Today, officials at NASA will announce which three American museums will receive the decommissioned space shuttles Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour. NASA is also giving away the shuttle prototype Enterprise, which is a test craft that never left the atmosphere so technically it’s a Thin Air Shuttle.
If you run a museum that features things that fly, getting one of these babies would be a real coup. It would also bring a hefty financial obligation, since the cost of preparing a shuttle for display and getting it to your location is a cool 28.8 million dollars.
The people of Dayton, Ohio are excited because their town is in the running. The National Museum of the United States Air Force is at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, ten miles northeast of the city. Dayton has been actively campaigning for the honor and people there will be terribly disappointed if they’re passed over, though who hasn’t been passed over by the shuttle at one time or another?
At the Museum of Flight in Seattle, they’ve already started building a place to house the orbiter they’ve not been given yet, which is either seat-of-the-pants audacious in the best tradition of barnstormers and test pilots, or flat-out foolhardy.
Other candidates include the Johnson Space Center, Chicago’s Adler Planetarium, the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and New York City’s Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum. Some of the contenders are not making a big promotional deal out their entry, possibly because they realize their chances of success are slim and nobody wants to be tagged as a “loser” in the museum world.
I have no such concern about my bid to bring a shuttle to the empty parking slot in my garage. Why, you ask? Building a suitable display for the only retired Space Shuttle on my street would keep me busy, for one thing. And when I was done I’d have a great central attraction to compliment the rest of my personal museum. The other day I went downstairs to retrieve something I can’t even remember the name of and was amazed at the range and scope of the things I have amassed, so I must be building a museum. What else could it be? Though I admit the collection is a bit unfocused.
I’m calling it the Museum of Invisible Objects because it is comprised of things I wanted to have out of my sight as soon as possible, which is what led directly to their installation in the basement galleries.
The largest expense in setting up my museum (after the 28.8 million for shuttle cleaning and delivery) would be the cost of building an escalator so visitors could be whisked from the garage directly into the Hall of Half-Read Books, where both hardback and paperback copies of classic stories and once new groundbreaking fiction are on display. There’s also a non-fiction area, where detailed explorations of things I once thought I wanted to know are carefully arranged in the order I abandoned them.
From there, it’s a short walk to the Obsolete Technology Collection, which includes a walk down Partly Functioning Inkjet Printer Alley, the amazing Inadequate Television Display and an amusing assortment of cassettes, 8 track tapes, LP’s, VHS tapes and laser discs I’m calling the Defunct Format Farm.
We’ll soften the lighting as people transition into the Sentimental Attachment Section where they can view the Enshrined Cute Baby Clothes and walk down the Boulevard of Broken Toys.
Then it’s directly to Ambition Row where they can see the Too-Scary-To-Use Table Saw and the Only-Tried-It-Once Power Washer.
As the tired but happy visitors move towards the exit they’ll pass through the wistful halls of the Period Furniture Farm, where they’ll have a chance to marvel at the things that used to be used to be in the main living area of this house, and in the homes of a number of my relatives.
And because it’s my basement, just before the stairs to the street there will be a whimsical display of bug carcasses under the heading, “Catalog of Things The Spiders Have Eaten”.
Late addition:
That Guy In The Hat sent in this item from his collection as a way to show us that, unlike me, he doesn’t just accumulate junk. Nice. Thanks, TGITH.
What’s on display in your personal museum?
Trail Baboon 
Rise and Shine Baboons:
Well, your piece today puts me in the mood for a garage sale, in which you put all of those galleries out in the garage for the public to view. Because I am now furnishing some new space at work, I’m braking for all garage sales. Just last week I scored a file cabinet, book shelf and banquet table for $22.50! You can always move your displays around to someone else’s house that way.
I noticed yesterday that I also have a few displays in the basement:
* Dead bug display–batallions of Asian beetles, millipedes, and a couple of
spiders
* UFO’s–every artist has the gallery of UnFinished Objects. An almost finished
sculpture that was abandoned when Mom was diagnosed with Alzheimers and I
just hauled out again, the thingy I started and never liked, etc. Many of those.
