system.

And you look around, and he'll put drinking fountains here and there, and there's workshops everywhere, and he ran electricity to all the workshops as well as water.

But, you know, I'm amazed any of his stuff's there.

His hat is still in there.

That's all his stuff still in there.

But if you want, I'll take you guys to the top, if you'd like to go all the way.

(Randy) We wouldn't not go there.

(Mike) Ye ah, how could we pa ss that up?

Can you see that?

That is-- (O'Malley) The higher we go, the better it'll get.

(Mike) I was going to say it's only going to get better.

(O'Malley) Yeah.

But now, see this pillar?

If you look on top, that's a washing machine agitator.

He said he could get that to spin, put a lightbulb up there.

He said this was going to be a lighthouse.

This was the first stove they threw away from the castle back in the '30s.

But see, the whole place used to look more like this.

If you guys had come up in the front, I guess, 20, 30 years ago, he had a lot more rock work, and he would incorporate junk into everything.

It all disappeared and eroded from rain.

That's the biggest--well, I'll tell you the secret.

You know them stairs we were coming up on?

Those are actually a drainage system.

Wherever his stairs have failed, that's where you get the erosion problems.

The earthquakes aren't so bad.

The earthquakes I can take.

It's just every time it rains, I get nervous, with the trees and the erosion.

Watch your step.

Yeah, watch your step.

It's steep.

He didn't like Johnny-come-latelies.

He'd come out here on the balcony, and he would size people up by their looks, and if he liked you, he'd give people tours, but he said a lot of people he didn't like.

He'd start shaking his fist at them, say, "Move along, small change."

If he liked you, people said he was the funniest guy you'd ever meet.

He had a real good personality.

He wasn't a hermit in any way.

I think he was a little more outward.

I think he liked attention.

He didn't shy away from it.

(Randy) So what's the vibe like, living and being around here?

(O'Malley) It's nice.

To me, this is the history of Highway 1 from the Depression up until the '60s or '70s, which this place is rapidly changing because of the real estate, the ocean views.

They're trying to change our history here, and, just, everything's getting mowed down and rebuilt.

That's why I think something like this should be preserved.

(Don) We agree, and as proof of our own idiosyncrasy, we brought along the world's largest ball of videotape, in the flesh and on a T-shirt, which could get some tour guide use.

I like it.

I'll wear this thing with pride.

(Don) But our tour must roll on back down the coast towards Morro Bay, where a really big rock seems to be saying, "Come play catch."

Oh, that feels good.

Oh, that feels good.

That feels nice.

(Randy) When you're at the ocean, you got to talk about the catch of the day, right?

(Mike) Th at's right.

We've irritated people, now, with this from one end of America to the other.

Catch it underhanded.

Whoa.

I'm kind of out of witty things to say, though.

Well, I can't hear you, so even if you said them, I couldn't hear them.

Or nitwitty things, as the case may be.

Oh, very good.

What are these?

Are these carrots?

(Don) No, don't eat that.

You'll have to call for medical kelp.

(Don) Maybe it's the sand squishing in our toes, but we're bound and determined to make this trick work.

(Mike) Oh, yeah, this one's going to get it.

(Don) Finally, the tide has turned, and we're back on solid ground, heading south to what I'll just call SLO, a charming town with shopping and dining and a bubble gum alley beyond our wildest dreams.

(Randy) That's the gum tree of all gum trees.

Look at that.

Oh, my God.

Oh, my God.

(Randy) I told you.

(Mike) I'm not even sure I want to walk down here.

That is really disgusting.

(Randy) It's kind of artistically disgusting, though.

(Mike) Jeez, oh, Pete.

Just plain nasty.

(Randy) You did bring some, didn't you?

(Mike) I didn't bring any.

(Randy) You didn't bring any gum?

I don't have any gum.

You didn't bring the gum?

I didn't bring any gum, man.

I didn't know we were coming to this.

(Don) No, I didn't, and it's not like this place needs it anyway.

But once again, being luckier than good is about to occur, with the well-timed arrival of Christy and Dawn and, well, you'll see.

I have gum.

One, two, three.

(Don) Next thing you know, jaws are chomping, juices are flowing, and we're about to leave our meager mark on Bubble Gum Alley.

I'm using a protective barrier.

(Don) The ick-ometer is almost off the scale, but we are committed, clustering up and Juicy-Fruitin' because we can.

I've never clustered before.

(Don) we gave thanks to our good gum Samaritans, took one last look, and headed off across town to check out a lodging legend: the proudly pink Madonna Inn, named not for that pop star but for the family who founded it.

You can stay the night in a well-appointed theme room or, like us, merely head down to the men's room for a look at the crowd-pleasing plumbing there.

It was cool.

It was so awesome.

(Randy) Was it good?

It was great.

(Don) It's okay.

The water spectacular is open to all, no matter what your gender.

Oh.

(woman) That's so cool.

(Don) So we are soaking it up, washing off the gum, and calling it a colorful day.

See you later.

See you, man.

(Don) Don't leave me in the men's room.

[bell dings] Guess you'll have to take our word, but the ocean really is over there.

When it comes to visual impairment, the fog and Randy's glasses aren't all that different.

But we all can agree, something strange looms up and over this coastal road nursery.

Pretty cool for a plant place, but the boss just buys them, and the lady in charge wasn't even sure where.

