Time to Retire

That old joke about the man who liked pancakes so much he collected trunkfuls of them wouldn't coax a chuckle from Cecil Heidelberger. For years, neighbors of the chubby junk dealer in rural Andover, Minn., were I amazed, amused or outraged by his g particular passion: worn-out auto tires.

Heidelberger, 60, proprietor of a 40-acre spread called the Musket Ranch and Trading Post, began collecting used tires before World War II. He sold his original hoard for a penny a pound in the wartime rush to find desperately needed rubber supplies. The war ended, but Heidelberger's passion for tires did not. Today, after more than 30 years of relentless collecting, he figures he has between 8 million and 12 million. His tires cover ten acres, rise to a 40-ft. peak and are a local landmark.

Anti-Tire Forces. Not everyone has admired Heidelberger's Mount Baldy. The Andover town board, charging that the tires had become a breeding ground for rats and mosquitoes, repeatedly tried to force him to get rid of them. The state, worried about a fire hazard, once demanded that he bury his tires individually, 2 ft. deep and 4 ft. apart. "There's not enough land in the state to bury all my tires," snorted Heidelberger.

He resisted the anti-tire forces on a hunch: "I figured anything worth 10 a pound in 1941 sooner or later would be worth 100 a pound." Heidelberger was wrong. Much to his own--and his neighbors'--surprise, the tires have turned out to be worth much more. An Oklahoma salvage entrepreneur plans to erect a huge shredder at Heidelberger's place; he aims to process the tires to extract oil, added as a rubber-softening agent during manufacture, and steel belting, and to make an oatmeal-like material that can be mixed with hard coal to provide smooth-burning fuel for generating electricity. The salvager's price: 390 to $5 a tire, or as much as $9 million for the whole pile.

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