Art Beal, Captain Nitwit, Der Tinkerpaw builder-designer of Nitwit Ridge in Cambria. Published in Focus 2-12-1977 photo by Wayne Nicholls. ©The Tribune
Captain Nitwit’s Cambria house was a dump, according to its crinkly, cranky, owner-designer-builder Art Beal. He began sculpting the rock of Nitwit Ridge, with dynamite, in 1928. Nitwit’s budget wasn’t as large as the newspaper baron building up the coast, but he made up for it with his physical strength and feisty demeanor.
Both castles would achieve historic status.
Art Beal was thought to have been born in the Bay area and lived in Oakland. His mother was a full-blooded Kalamath Indian who died in the Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 when Beal was 10 years old. His father was a traveling man he never knew. Beal was raised by a strict church group and went into the U.S. Merchant Marine and to sea as a 17-year-old.
School had never suited him. “I went through the front door and they pushed me out the back.”
Beal’s first filed Tribune clippings begin turning up in 1973. Depending on the story he also called himself Dr. Tinkerpaw or Der Tinkerpaw, “Because I tinker with my paws, and it’s Der not Doctor.”
He does not explain the signs on the property marked “Dr.” but don’t expect a linear tale from Beal. “Sometimes they call me Captain Nitwit because I live on Nitwit Ridge.”
Reporters mention his collection of faded clippings from the 1920s showing him winning distance swimming championships in San Francisco Bay. Beal said he knew movie Tarzan Johnny Weissmuller, comic Will Rogers and other stars from the vaudeville circuit where he did athletic stunts and told jokes.
He would toss off lines while in the middle of an interview.
His standard line about bachelorhood, “Ajax club — I work fast and leave no ring.”
Or “You know the difference between a Mason and a Knight? Once a Mason always a Mason; once a night may be enough.”
Clippings show his vaudeville partners at one time were a one-legged bicyclist and a dog. After Beal’s time as a merchant seaman and entertainer, he settled in “West Combria Pines” — his pronunciation — and began to assemble the Castoff Castle.
The home staggers up 250 feet of rocky cliff. Some say he built nine levels, others say five. It can be hard to define the edges, because landscaping overgrew the house in later years. Some rooms are attached, but most aren’t. Building materials included driftwood, car bumpers, turned wood, pots, beer cans, abalone shells, rusted car wheels and tons of concrete.
When he got tired of living in one room, he made another.
Built to code? Hard to imagine someone who could give orders to Captain Nitwit.
His strength was remarkable.
A story quoted Beal, “Pixies and gremlins didn’t do it. I did it all with these two hands.”
His work as the town’s first garbage man provided ample inspiration, though his wild driving or slow sifting through trash may have gotten him fired. The stories vary. There was a picture in a special place of honor, a toilet-seat frame, for the woman whose complaint led to his firing.
He would work often shirtless with grimy trousers, no socks, shoes without tongues, on his lot in the middle of nowhere. The town grew up around him bringing some who didn’t like the eclectic pile.
“Johnny-come-latelies,” Beal would mutter. “It was in ‘28 when it all began. Nobody was here then. This hill was hidden far back in the woods. So, I created my first one room shack.
“But that wasn’t enough. I put up another, and another and another, I can’t stop now.”
Reporters from The Cambrian, Telegram-Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Dallas Times Herald, Sacramento Union, NBC’s Today Show all made the trek to interview Arthur Harold Beal.
The folk art home was recognized at a state historical landmark in 1986.
The living room was suffering water damage at this point he could not keep up with the repairs on the property. Published in 5-1-1981 photo by Tony Hertz ©The Tribune
A June 22, 1991 story by Susan McDonald sadly noted that, with the Nitwit Ridge roof gone and no electricity or running water, Beal had to live miles away from the place he loved most. After being found with hypothermia and in and out of hospitals in his final years, Beal had to leave the place he had called home for more than six decades and live in a nursing home.
He crankily spent his final days where things were clean and orderly, and the Muzak plays on and on.
About a month after McDonald’s story was published, a caretaker cleaning out a shed on Nitwit Ridge turned up a half-gallon jar about one-third full of oily, pale amber liquid marked “glycerin.”
Beal confirmed it was nitroglycerine, and the bomb squad was notified. Jim Mulhall of the bomb squad (now Atascadero Police Chief) estimated that the bottle had been in the shed 40 to 50 years. Muhall was unable to say for certain whether the liquid in the bottle was nitro, but its appearance and having Beal say it was made it necessary for the bomb squad to remove the bottle.
“This was the first time we’ve had to go get pure nitro,” said Mulhall. “In the past it was used to strengthen dynamite, but is rarely ever used these days. It is so extremely unstable and so extremely explosive.”
A task force member dressed in a protective suit carefully lowered the bottle inside a rubber bucket filled with vermiculite into a bomb trailer. They took it to a local quarry to detonate it.