So it's a short stop, and how's this for irony?

By the time we hit the home of pea soup, the fog had cleared completely.

Now, Andersen's fans-- and you know who you are-- might like us to stop, but we're going to Grandma's, Grandma Prisbey's, that is, the bottle village that might've made Simi Valley famous.

Forget the Reagan Library.

We've got a date with one of the great sites of grassroots art, though the Northridge quake did break a lot of Grandma's glass.

(Mike) They put out the red carpet square.

(Johnson) It's very short, so you'll have to do your glamour turnaround in a hurry.

(Mike) My glamour turnaround.

(Johnson) And it's typically frayed at the edges, just like Bottle Village.

(Don) Our highly hospitable host is one Joanne Johnson.

She met Grandma Pea in 1976, loved her, loved the place, and so, with precious little help from the powers that be, has thrown heart and soul into keeping the BV's dream alive.

(Johnson) She didn't start building this until she was 58 or 60 years old.

Her husband and her bought this 1/3 of acre, and they had been meandering around in that trailer.

And she was tired of it, and she said, "So I took the wheels off the trailer, "and I hid them, because I didn't want to move anymore."

(Randy) Well, I'm assuming she wasn't a cement worker coming into this.

(Johnson) No, no, she was a farm girl, and one day, she just got a notion, and I guess she really got into it, because look what she did.

We think she started building at least in the mid-'50s, and everything was really completed by 1960 or 1961.

This is the Rumpus Room.

There was the Pencil House, Cleopatra's Bedroom, the Dollhouse, the Little Hut, the Cabana, and every room was thematically decorated inside.

This is pretty much the cathedral of Bottle Village.

We like to think of is as the home base of Bottle Village or the ceremonial center.

All the windows are round, and this piece over here-- there was a little cardboard sign here that said, "This is my conversational piece."

And these are all Manishewitz wine bottles, painted on the inside.

And as an accessory, these tubes were hanging all the way down to the bottom, and they're really old-fashioned intravenous feeding tubes.

Most people think, "Oh, she made this, "and she was really wacky and eccentric "and a little off, "like the people who collect newspapers and have way too many cats."

And she wasn't.

Her trailer was immaculate and very sparse, just a few pictures, and always clean and with the pencil on-- you know, the pen-- clipped on the TV Guide.

She liked to watch Bowling for Dollars.

(Randy) Whoo, who didn't?

Here's Bottle Village in-- you have to guess what it is.

(Randy) Um, grommets, Levi grommets.

(Johnson) No.

Reverse, empty .22 shells.

(Randy) Was Grandma a shooter?

(Johnson) No , she probably collected them from whoever was taking potshots at her village.

This is her spring garden.

She said, "Well, I never have to water it.

"It's a spring garden.

It's always blooming."

You could probably guess what all these are.

(Randy) Well, they're shaped like TV tubes.

(Johnson) And they are.

Hey!

(Johnson) She so enjoyed people coming to visit, and then, as more people came and more people came, she got the script down, because Captain and Tennille were here.

(Mike) No.

And Connie Chung, and, I heard, Pat Sajak.

(Randy) So you really didn't talk art with her?

When you came over, it was-- (Johnson) No, I never did.

I never asked her why she built it, what started it.

We just used to talk about the weather, television programs, just like I would go sit in my grandma's kitchen.

She had two husbands that both died, seven children, and six of them died before she did.

So she had a lot of tragedy in her life, and you would've never known it, because she was just a great person, I thought, and I still do.

And that's why I'm doing this.

(Mike) Yeah.

Yeah.

(all) Yeah.

(Don) According to Grandma, there were 3 million bottles here, and we haven't even mentioned her dolls or pencil collection, which were sizable too.

And how about those Bottle Village elves, who seem to have set out some serious snacks?

Feels like a party, and the big ball is welcome too.

(Randy) Do you feel the power of old television shows?

I do; it's vibrating.

(Don) Who knows?

Maybe Sajak will show.

From a place that truly knows how to treat a weasel, this is Don the camera guy signing off.

(female announcer) To learn more about the sights on this show and how to find them, visit us on the web at: DVDs, tapes, and a companion book to this series are available by calling: (Mike) ♪ We'll have a ball of fun.

♪ Captioning byCaptionMax www.captionmax.com Michael Murphy, don't be doing that.

Scaredy camera man.

(man) Ew , he's touching it, ew.

Squeeze it.

(Mike) Good job.

(man) Th ere we go, al l right.

(Mike) All right, guys.

All right, see you.

(man) Public TV show?

(Don) Yep.

We're going to the places your dad wouldn't stop.

Oh, he's actually touring the United States as we speak.

(Don) Well, maybe not your dad.

(male announcer) Production funding for Rare Visions and Roadside Revelations has been provided by: (female announcer) YRC Worldwide and public TV are natural partners.

We share the very important goal of connecting people, places, and information.

In this big world, that's a big job.

YRC Worldwide and public TV can handle it.

YRC Worldwide: honored to support the communities we serve.

(male announcer) The DeBruce Companies, with facilities providing customers with market information and marketing opportunities for domestic and international grain, fertilizer, and feed ingredient businesses.

(male announcer) And by Fred & Lou Hartwig, generous supporters of KCPT and public television, urging you to become a member today.