Bowling Ball "Art"

Bowling Ball "Art" AG WORLD 30-5-22 Larry Parker mounted about 250 bowling balls on stakes on a 3-acre meadow near his farm house. He calls it "art". The balls, in all colors of the rainbow, are simply stuck on top of poles driven into the ground. The balls are set at different heights - some up to 5 ft. off the ground - and spaced randomly. "The idea started out 10 years ago as a joke on my grandkids, but since then it has taken on a life of its own. People come from miles around to see them," says Parker, of Freeman, Mo. "It's so stupid that it's magnificent." To fool his grandkids, he put two bowling balls in a big nest made out of an old Christmas wreath. "I told them there was a big bird on my property and they should go look for any eggs it might have laid. Of course, after a few years the kids realized they were just bowling balls. By this time, I had collected eight or nine bowling balls and I started sticking them on old tent poles. Passersby would stop and ask about them." He gets most of his bowling balls at garage sales and auctions. "Anytime I find a bowling ball for 50 cents, I would buy it. I already had more than 100 bowling balls when a Kansas City newspaper did a story on them. One day a lady who had read the story came out with a pickup full of bowling balls - about 120 in all - and asked if I wanted any. Her sister had recently closed a bowling alley and dumped the balls on her farm, so she dumped them on me. That doubled my production immediately." Parker says he isn't fussy about the kind of bowling balls he uses. "I'll take anything I can find that has finger holes." To mount the balls, he uses everything from tent poles to electric fence poles. "I've got more money invested in poles than I do in bowling balls," he says. Not all of the balls he owns are in the field yet. He says anyone who comes by his place has to put a ball in the field. "That makes them an accessory to the crime, so they can't call me crazy." A disproportionate number of the balls are located close to his house. "Apparently there are a lot of wimps who don't want to carry a ball very far before they place it," he jokes. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Larry Parker, 7208 E. Pony Creek Rd., Freeman, Mo. 64746 (ph 816 899-2905; mokancomm.net).

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