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By Doug, January 22, 2010 22:03

Do you love clowns or hate them?  What about dolls, like those creepy ones in movies?  What about clown dolls!?  It’s enough to send shivers down your spine.

The Klown Doll Museum in Plainview (its full and proper name) houses a collection of 4,500 nightmares-in-waiting that’ll provide you with countless sleepless nights.  If you like clowns and you like dolls then the Klown Doll Museum (in Plainview) will satisfy your horribly strange and spooky obsession.  I mean, seriously, can you imagine walking through this place at night with nothing but a wax candle to light your way?  Can’t you just hear the pitter-patter sounds of those grotesque clown dolls as they move through the shadows, lurking, ready to pounce?  All those creepy dolls staring at you through those messed up, unblinking eyes looking straight into your soul?  How could you turn your back on any of them—they’d drive a butcher’s knife right through you!  Over and over and over again. 

Sorry, my mind drifted again, but those things are really bizarre.

Oh, and why do they call it the Klown Doll Museum (in Plainview) instead of the Clown Doll Museum (in Plainview)?  Apparently there was a Klown Band in the town 50 years ago and the unusual spelling stuck.  Klowns or clowns, if you want to see them, go to Nebraska.  Happy dreams.

The Klown Doll Museum of Plainview

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By Doug, December 20, 2009 15:03

The UFO Museum and Research Center, Roswell, NM.

The UFO Museum and Research Center (no, it’s not just your average tourist trap, this place does some legitimate science!), along with all the other UFO-related crap that makes up Roswell New Mexico, is an attempt by a small-town-in-the-middle-of-nowhere to capitalize on the mania surrounding the claims of a flying saucer crash in 1947.  Yes indeed, little green (or rather, gray) men from outer space traveled many light years through the galaxy but somehow managed to crash into the desert just as they were about to reach their destination and you can find out all the juicy details at the UFO Museum.

Nobody knows exactly why the saucer crashed but many theories have surfaced including female aliens at the helm “freshening up” their faces in the rear-view mirror, distraction by an intergalactic cell phone call and (perhaps the most plausible) the aliens believing there would be another gas station just up the road a bit (if you’ve ever driven through New Mexico, you can understand their mistake).  There are other theories but if you’ve got a better one, hey, leave it in the comment box below!

Flash forward half a century and little green men are the biggest industry in town.  There’s a UFO festival and the whole town seems to be trying to get their share of the tourists’ money.  The little green man seems to be everywhere!

Roswell is 200 plus miles from any large city including Amarillo, Lubbock and El Paso, Texas, Albuquerque, NM and Las Cruces, NM. A majority of our visitors make a point to come to Roswell to see the museum and be in the city where the best known UFO crash and cover-up occurred. While in Roswell, they in the least buy gas and a soda or they may spend a week learning about the phenomena and Roswell.

The UFO Museum itself starts out with a map of the world where you can place a pin on your hometown.  Next up, various World War II-era black and white photographs of people and airplanes.  But, things start getting good when we get to the room of war-surplus equipment with a model of the flying saucer crash site (think model train layout and a paper plate painted silver).  Naturally, we get to the part of “The Great Cover Up” where we learn how the evil government is hiding all this wonderful technology from us because we just can’t handle the truth.  Then, there’s an entire room full of proof (no, not physical evidence, newspaper clippings!) aliens exist including crop circles, Area 51, etc.  Finally, there’s the big finale:  an ACTUAL alien autopsy mockup!  It doesn’t get any better than this.  No, really, it doesn’t get any better; that’s about all there is to this place.

Now, you’d think the gift shop would be world-class (can you say “My dad was abducted by an Alien in Roswell and I all I got was this stupid T-shirt” T-shirt?) but their stuff is mostly quite unimaginative.  It’s mostly your run-of-the-mill stuff (hats, coffee mugs, key chains, etc.) with “Roswell” and/or the classic alien head printed on it.  However, there is a rather clever T-shirt along the lines of “born to ride.”

Whether you believe in flying saucers or not, a trip to Roswell and the UFO Museum and Research Center is fun and campy.  Be sure to check out their plans for a new museum—it looks like a cross between Seattle’s Experience Music Project and Disneyland’s Space Mountain!

UFO Museum and Research Center

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By Doug, December 5, 2009 20:45

The Mona Lisa, made from Legos, at the Toy and Plastic Brick Museum in Bellaire, Ohio.

The “Toy and Plastic Brick Museum” in Bellaire, Ohio houses the world’s largest collection of Lego building sets.  So, why isn’t it called the Lego Museum?  Ask a lawyer.  Apparently, Lego didn’t appreciate anybody else using its name for profit.