* Wet and somewhat mildewy High School Annuals. Nuff said.
Time for a Baboon Garage sale. Do baboons have garages?
LikeLike
Jacque Don’t buy any more stuff until you find out if I might have it and you could have it for free. I’ll bet you don’t have a stuffed (as in taxidermy stuffed) flying mallard duck. You could have mine for free. And there is a brand new rug I have been trying to give away for eleven years.
Just put your lips together and whistle.
LikeLike
http://youtu.be/0gFpoXYAm0o
LikeLike
The Colonnade of Craft Supplies and the Rotunda of Once But Never Again Read Books! Oh, and the Portico of Polar Bear Calendars that Can’t Be Thrown Away.
LikeLike
I save polar bear calendars, too! aAck!
LikeLike
I’m afraid our lower level would be less of a museum and more of a horror show – the Was That Something The Cat Yacked Up hopscotch section, the Acres of Forgotten School Texts aisle, and across from that, the Is This a Tool or a Torture Device wing. Before you head back out, you can stop by the Strange Holiday Decorations from Years Past, just in case that sort of thing might scare you (or maybe make you laugh out loud)…
LikeLike
Very funny, Dale. After our move is 98% complete, we have emptied our museum entirely except for the Clyde and Sandra Wing in the Way too Much Art Museum. About 40 framed works of art to trash. Last month I got rid of exactly the same book collection, a trip to Steve’s neighbors, Half-Price Books.
My sister was here helping us clean out our house and commented that she was learning the lesson that she needed to start trashing out from her museum right now. She was going to pull an “Adeline” (our no nonsense, completely-devoid-of-nostalgia mother) and get rid of one significant thing a day. She then loaded up the rear end of her Ranger with stuff she took from us.
I am surprised the San Diego Air and Space Museum is not in the running.
LikeLike
Wait! Don’t forget the Hall of Unplayed Sheet Music and the Archives of Graduate School Class Notes. I am happy to say that the Raw Data Bins have been emptied. We had to wait at least 10 years post-degree to get rid of those dusty papers.
LikeLike
Good morning to all:
Well, I think the Babooners might have the material for a museum that would rival House on the Rock in Wisconsin. I bet some of you have been there. One trip to that mind boggling collection of weird stuff was more than enough for me. However, I’m sure it is a big tourtist attraction. Dale could be our curator. We just need a good location. Maybe one of the caves in St Paul would work.
We have a large collection of board games we could contribute to a Babooners’ museum. My collection of strange left over stuff from home improvement projects might fit in the museum. Also I could add to Dale’s collection of half read books.
LikeLike
Oh Jim.. you just reminded me. I was a young married and on a trip through Wisconsin, the spouse said “Oh, there’s a Frank Lloyd Wright house near here, let’s go.” Since there was no iPhone internet connection to tell us otherwise, he drove right up to the parking lot of The House on the Rock, we paid the fee and started on the tour. It became very clear, very fast, that this was certainly not a house built by FLW, but once you’re in, there is no way out, except by going through the whole “museum”! When we got to the level with the carousel w/ the mannequin angels with anatomical parts glued on (if you’ve been there, you know… if you haven’t been, think what happens to women on cold days w/ thin blouses) I was sure we had descended to the final circle of hell! I still haven’t been to the actual FLW house in Spring Green – only about 10 miles away!
