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As Bobby Beaty tools along County Farm Road in Friendsville, Tenn., he’ll most certainly point out that once upon a time this was all rural land–there were no mini-marts, no housing developments, no big power lines. But as you near his property, the great masses of trees and hills still look vibrantly green, striking a beautiful contrast to the clear blue skies. If it wasn’t 95 degrees out, you’d swear it’s a small chunk of heaven. The slim, neatly groomed 60-year-old owner of Beaty & Waters Used Cars has seen a lot of change in the past 30 years–in fact, one fairly new construction is his own warehouse built near his home. He put it up in 1987 to house his ever-growing collection. "When I started collecting, I put ’em in boxes," he says. "And I just kept puttin’ ’em in and closin’ the box up. Everywhere I go, if they had a box, I’d get it. And I just kept stackin’ ’em up over there in the house. Why, I had ’em in the closets, under the beds, and everywhere else. Mrs. Beaty wasn’t likin’ it too well, you know." The problem was momentarily solved with the construction of the warehouse. But, wouldn’t you guess, he had to expand it two years later. The collection was getting bigger, and it needed display space. You see, Bobby Beaty collects baseball-style novelty caps. He has 6,400 of them. Or thereabouts. Shelf after shelf, they line the walls of his warehouse in perfect rows, like bodiless soldiers marching in single file. They aren’t stacked on top of each other, they aren’t doubled up on the shelves–they sit at attention in unbroken lines, stretching the entire length of the warehouse. There are caps with sports team emblems, political slogans, addresses from stores of every sort, car dealerships … every kind of baseball-style cap you can think of. And they’re all neatly sealed in plastic. Beaty’s obsession with caps started in 1983, when a friend of his gave him a Beaty Seed & Feed cap from Cleveland, Tenn. "And it was so pretty, I decided ‘I’m just gonna start collectin’ ‘em,’" he says. "It just hit me. It’s different, you know. So I got started on it and I couldn’t quit." Is there any particular kind of cap he searches for? "No, just any cap–I don’t care what it is," he says. There are no especially valuable ones in the collection, though there are a few notables. He’s got one from Junior Samples, "just like he wore on Hee-Haw," political ones from former Tennessee Gov. Ned McWherter and Presidents Bush and Clinton, ones from companies no longer in business like Blount National Bank and Clayton Lincoln-Mercury. He estimates that 90 percent of them have been gifts from friends and family. "You know what a friend is–it’s somebody who likes to do something for you. Your friends’ll take care of you. I’ve been in business out there at Beaty Used Cars for 33 years and I might go in the morning and there’ll be two there on the desk that somebody dropped off–you don’t even know who brought ’em to you. They just know you collect ’em and they’ll bring ’em to you." While caps are certainly Beaty’s primary obsession, his warehouse shelters plenty more collections in various stages of organization. He has Coca-Cola trays, beer cozies, tobacco cans, Velveeta cans ("I bought those in stores an’ laid ’em back.), sport cups, and several antique bicycles, including an old Huffy with rocket-ship styling. "Just anything I thought was different or odd, I kept it," he says in mild understatement. There’s his complete collection of every Thrifty Nickel published locally ("I’ve kept them from day one"), the hundreds of old car manuals ("Here’s one for a ’78 Chevy Malibu"), baseball cards in unopened boxes, old push mowers. Most impressive is his car collection, which uses up most of the warehouse’s floor space. He’s got clean Volkswagen Beetles, pickup trucks, and a number of ’50s Chevrolets, including a ’52 Powerglide coupe with 21,000 miles that he’s had since 1965. Situated among these prime examples of automobile engineering are probably the last two mint-condition Yugos in the country. "These two little Yugos are supposed to be the worst cars ever built," he muses, "and they probably are, I don’t know. But I remember when I was a kid they had a Henry J., and the Allstate. You could buy one of ’em for a song and a dance, $5-600. Now they’re probably worth $30-40,000. I just thought maybe these might hit. My grandkids might get something out of ’em." But caps are still first on the collecting agenda–after all, he says, "It’s hard to quit collectin’ when your friends go somewhere and bring a cap back." He’ll be running out of shelf space soon, though he hasn’t yet formulated a plan. "I don’t know. I haven’t any idea what to do," he says. "I’m pretty proud of ’em–I mean, it’s a feat. Now, it’ll take you a long time to put that many caps up, if you just sit down and think about it."
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