It would be Beal’s last big blast. He died at a Morro Bay nursing home August 16, 1992 at the age of 96. He had no known relatives, though he may have had a daughter who died during World War II.
Various efforts have been made since Beal’s death to restore the site. The property was in tax trouble in March of 1997 and the buildings did not get much repair in Der Tinkerpaw’s declining years.
Michael and Stacey O’Malley, the new owners of the 2.5-acre site, give tours of the whimsical house site on Hillcrest Drive. Reservations are required to tour the state historical landmark at 881 Hillcrest Drive. Call the O’Malleys at 927-2690. A donation of $10 for adults and $5 for children is requested, but not required, for each tour.
The O’Malley’s collect articles about Art Beal and are especially interested in anything prior to the 1960s.
Telegram-Tribune stories by Susan McDonald, Lee Sutter, David Eddy, Brooks Townes, Tim Ryan and Kay Ready and an L.A. Times story by Charles Hillinger all contributed information as well as Kathe Tanner of the Cambrian.
Another blog, Honey Pot has a collection of color photos from Nitwit Ridge.
If you like tales of coastal curmudgeons you may want to read about the Baykeeper, Sandal Makara.
February 12, 1977 Telegram-Tribune
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I had the pleasure of knowing Art for many years. He was a real character. He had a great garden where he grew much of what he ate. The handrails in the place also served as water pipes. He hand carried most of the rocks up the ridge in 5 gallon buckets.
Boy, did he get it right. Lived on the ridge long before anyone else, and these new people had the nerve to complain about is wonderful house.
And this still goes on today (Mulholland and Dan DuVaul have been the most prominent of late) all around our great county, with the big city people moving in and wanting to change out the quiet country attitude we have always had.
I know folks need a place to live, but dammit, accept what you moved into and leave it alone!
Anyone know where Der Tinkerpaws is buried?
I met Art Beal,back in the mid-70′s.I was in a store in Cambria,and met a childhood friend I had not seen in five years.She asked me if I wanted to go with her and meet a friend of hers named Captain Nitwit.When we arrived she told me to wait outside,and not move until he had given me permission to enter.She waved me in,and he was sitting at the kitchen table and asked me what I wanted.I told him that She had told me that he had the most amazing house in the world.He proceded to take me through the entire house,sheds and gardens.It was unlike anything that I had ever seen,rooms made of wine bottles,tires,hubcaps,etc.I think at that point of his life,he was very fed up with his neighbors,not appreciating his “castle”.He seemed to relate with younger people,at the time I was probably thirteen.I still reflect on the special tour I received that day in Cambria,Ca.
A very special lady took me to see a friend of hers, someone I’ve grown to appreciate more and more as my years go on. She told me that he was odd, but a very nice man, and O.M.G.was I going to trip out at his house.That was an understatment. Art was easy going and always busy. He provided us with a guided tour. This was in 1971. I don’t know,(or care what month), but sufice it to say I was all of 21 and Art was 75. We starte with the lower house made of river rock. The east wall had bottles in it to let in the light. He polished the west wall rocks so they would reflect the light.Then we went outsid, along the garden path, made of flat stones and joined with morter Art mixed up. He was in no great hurry to get finished because he always needed something to do. Up a few steps along the path, a series of steps more path with the ever present galvanized pipe handrail. There was always a hose bib near one of the many terraces he built. “You start with a few old tires that the people throw away. People don’t know how many more miles I get out of these old tires, but they don’t go nowhere.These tires stay right hereand hold back the trash I throw in, then the compost I top it off with, then the gopher dam.” “You know what a gopher dam is?” he would ask, then answer not waiting for us to say, NO,”it’s all these tin cans, top and bottom cut out, placed end to end.” “Every 6 feet or so Art would place a bottle, the bottom broken off, between the cans,in the hollow. The wind blows across the bottles, (he held up a bottle he had ready to place, blew across the top to make it whistle), “no gopher will enter this hollow circle around my garden. the noise scares the shit out of them. Oops, shouldn’t say that, but it does.”
Speaking of which, part of the tour was a stop at a small building on the east side of his domain, about 150ft. from the house. I don’t remember what the structure was made of, I think, mostly rock and morter. What I do remember is that on the west and north were two toilets about 3 or 4ft from one another. Art said, “I made it like this so I could shit and talk with a friend, although, not hd many takers cause I’m a stinker!”
we spent the night several times. of course, we drove our own guest bedroom.I had a ’63 VW bus and my 8 track stereo, my best girl, and the whole rest of my life ahead of me. There’s more tails, many more. Going to town with Art etc., etc.
I’ll try to contact my friend who took me. Maybe another who remember diffrent stories. I would love to remember those times, always. I guess I’m not doing too bad, seeing that, that was 40 years ago. Far too fond memories.