LikeLike
funny vs. i thought at one time house on the rock would be a cool destination but i was there and about the carosel horses i started to feel the need to get the heck out and it did take another hour or so. what a sicko…
my collection is stored in warehouses and storage units around the state. i could add samples form companies that i have worked with in the past and/or hope to have something like it made in the future by a different company, furniture that was too good to pass up but has no where to go, book i will get to someday but when i want them i have no idea where they are. s wonderful slate pool table but a friend took part of it to fix it up and made it worthless form a collectors point of view. a couple of cars that are driven less and less as time goes on. parts from stuff.. all you need is that one thing to make this ok again but i havn’t quite run across it yet. my moms pile of gifts bought because they were too good to pass up and put in a pile for when you need a gift for someone and don’t have time to go and get it. artwork, can’t trash artwork. my lp collection is one thing i will not part with. i collect that from garage sales the world over. everyone is thinking thwey are coming back but i have been collecting them on the premise they are going to be my little private collection for years. i have some treasures and some pretty funny stuff in there.
i did get to go to taliessen but was made to feel less than welcome when my 1 year old was not totally silent as the speaker droaned on about flw for way too long in a self important jeeves the butler kind of sing song presentation that made me want to get up and run let alone the little kids. i was with my mom who said the attitude at taliessen was similar to that which flw himself would have portrayed as he was known to be a visionary with self importance and lack of compassion and patience for the common folk out there. i sure do like his stuff though. i would recommend it and or the chicago homes tour when if it is possible.
LikeLike
I think we also thought there was some kind connection between House on the Rock and Frank Lloyd Wright and, as you said, there certainly isn’t. Also, as you said, the path throught the place goes on forever. Still, I think Babooners might be able to come up with enough stuff to make a very long trail of strange items that could be called Cave of the Babooners.
LikeLike
We toured the Winchester House in San Jose, very close to where our son lives for the moment. But they tell lots of lies about it apparently.
http://winchestermysteryhouse.com/
LikeLike
VS There is a strange connection between Frank Loyd Wright and the House of the Rock. The House of the Rock was created to spite FLW, who mocked the first plans he saw for the place.
LikeLike
For an interesting fictional trip through House on the Rock, give Neil Gaiman’s “American Gods” a read. It’s been awhile since I’ve read it, so memory is a bit fuzzy, but there is a central event in the plot that takes place in (and through) House on the Rock.
LikeLike
I just looked this up on the library site and the under “related subjects”, it says “American Fiction, Spiritual warfare, Ex-convicts, Bodyguards, Widowers, Fantasy.” Curiosity alone will make me check it out!
LikeLike
I think I listen to this book on tape and very much enjoyed hearing it.
LikeLike
Jim I once visited the House on the Rock when in the midst of a torrid but doomed romance. At first I was fascinated by the place, and then I gradually began to feel creeped out. Have you been there? It dawned on me slowly that most of that stuff on display is a replica. So a wall on which you see maybe 40 pilgrim blunderbusses there is not one real old gun, just a lot of plastic. And I had to wonder what sort of mind would think that it is a Good Thing to create and display 40 faux antique guns? And how would you ever know you had put up enough phony antiques? There is not a more surrealistic spot in Middle America than The House on the Rock.
At the end of that tour, I looked into her eyes and said (paraphrasing Humphrey Bogart) “We didn’t get to Paris, but we will always have The House on the Rock.” I figured there were enough levels of irony in that summation to fit the moment.
LikeLike
Yes, I’ve been there and I think you did come up with an very ironic summary of the place. It didn’t occur to be that a lot of the stuff is cheap replicas, but I think you are right about that.
LikeLike
Jim Start with that magnificent carousel. I am a carousel scholar, and I’ve never seen one to match the one in The House on the Rock. But it is a big collection of phony ponies! That thing never existed anywhere other than in its display space. No child’s butt ever touched those saddles. The whole thing is someone’s sick plastic fantasy on the theme of an old carousel.
LikeLike
i did not catch the phoney aspect of this at all. how can you sell a ticket to a clooection of stuff that is not real. it may as well be online photos. the day i was there it was 33 degrees. just enoug to keep the rain form freezing. the out of tune violins and weird instraments were squeeking away and the rain leaked through the roof of the opening exhibits as we entered and the doors opened to go to the long overview room where on a sunny day it may have been nice. on a 33 degree rainy day it was cold gray gritty and the first sign i should find a different option for the day. it got progessivly more like that and though i am not clostrophobic i got real close to wanting out of my skin that day. i was there with my family and we couldn’t get through fast enough. frank lloyd wrights grave sight is nearby and that is very cool. taliessen is inspirational but uppity but never send anyone to house on the rock.
