Jerry-Built of Bottles ‘n Bits

Most empty bottles, jars, cans and sundry obsolescence have a common destiny--a trash heap. But those bits and pieces of daily life that found their way to the Simi Valley dump back in the 1950s and ‘60s, were almost assured of a new life and purpose.

To Tressa Prisbey--a familiar scavenger of that dump in the ‘50s, each battered container, broken crockery or other discarded household item, held a special fascination and was squirreled away as part of her horde of precious building materials for a fantasy village she had envisioned and which eventually materialized.

Grandma Prisbey’s Bottle Village, built during the ‘50s and ‘60s, has become a fixture in Ventura County, and today has a staunch support group--Friends of Bottle Village--working on its restoration.

“We are hoping to reopen the village this year,” said Joanne Johnson, an artist assigned to the project as coordinator. “We are determined to preserve this unique bit of folk art. Tressa Prisbey was poor and had little else to go on but a spark of genius and a naive sense of design to express her concept.”

The most incredible aspect of Grandma Prisbey’s Bottle Village, is the extent of it--13 buildings on one-third of an acre at 4595 Cochran St., Simi Valley--still standing and none built on any foundation. Even more remarkable is the fact that the 5-foot-2 builder of this hodge-podge architectural statement weighed a mere 110 pounds, did all the hauling from the dump and built every inch of the project herself, even though it took her almost 25 years.

Prisbey, now 90 and living in a convalescent home, was born in Minnesota. The myth of Bottle Village spins a fascinating tale that started when she moved to California and brought with her a collection of 17,000 pencils. Since she lived in a trailer, there was not enough room to house them. Hence, the Pencil House was created.

“Several of us who actually worked on the repair of the paths at the village, learned first hand what it must have been like to work with all that mortar. It was extremely drying to the skin, but a great deal of fun to do those mosaic implants in Prisbey’s own style. I think we’ve all had the impulse as children to build forts and castles with whatever we could find,” Johnson said. The giant walkways are made of cement with a myriad of 20th Century life embedded and preserved--door knobs, guns, irons, plates, jewelry, bottle caps.

In another century, perhaps, Prisbey’s Village may well be regarded as an ingenious time capsule.