Sure, you can go to Legoland in California or see great Lego displays at Disneyland or Walt Disney World but that would be mundane.  Why not spend just 10% of the price to get into Disneyland and see a bunch of old Lego building sets!?  Uh, maybe you shouldn’t consider that value proposition too closely…

I think Legos were my favorite toy as a kid.  How about you?  What was your Lego masterpiece?

Toy and Plastic Brick Museum

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By Doug, December 4, 2009 19:56

The Lunchbox Museum, Columbus, Georgia.

We all had them, didn’t we?  Those cool metal lunchboxes we toted to school every day with our peanut butter and jelly sandwich and maybe, if we were lucky, a Jell-O pudding cup!  Mine was a school bus with Mickey and his friends but I remember other kids who had Scooby and the gang, Bugs Bunny or maybe Barbie, if you were a “yucky” girl.

He [Allen Woodall] began collecting lunch boxes a mere four years ago, because, as he puts it, “they’re just so neat!” He now has more than 1,000 lunch boxes and related items, including thermoses, coolers and even tobacco tins that doubled as lunch boxes.

Of course, if there’s something to collect, someone will collect it and eventually decide the world needs a museum to house the prized collection.  Lunchboxes are no exception!  The “World’s Largest” lunchbox museum is in Columbus, Georgia (conveniently located near the old farmers’ market in the historic downtown area).

The Lunchbox Museum

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By Doug, July 18, 2009 02:44

The Hobo Museum in Britt, Iowa.

Believe it or not, there’s a difference between a hobo, a tramp and a bum.  Basically, a hobo travels in order to work (a migrant worker is a type of hobo) and a tramp travels but doesn’t do work.  A bum doesn’t travel around and doesn’t work, either.

The Hobo Museum, in Britt, Iowa has photos, various contraptions used by hobos, railroad memorabilia, etc.  There’s also a hobo cemetery one can visit to pay their, well, respects to various hobos of note.  A visit to the gift shop is a must; one can buy various hobo-made oddities like wood carvings, “monkey fists” (apparently the symbol of all official hobos) and more.

Each year, the town hosts a Hobo Convention where folks come by the thousands to do what it is hobos do.  There’s a parade, flea market, concerts and Mulligan Stew to serve 5,000!

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By Doug, July 17, 2009 03:01

Museum of Family Camping

Allenstown, New Hampshire is the home of the Museum of Family Camping. It’s located in the old Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) dining hall within Bear Brook State Park, along with a couple of other museums that may (or may not) be of interest. The museum was conceived by Roy Heise and opened in 1993.

The Museum has a story to tell its visitors: The story of manufactured products used in camping; the story of families, groups, and individuals as they share the outdoors; the story of parks and campgrounds that welcome campers for recreation and fellowship.

Sounds like three stories to me. But, if you like camping, it’s worth a visit to the museum just so you can see some of the old camping gear like the canvas tent; you won’t complain as much about backpacking with a modern tent after seeing the stuff people used to lug around!

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By Doug, July 15, 2009 04:41

Houdini's Milk Can Escape

The American Museum of Magic in Marshall, Michigan is a collection of entertainment magic props, books, posters and so forth. Housed in two buildings, the collection includes more than 15,000 books and 20,000 photographs in its library.

One of the more popular pieces in the collection is the actual “milk can” made famous by Harry Houdini. Houdini would fill the can with water and then he’d have himself handcuffed and lowered into the can. The audience was invited to hold their breath just like Houdini was doing inside the can while it was sealed shut and Houdini performed his escape. The popular act was only done for four years but it’s one of the stunts most associated with the famous magician.

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By Doug, July 13, 2009 04:29

Herreshoff Museum

Put on your captain’s cap and do your best impression of Thurston Howell III because today we’ll visit the Herreshoff Marine Museum / America’s Cup Hall of Fame. Yes, yachting is on our agenda so let’s shove off and hoist the mainsail; we’re headed for Bristol, Rhode Island!

Yacht racing is not something the average Joe enjoys on a typical summer weekend.  Even the Wikipedia entry on the America’s Cup sounds uppity:

The America’s Cup is the most prestigious regatta and match race in the sport of sailing, and the oldest active trophy in international sport, predating the Modern Olympics by 45 years. The sport attracts top sailors and yacht designers because of its long history and prestige. Although the most salient aspect of the regatta is its yacht races, it is also a test of boat design, sail design, fundraising, and management skills. The Cup originally named the Royal Yacht Squadron Cup was changed to the America’s Cup after the first yacht to win the trophy, the schooner America. The trophy remained in the hands of the New York Yacht Club of the United States from 1857 (when the syndicate that won the Cup donated the trophy to the club) until 1983 when the Cup was won by the challenger, Australia II of Australia, ending the longest winning streak in the history of sport. The skipper of Australia II, John Bertrand, was quoted as saying, “This puts yacht racing back on the map.”