LikeLike
I have been enjoying reading about the House on the Rock. The untold stories about the place are better than fiction could possibly be.
* It was built to spite Frank Loyd Wright.
* It was constructed by drunks who were paid (at least partially) with booze, all records of which were later burned so the owner could claim he built it alone.
* The place is filled with automata orchestras with mechanical figures playing instruments, but many of the instruments are rigged to not make a sound and the “orchestra” you hear is a recording.
* Everywhere you look there are suits of armor on display, all of which were made in the 1960s for this display.
This is one of Wisconsin’s biggest tourist attractions, but it is a hallucinogenic acid-trip fantasy created by seriously disturbed minds . . . or that would be my opinion. And everyone should see it.
The story is summed up here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_on_the_Rock
LikeLike
Love the FLW designed pig house best.
LikeLike
Tell me more about the pig house
LikeLike
Our biggest collection would be the Cat Hair sculpture room. Fascinating effects can be produced by applying hair shed from 5 cats, along with regular dust and lint, to an armature of 2-foot long human hairs (the roommate’s; my hair is a little over one inch long, I think, so it’s kind of hard to tell apart from the American Shorthairs). Then there’s the special collection of Stuff that Needs to be Shredded, some of which was collected by my dad before his last strokes. Fortunately the No-Longer Identifiable Foodstuffs gets curated once a week on trash day!
LikeLike
Hey — you should be happy you have an actual room for this collection. At our house, we have a little bit of the Pet Hair Collection in each room. In the corners.
LikeLike
is that what that is?? i was wondering
LikeLike
Our best collection actually is only marked by a sign now. The sign reads Bodiesville. My son hung it after we discovered the place in the basement where the cat stashed mouse carcasses.
LikeLike
Morning–
A great story Dale and fun stories from the rest of you; this will be fun reading today.
I’m in a hurry so I just have to mention my friends ‘Arts and Crap’ room and on the subject of ‘Please don’t touch…’ I’ll have to tell you later about Kelly and I doing our wedding gift registry at Daytons and the crashing crystal display.
LikeLike
yes you will
LikeLike
I’m back.
We’ve got the Cabinets of Little Used Wedding Present Placemats, the Closet of Old Maps that seemed Neat at the Time, the Sandroom of Kids toys OutGrown, the Water Heater Room of unused Paint Cans and finally, the Historical Replica of Bens’ Old Room Complete With Model Airplanes Still On the Ceiling and 21 Scenic Old Milwaukee Beer Cans.
(Was it Old Milwaukee that had the scenic beer cans??)
Course that’s just in the house. Outside we have the Barn Full of Hay, the Shed Full of Dad’s Crap (See New Displays Monthly!) And the Granary of Old Oats!
In the ‘Don’t Touch’ department:
Kelly and I are working on our wedding Registry at the Daytons Department Store. Picked out towels, flatware, China, (I’m bored…) and we go over to the Waterford Crystal Department. Look at some different patterns, talk about drinking glass and water pitchers and I point to some trinket on the third shelf– I swear; I didn’t even touch it!– and the whole shelf and all it’s contents comes down. Breaking crystal, shattering glass ending in tinkling noises…. and I’m standing in the middle of it still pointing at the empty cabinet now. I start to mumble something and then I notice Kelly is gone. I make the circle and she is now where to be found.
Clerks start to arrive and bless their hearts they say ‘Oh, it happens all the time; don’t worry’.
To this day I get nervous around shiny things…
LikeLike
Although we did not break anything, I do remember telling my husband that certain china patterns were off-limits as I would always feel under-dressed sitting at a table laid with that china. The Dayton’s people were a gracious lot – were they not? Miss ’em – Macy’s just isn’t the same.
LikeLike
My ex and I didn’t even WANT china or silver (it was the early 70s) but I couldn’t stand my father’s puppy-dog eyes when we told him. We picked the simplest, cheapest thing we could find. My father (despite several arguments) filled in what we didn’t receive. I have used the china a couple of times for tea parties. Lent out the silver to a girlfriend of mine once. That’s it.
