The Wizard Of Oz And A Bowling-Ball Garden -- Second-Hand Shop Provides Zany Oasis In Central Oregon

BEND, Ore. - You start with "The Wizard of Oz."

It's obvious the minute you walk into Buffet Flat - the antique store segment of this puzzle - because the first thing you hear is dialogue from the movie.

"I'll get you, my pretty, and your little dog, too!"

The sound is coming from inside a doll house. There, a doll family eternally watches "The Wizard of Oz" on a working 2-inch television. Playing over and over and over, courtesy of a VCR hidden in the corner. Every day and forever, Aunty Em.

But pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. There is more here than an antique store stuck in a Munchkin Land halfway between Bend and Redmond; it's just not immediately clear what that is.

Visitors to this place - officially known as "Buffet Flat, at the Funny Farm, in the Land of Ahs" - are welcome to ponder the meaning of it all.

"They don't always get it. But is there something to get?" muses co-owner Gene Carsey Jr., considering the question. "That's like asking the meaning of life."

So it is, but it's too early in this story to answer that one.

Instead, it's time to take a tour of this 4-acre event, this Far Side cartoon come to life, that Carsey and partner Mike Craven have created alongside U.S. Highway 97. You start with the antique store, a collection of vintage clothing, jewelry, books, whatnots and doodads. The rest of the property is the Funny Farm, with Carsey, 50, in charge of "production and special effects" and Craven, 48, in charge of "direction and design."

Designated by Deschutes County land-use wizards as a "private park and playground," the farm is home to 12 cats, two dogs, two pigs, 12 goats (some fainting, some not), one sheep, one mule, one burro, two humans and untold thousands of ants (unknown how many faint). Not that it really matters, but for some reason the pastures holding the goats and other critters are connected by doors, not gates.

The place is a tribute to the weird. It is bad puns. It is hopeful nonsense. It is political statement.

It is Carsey answering the phone with a flat, "Buffet Flat, Funny Farm, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha," and you can imagine the response on the other end because Carsey then adds, "Yes, it's real - or as real as we can get it."

It is the bowling ball garden, now in full bloom.

"This is the first year they've leafed out," Carsey says with a straight face as he leads a wandering walking tour of the property.

The real story? Carsey and Craven, who have been in the secondhand and antique business for 17 years, found themselves with about a zillion used bowling balls. "In the secondhand world there are two things you can't get rid of - skis and bowling balls," Carsey explains.

So they mounted dozens of bowling balls on stakes, attached some green wooden triangles that resemble leaves, and planted them in the ground.

"There are very few rules in Ahs, but one is you can't pick the bowling balls," Carsey says. "What's strange is how many people have their own gardens."

Over here is a "nesting area" for 12 pink flamingos, yard ornaments, perched in and around a tree decorated with plastic fruit.

"We started it because we thought flamingos were an endangered species, then I drove through a couple of mobile home parks and learned that they aren't endangered," Carsey says.

Then there is a rock square, perfectly piled and leveled. In the center is an old fashioned alarm clock. "That's rock around the clock," Carsey says. "I'm looking for a bigger clock, then it will be more obvious."

Here is the agitator wall, 33 brightly colored washing machine agitators mounted on an outside wall. Carsey and Craven keep picket signs on hand in case visitors wish to walk back and forth in protest of something. "Without agitators, nothing in the world would come clean," a sign on the wall says.

Many people don't know what to make of the displays. Some humorless know-nothings have accused Carsey and Craven of being "Satanic" or of abusing animals. Others have described the place as "garish," a term Carsey relates with eyebrows raised, as if gravely wounded by such a suggestion.

"We're kind of a triangular peg and there are no holes we fit into," Carsey says.

Not that Carsey and Craven always walked the Yellow Brick Road: Carsey was a Forest Service contractor and Craven a physical therapist before they met, became partners and opened the antique store.

If there is a philosophy at work here, it is expressed in poems Carsey has painted about the place. The one at the front door says, "Common sense is good to have, but never let it master you. For then it might deprive you of the foolish things to do."

But the base work, the foundation of it all, is the series of Oz books that influenced young Gene Carsey as he was growing up in Bend, particularly the one involving the Wizard, who was a fast-talking but well-meaning carnival con man who blew into Oz by accident and used tricks and gadgets to set himself up as the all-powerful Wizard.

"I feel a kinship with the Wizard because a lot of what's here is not what it appears to be," Carsey says. "He's hiding behind a screen and doing these tricks for people. I'm the same way."