FEELING FLUSH
King of the Commode seeking an heir to his thrones
ALAMO HEIGHTS, TEXAS FORSALE: One tiny kingdom, with many thrones. But it doesn’t come with a hereditary title. That belongs to Barney Smith — the undisputed “King of the Commode.”
“There’s a lot of me in there,” he says, sitting in front of the corrugated metal garage he’s dubbed his Toilet Seat Art Museum.
There’s a lot of, well, everything in there.
Smith has one seat decorated with a chunk of the Berlin Wall and another with a piece of insulation from the doomed Space Shuttle Challenger. There are lids festooned with flint arrowheads, Civil War Minié balls, Amtrak train keys, Pez dispensers — even $1 million in shredded greenbacks from the Federal Reserve Bank in San Antonio.
The sign out front says Smith’s art is “NOT FOR SALE.” But after five decades and countless offers, the king says everything must go.
“At 96, I come out here with a cane. I’ve gotta hold onto everything to walk,” says Smith, who is bent with arthritis. “I’m beginning to feel like that I’d rather be in an air-conditioned home in a chair, looking at a good program.” Still, walking away will be hard. “This is my life’s history here,” he says.
It started more than 50 years ago, as a way to display hunting trophies.
Smith says his father would spend hours cutting out, sanding and varnishing wooden shields to mount his antlers. The son figured a toilet seat lid would do just fine.
“Well, I’m a master plumber, retired,” he says. “I thought I ought to stick with my trade.”
Smith had promised his wife, Louise, that he’d stop at 500. That was 850 toilet seats ago.
“If I would have just read my Bible as many hours as I spent on my toilet seats, I’d be a better man,” he says with a twinkle in his eye.
Smith toiled in obscurity until an artist who’d come by caught a glimpse of his garage and told a local TV station.
The piece aired on a Friday. The following Monday, two other stations came calling. Then came the tourists. “And so I just slung the door open,” he says.
Smith officially opened it as a museum in 1992. Since then, visitors from every state and 83 foreign countries have made their way to this little municipality.
Smith uses his walking stick to point out his favourites.
Like a lavatory seat from the airplane that carried billionaire Aristotle Onassis’s body home to Greece. Or the piece of one of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s “thrones.”
Smith is currently working on a seat commemorating the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea. He suspects that will be his last.
In 2014, he lost Louise, his wife of 74 years. A few months ago, he fell and broke two ribs.
Daughter Julia Murders says they’ve had offers. A man from India, who wanted to buy the collection for his daughter, offered US$20,000 — about $15 per seat.
But Smith isn’t looking to cash in.
“I want all 1,350 to be intact in another museum somewhere,” he says. “It’s not the highest bidder. It’s not being raffled off.”
Austin writer and publisher Daedelus Hoffman wants to help preserve Smith’s legacy.
His Catawampus Press raised more than US$30,000 to produce a full-colour, cloth-bound book about Smith. King of the Commode: Barney Smith & His Toilet Seat Art Museum was released Saturday, just in time for Smith’s birthday.
Hoffman hopes the book will help Smith attract a suitable buyer.
“For me, Barney’s story is about the innate human desire to create and communicate,” Hoffman says. “He is a folk artist. And his story and his life work merits preservation.”