LikeLike
Sad story about the broken glass, Ben! It sounds like Kelly has that special gift for being somewhere else when bad stuff happens.
On the beer cans, in Minnesota the prettiest scenes were painted by Les Kouba, who was a raconteur and fascinating guy. My former wife interviewed him once for an article series my magazine ran on “wildlife careers.” Les fancied himself a naughty boy as well as a good painter, and he proudly pointed to the way he had hidden manmade objects (like used condoms) in some wildlife scenes. Les did wildlife scenes on a popular series of beer cans for the Schmidt’s brewing outfit.
LikeLike
I could tell you about a mortician who had a very pricey casket rigged to fall so he could make people buy it.
LikeLike
Oh yes, Schmidt Beer. Thank You Steve.
Hmmmm…. I’m going to have to go look closer at those cans.
LikeLike
The condoms weren’t on the cans but in Les’s famous wildlife paintings, like pheasants running for shelter before a storm.
LikeLike
The first museum I’d erect would be Queer Stuff Republicans Actually Believed. It would feature displays to commemorate the idea that you can raise taxes by lowering them, or that Obama wasn’t born in this country, or that FDR intentionally allowed Pearl Harbor to be destroyed so he could go to war as he had always wanted. This might be a very big museum, and I’d have to work to keep it to a reasonable size.
That would be followed up by the Museum of Vaguely Disgusting Celebrity Objects. Elvis Presley’s corset would be there, the one he used in later Vegas shows. You can be people would flock to see Liberace’s toenail clippings and actual dirty socks found in a motel room rented to the Rolling Stones. Where else could you see hair collected from the barber of Richard (“Have Gun Will Travel”) Boone? I have a few displays in mind for this one that I dare not mention. Let’s just say, “You’re gonna be surprised!”
LikeLike
I might buy a ticket to see Richard Boone’s hair. I love “Have Gun Will Travel”.
LikeLike
Some actors, you could get lost just staring into their eyes. With Richard Boone it is his nose. They don’t make noses like that any more. BTW, “Have Gun Will Travel” is available for free viewing today on Hulu. If you don’t have anything more important to do.
LikeLike
that was a favorite in 1961 or so. don’t remember why except the black clothes and the card with the horse on it have gun will travel had a peotic ring to it more than an ominous tone to a 6 year old.
LikeLike
Well, first off, HGWT was a classic western where good was clearly good and evil was clearly evil. In addition, although lots of people did get killed (actually every single person ever shot in HGWT dies, except Paladin – he’s the only one who ever gets a flesh wound), he did work at getting things settled first without fighting. And he was the perfect man… fairly good looking, intelligent, good cook, well read, senstive… what more could you ask for?
LikeLike
Theme song sung by Johnny Western, who grew up in Knife River Valley, like I did, but a few years ahead of me.
LikeLike
Paladin was a modernized version of the Samurai Warrior, only with a Colt .45, black duds and that nose.
LikeLike
There was a sequel called Hec Ramsey, wonderful. Very good TV show so it only lasted 11 episodes. Boone plays the Paladin character as a detective on the cusp of forensic science in the early 1900’s, in Denver, if I recall correctly. Intelligent and Boone was excellent.
LikeLike
I refuse to answer on the grounds that I would never be able to face any of you again.
LikeLike
…and why should you be the only one to remain faceable, mig?
LikeLike
don’t mind me, I am just poling up the de Nile…….
(dreamed the other night my basement was flooded with a foot of water-still shaking at the thought-that really did happen to my mother’s neat as a pin house when I was a child, only time I remember my mother losing it)
LikeLike
My basement used to flood like that all the time. I got tired of it, like the folks in Fargo, for we’d get several inches of water on the basement floor after every heavy summer rain. One summer we had flooding three times. But at least no floating dead pigs or swimming water moccasins.