The museum, as the name implies, is actually two museums in one. The Herreshoff museum displays a collection of some 60 boats including the largest boat to compete in the America’s Cup and Rhode Island’s oldest boat, SPRITE. The museum also houses 500 models that are themselves worth the price of admission.

The America’s Cup half of the museum looks at some of the people behind the race. Unless you are really into yachting, this half of the museum is a “must miss” even though the rest of the museum is worth a visit.

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By Doug, July 8, 2009 02:59

A wall of brooms from the Main Street Museum

The Main Street Museum in White River Junction, Vermont is a collection of, well, junk. As far as I can tell, it’s a bunch of junk arranged in a museum-like setting. I’m talking about “normal” junk, like you see in other museums and “real” junk like you might find in your kitchen “junk drawer.” But, they package it nicely and that apparently makes all the difference:

The Flora and Fauna collections represent invasive species from the infrastructure of an economically marginal Vermont downtown. Our dried cats are not true mummies; they are merely dehydrated. Our local collections of knotweed, dogweed and loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria) are presented alongside historic and geographically significant specimens representing the various cultures of the earth. Paving stones from Rome and cobblestones from our local railroad underpass are preserved here as well as asphalt from Los Angeles, New Orleans and Baltimore. Coffee cups and aspirin bottles from now defunct work places in White River Jct. are displayed alongside bricks from Monticello, masonry from the Alamo in Texas (and the Forteleza in San Juan), and dried rose specimens (family Rosaceæ) from Robert Todd Lincoln’s—and Jefferson Davis’s—houses.

…

Assigning values to artifacts is increasingly difficult in the environment of most major collecting institutions. The neutrality of theoretical systems utilized by any museum is currently being called into question. As a small independent repository the Main Street Museum has the flexibility—indeed the mandate—to examine the layered and ever changing meanings of objects and their relationships to their surroundings. As the uses for objects are more or less continuously in flux, we analyze these uses through traditional disciplines (art historical, scientific and qualitative methods), but also through psychological analysis as well. Our emotional relationship with objects is formed abstrusely. Therefore the meaning of objects is unlocked only through similar cryptic means.

So, it’s a bizarre, one-of-a-kind museum that’s worth a visit if for no other reason than to form your own opinion of the place.

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By Doug, July 7, 2009 05:10

Gene Autry

Trying to figure out the “begats” for the Museum of the American West is like trying to figure out why a dog likes to stick his head out of a car window while the car’s moving but hates it when you blow in its face. Sure, you can figure it out eventually but you’ll probably need to take a couple of aspirin before it’s all said and done.

The Museum of the American West is part of the Autry National Center of the American West. The other two parts of the Autry Center are the Southwest Museum of the American Indian and the Institute for the Study of the American West. The Autry Center was formed when the Southwest Museum, the Women of the West Museum and the Autry Museum of American Heritage merged. Not sure what happened to the women during that move but at least the name was dropped for good. So, that’s all I’m going to say about that.

For those who know nothing about cowboys, here’s a little bit about Gene Autry:

Gene Autry’s career spanned some 60 years in the entertainment industry, encompassing radio, recordings, motion pictures, television, rodeo and live performances. He also became a broadcast executive and major league baseball owner.

Known as ‘America’s Favorite Singing Cowboy’, he is the only entertainer to have five stars on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame, one each for radio, records, film, television and live theatrical performance (including rodeo). In his ability to transcend media and in the sheer scope of his output, Gene Autry was unsurpassed as a popular image-maker of the American West.

Born in Tioga, Texas, on September 29, 1907, Orvon Gene Autry bought his first guitar at the age of 12 for $8. By the late 1920s, he was working as a telegrapher for the railroad in Oklahoma. While he was singing and playing in the office one night, Gene was discovered by the great cowboy humorist Will Rogers. Rogers advised the young Autry to try radio, and the rest is history.

But what about that museum, you may ask. Well, I was getting to that.  The museum is located in Griffith Park, California.  Exhibits include art, costumes, firearms and (of course) music related to the American West. But the museum exhibits rotate quite a bit so make sure you look into what’s going to be there when you are or you might end up seeing a whole lot of stuff you really don’t care about. However, if you are the least little bit a fan of the American West, that’s not likely!