It's in San Antonio, Texas, and its the only one in the world. Retired plumber Barney Smith is it's creator and curator, and he's delighted to show his 1,000 or so visitors a year the finer points of his creations. Of course, after yesterday's page 3 story in the Washington Post, that number's gonna jump plenty. From the article:
- Barney Smith does not know where his wife's gallstones are. He knows they were extracted a few years ago, and he thinks they float in a jar of murky liquid somewhere in the Smiths' home. But his wife, Velma Louise, won't say a word about their location.
'She's got them hid in the house,' Smith said. 'She knew where they'd wind up whenever I ran across them.'
The elusive gallstones, Smith explained, would have ended up affixed to a toilet seat lid titled 'Surgery,' one of hundreds of such lids the 82-year-old has adorned and hung in his corrugated metal garage - or, as Smith has christened it, his Toilet Seat Art Museum.
Since retiring as a plumber 32 years ago, Smith has produced 677 of the fanciful seats. The work has placed him at the forefront of the lonely field of toilet seat art.
He finds it relaxing, but his wife thinks he is obsessed, he said. Velma Louise Smith, who declines interviews, is not a fan of his work.
Smith feels confident he'll make it into the Guinness Book of World Records, noting that the only other renowned toilet seat artist - a California man named John Kostopoulus - died in 1996, and his family destroyed the seats soon after.
Barney better hope Velma Louise doesn't outlive him.
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