LikeLike
Floppy disks that might have something interesting on them. Power cords that have been tragically separated from whatever they were once mated to. Burned-down candles that are waiting to be reincarnated as new candles. Watering cans. I don’t even want to think about what’s in the basement.
LikeLike
thats all upstairs? why wouldnt you put it in the basement. sounds like you have easy first steps to improving your situation.
LikeLike
Linda You’d never want to get in a competition with me for the basement with the most outdated stuff. I’ll bet my floppies are floppier than yours! Or do you too have some 5 1/4″ floppies? I can’t wait to entertain my grandson with stories about when men were men and floppies were floppies, and all computer screens were monochrome and WYSIWYDG (What You See Is What You Don’t Get).
LikeLike
Just two weeks ago, while vacationing in Phoenix, my nephew, niece, and I went to one of the lamest ‘museums’ I’ve ever seen…The Arizona Pop Culture Experience.
http://www.azpopculturemuseum.com/
We thought it might be somewhat cool, so we shelled out $5 apiece and were assigned a guide. It was nothing more than a huge private collection of a guy’s action figures. “This is our Star Trek room. This is our Marvel Super Hero room. This is our GI Joe room.” Etc, etc, etc. And, yes, that’s about all our guide had to say about each room. Not only were we not the only suckers to spend money on this turkey, not only has this ‘museum’ been going for -years,- but they just moved into brand new upscale mall. What the…???!!! And their marketing isn’t even that good (see above link to their website)! If these guys can survive and, apparently, flourish, in this economy, it’s got me thinking…
What’s in my museum? Original comic book, comic strip, and pulp magazine art. Yes, I know, you’ve all heard me talk about my photography. Is any of it on my walls? Nope. Why am I spending boatloads of cash on other people’s art when I should be spending it on propogating mine? Because I’m dumb, that’s why. Still, I love the art I’ve bought and I think it’s very cool to be its current caretaker. I’ll ask Dale to post a little something that some of you might fondly remember.
LikeLike
This just in from NASA:
Space shuttle Discovery will go to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia, outside Washington.
The Enterprise, the prototype shuttle built but never flown in space, will eventually go to the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in New York.
Atlantis will go to the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida.
Endeavour, NASA’s youngest orbiter, will go to California Science Center in Los Angeles.
LikeLike
This may be my all-time favorite Trail Baboon blog…you are truly people I love to hang out with…and thanks for the laughs in the middle of long afternoon…
LikeLike
I would gladly see any of your collections rather than even think about the Icelandic Penis Museum that is mentioned several times in Yahoo today.
LikeLike
Given the temperatures, you wouldn’t need a lot of shelf space for a penis museum in Iceland. 🙂
LikeLike
snort
LikeLike
tmi
LikeLike
The Back Porch Collection of (Washed) Reuseable Food Containers is the only thing I have that’s not already been mentioned – for if I get around to processing a mountain of fruit or veggies from the garden. Yogurt containers, canning and other handy jars, freezer conainter… you name it. (Thought I had posted this already.)
Now I know why we’ve never stopped at The House on the Rock.
LikeLike
Oh, yeah….yogurt cartons. Plastic flatware, too.
LikeLike
Kicking off of my post above re the TV series Hec Ramsey, I would build a museum, I suppose online, of the TV shows that could not last long because they were too intelligent and well-done for the regular market, that today would maybe make it on cable. Three come to mind:
My World and Welcome to It. William Windom and Lisa Garretson, based on the short stories of James Thurber, hence the title.
Hec Ramsey, as noted above.
Nichols. James Garner. Hard to describe, but set in the same time period as Hec Ramsey, an era about which very few movies or TV shows exist.
Any additions?
LikeLike
Claire Danes (?sp.) had a coming of age one, My Life So Far.
LikeLike
How about that stylish one, “Pushing Daisies?”
LikeLike
I miss Pushing Daisies…
LikeLike
Hey everybody… check out TGiTH’s panel… Dale added it to the end of his bit above!
LikeLike
Cool!
LikeLike