On our way to Ayr, we stopped once again at one of my favorite roadside attractions. Literally situated on the side of the road in Buffalo, North Dakota, is a spectacular display of lawn ornaments. So grand, it is the sort of thing which makes me yell, “Oh my gawd – turn the van around now!”

Just as this is no ordinary lawn but a farm, this display is no ordinary lawn kitsch (or even a less typical lawn decoration scheme) but a huge collection of even larger cement animals, each weighing hundreds of pounds. The traditional Midwestern deer stand near their wolf predators, a rooster towers at the same height as a rhino. There are elk, cows, emu, bears… a giraffe. There’s even a boulder painted to look like a panda.

And then there are the vignettes: a chimp sits on a tombstone slab surrounded by squirrels & assorted poultry, a totem pole has all sorts of critters climbing on it, folks ride in wagons, make-shift riders on the horse and the donkey, and a family fishes in a small pond with even smaller polar bears in attendance.

Each animal is lined up to face the street, and bolted to stone or cement bases to secure them. At first this seemed rather silly to me — who could walk off with such heavy things? — but it’s winter, with it’s heavy snows and bulldozing winds, who is more likely to move or damage the mish-mosh herd.

This time, after we poured out of the van and once again marveled at the awesome display, the owner of the collection drove up on his riding lawn mower. He was only too happy to talk about his large collection of concrete animals.

Bud Beilke started buying the animals in 1993 or 1994, after his wife said ‘no’ to getting animals. His first purchase was the magnificent metallic gold painted lion. The polar bear is an international purchase, from Canada and weighs over 600 pounds — which makes me think the shipping was the real ‘bear’. His last purchase was the mountain lion prowling down the rocks, which cost about $750.

This is no cheap, fly-by-night collection, but rather an expensive, drive-by-and-see-it-at-night collection (via an elaborate system of floodlights), arranged with love and care by the collector.

Bud and his wife, Alta, are selling the farm and moving to Fargo, and so all 45 animal statues are going on the auction block on July 14th. We plan on going, if only to say goodbye to the giant collection. I’m going to miss it terribly.

But before then, we must get back and see it under the stars and floodlights one night.

After all, Bud went through a lot of trouble for folks to see it like that; the least we can do is give it — and Bud — their due.

---

================

Gotta Collect? Then You Gotta Connect - Join our Collectors’ Community!

This entry was posted on Monday, June 23rd, 2008 at 5:31 am and is filed under decorating, events, interviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.