A Site For Tired Eyes

It was Sir Richard Steele who wryly noted, "Every rich man has usually some sly way of jesting, which would make no great figure were he not a rich man." Marsh attracts publicity because he does things to amuse himself but which happen to be of special interest. He is not like the manic buffoons who do things calculatedly, without heart, to get into the Guinness Book of World Records and thus attract publicity. The Guinness Book of World Records is a scourge upon us these days.

So, droves of interviewers—everyone from Charles Kuralt of CBS to Forbes magazine—descend upon Marsh, almost all sure that he is not for real. Alas, there is a tendency today to automatically assume that people who are different must be phony, when, in fact, the inverse is more likely to be true—that people posing at the safe norm are only acting the part. And, in a sense, Marsh even outperforms the disappointing Taj Mahal and the World's Largest Phantom Soft Pool Table because he lives up to expectations.

It does not appear that he will ever wind down. Some people are natural beauties. Some are natural athletes. Marsh is a natural funmaker. He just thinks that way. A group of Japanese came to visit Amarillo not long ago. Marsh hosted a party for them, and to reinforce the Asians' stereotypes, he invited no one but Texans 6'4" or taller. In Kentucky he once saw some big bent trees; he made giant harps out of them. People who park in Marsh's parking space often find their cars chained to a lamppost, with a note telling them where Marsh can be reached. If they get in touch with him, Marsh will mail them a key to the padlock. Sometimes on dull nights he will dress up like his hero. Mr. Toad. A piano is sunk halfway out in one of his lakes. Marsh writes letters on outsized stationery stamped TOP SACRED, and he plans to read the copies of this correspondence years from now, when he is old and infirm, to prove that it all happened.

"But I haven't got the time to be as crazy as I'd like," he says, returning to the red burgundy for a while. "That's why I've never been able to find a date when I can judge the wrestling in Albuquerque. And I never did a lot of the Bicentennial stuff I wanted to, except be Uncle Sam in the July 4 parade. What I wanted to do was cut out a huge hand shape on my ranch somewhere—500 acres or something—plant wheat in it and call it the Great American Farmhand. Then nearby I'd make another huge hand, put a herd in there and call it the Great American Cowhand."

The truck designated TRUCK bounced away from where the World's Largest Phantom Soft Pool Table was sequestered, waiting for some hobo or helicopter to chance upon it and have his vision of reality forever altered. The truck headed deeper into Marsh's property toward the Amarillo Ramp. Robert Smithson, a famous earth artist, designed it in 1973. Smithson only did a few things, and when he came to stay at Toad Hall as artist-in-residence, he decided to create something in the Panhandle.

Marsh pours brandy into a paper cup and dismounts from the truck designated TRUCK. The Amarillo Ramp is down below. It is like a ramp in a parking garage, only it is made of dirt, winding 400 feet. It curves out into the middle of a lake, rising slightly, and then just stops. The Amarillo Ramp is so far out in the middle of Marsh's property that it would take an extraordinary wanderer to stumble across it and have his vision of reality forever altered. But maybe 100 people a year, art fanciers from all over the world, make pilgrimages to Toad Hall to see the Amarillo Ramp.

"Smithson looked all over the property," Marsh says. "We drove for weeks. He picked this spot. I thought it was one of the most unattractive parts of our land, but he said he didn't want to compete with nature." Smithson designed the Amarillo Ramp, and then he went up in a light plane to check out the site from the air. The plane, for no known reason, suddenly plummeted to earth, killing all three people on board. It crashed only a few hundred yards from where the Amarillo Ramp was to be, burning the protein-rich Panhandle grass all around where it hit. Smithson's wife had the Amarillo Ramp finished to his specifications.

Stanley Marsh 3 stands at the end of the Amarillo Ramp and looks over to where Smithson crashed to his death. The more background knowledge the viewer has, the eerier the sensation: the artist's creative child borne by his wife after his death; his last vantage a view of his first draft. Marsh unzips his fly and answers another of his many calls to nature, right there on the crest of the Amarillo Ramp. Then he starts walking back to the truck designated TRUCK SO he can pay a Sunday call on his yak and the scruffiest herd in the world.

"Another thing I wanted to do for the Bicentennial," he says. "Well, that wasn't our real Bicentennial. I can do these things by '89, which is the real Bicentennial. I want to make a rag-doll Statue of Liberty. Exact size of the real one: 151 feet high. Can you imagine that, driving down the road and all of a sudden you come upon a rag-doll Statue of Liberty, propped up against a hill? You'd never be sure again, would you? She wouldn't have to have long skirts, like she does in the statue. She could be casual. She could cross her legs if she felt like it. She could lounge. She could carry different things. She wouldn't have to hold the torch up all the time. We could give her some flowers to hold for a while. Children could climb up into her arms. I guess the superpatriots would get on me, but we would be giving the Statue of Liberty something new and rare: that warm feeling of a rag doll. That would just be so beeyooteeful for America."

Back at Toad Hall, his kids gave Stanley Marsh 3 his 39th birthday party, but truth to tell, it didn't seem different from any other day in his life.