Category Archives: Attraction

Cycle Thru and Collective Behavior at CAM

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I made it to “Cycle Thru! The Art of the Bike” within its first week. It opened at the Cincinnati Art Museum on Friday, April 4, and I attended on Thursday, April 10. It will be there for another eighteen weeks, through August 24. The exhibit includes photographs, paintings, and other pieces of art that feature bicycles, but while I enjoyed looking at those items, what I documented were the real things: Bicycles that might themselves be considered pieces of art.

The exhibit begins with an 1878 Ariel High Wheel. This style of bicycle originated in Britain and was commonly known as a penny-farthing because the pairing of the large and small wheels reminded people of the relative size of penny and farthing coins. On the left in that first picture is an Otto Dicycle, which women could ride without risking the embarrassment of exposing an ankle. In the foreground of the second photo is a cast iron and wood velocipede from 1865. I had seen the three-wheeled vehicle in the third picture in promotions for the exhibit but could not figure out what was going on until I read its description at the museum. That trailing wheel was supposed to make the ride smoother, but it’s not clear how well that worked. That rider comfort was definitely top of mind with this bike is reinforced by its “bespoke anatomical saddle“.

I thought one of the vehicles in the 1900s-1910s display might belong to Wile E. Coyote, but what looked like an Acme Rocket is one of two metal cans to hold air and keep the water bike afloat. The wall behind the very rare 1960 fiberglass Bowden Spacelander is filled with bicycles from the 1930s and 1940s. The 1965 Sears Spaceliner at upper left in the 1950s-1960s caught my attention because of its resemblance to my 1960 J. C. Higgins Flightliner. The Spaceliner was designed by Viktor Schreckengost and built by Murray, and I’m guessing that is also true of the Flightliner.

Of course, for anyone not having owned a Flightliner, the big attention grabber in that last group of bicycles is almost certainly the customized 1953 Schwinn DX Cruiser from Pee-wee’s Big Adventure. The saddle might not be bespoke, but everything else sure is.

The museum itself is, as always, free. “Cycle Thru!” is not. However, admission to the bicycle exhibit also includes another paid exhibit at the museum. Until May 4, that second exhibit is “Shahzia Sikander: Collective Behavior!“. After that, “Cycle Thru!” will be paired with “Farm to Table: Food and Identity in the Age of Impressionism“. I’m sure “Farm to Table” will be a very good show, but man, I sure liked the Sikander exhibition. The photo above is of the second edition of her sculpture “NOW”. The first edition is on permanent display outside the Appellate Courthouse in Manhattan

As the museum’s description of the exhibit states, Shahzia Sikander works “in a variety of mediums—painting, drawing, print, digital animation, mosaic, sculpture, and glass,” and I believe the exhibit contains examples of every one of them. The first item shown here, “Provenance the Invisible Hand“, combines silkscreening and hand painting. The second, “Arose“, is a glass mosaic. A detail from its center is here.

“Liquid Light II” is painted glass. “Promiscuous Intimacies” is a bronze sculpture. I made myself comfortable on a futon and watched the “Parallax” digital animation but somehow missed its description, so I am including a capture from a PDF of exhibit labels here.

I also missed any onsite description for “NOW”, so am including a capture of the PDF for that as well. It is here. As I did some fairly casual research on Sikander, I learned of an 18-foot statue named “Witness” that is similar to the 8-foot “NOW”. On July 8, 2024, while on display at the University of Houston, “Witness” was beheaded. Although an anti-abortion group had protested the statue’s presence in February, nothing is known that connects the group with the decapitation. Sikander explained her desire to not have the statue repaired with, “The damage reflects the hateful misogynistic act and it should not be forgotten.”

A Pair of Urani

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I have been to the original Uranus Fudge Factory in Missouri a few times since it opened in 2015. With the opening of the second Indiana “factory” outside of Richmond in December, there are now a total of three. The first Indiana “factory” opened three years ago in Anderson. I visited both of the Indiana stores on Friday, which I guess means I could do a “My Caboddle” post on them if I wanted.

The Missouri location is marked by an elaborate giant neon sign and a twenty-foot-tall Muffler Man style statue of Uranus Mayor — and owner — Louie Keen. Richmond has the huge block letter sign in the opening photo and a pair of not-so-tall Mayors. It also has a 110-foot cross. The cross was left by the previous owner, New Creations Chapel, much like someone might move and leave behind a couch that doesn’t fit in the U-Haul truck they rented.

Mayor Keen is not ten years old, but either has a really good memory or took really good notes on every potty joke that made him laugh at that age. The potties here, of course, have jokes. The establishment’s name lets you know what to expect, but there is a line that the signs, slogans on merchandise, and endless double entendres from employees do not cross. If you can laugh like a ten-year-old boy, you’ll be just fine.

There is, naturally, merchandise aplenty. Uranus, MO, sits beside Historic Route 66, and the inventory there reflects that. The Richmond store sits beside US 40 and could be considered to be on the National Road. Road fans should note, however, that it is not on the National Old Trails Road. It is on the stretch of National Road bypassed by the Dayton Cutoff, which the NOTR followed.

And yes, there is fudge; really good fudge in a bunch of different flavors. I left with a little Praline Pecan and a little Mint Chocolate. Uranus ice cream and sodas are also available, but I skipped both in Richmond. Gotta save something for the day’s other Uranus.

Fudge and ice cream might make you think of an amusement park, and Uranus has a bit of that, too. There is a shooting gallery in a back corner and a Vortex Tunnel near the exit. Without that handrail, there is no doubt that I would have been sprawled on the floor within just a couple of steps. Outside, the animatronic dinosaurs will be turned on “any day now” and will eventually guard a miniature golf course.

I then moved on to Anderson, IN. There is no statue of Mayor Keen here. I guess that could be him dressed as an astronaut, but I doubt it. The real Louis Keen is on the premises, however. The Anderson fudge factory opened on April 1, 2022, and is celebrating its third anniversary a tiny bit early with a party on Saturday featuring a fudge eating contest. One of the employees I spoke with indicated that Louis was next door, resting up for the big day.

Standing in front of the main building is something featured at all three locations: a fully functioning Zoltar. Here is the one at Richmond. The inside is packed with fudge and merchandise.

In Anderson, ice cream is served in a separate building. I got pistachio. The Anderson Putt Pirates Mini Golf, featuring the deep blue sea, is beyond the ice cream parlor. There are some dinosaurs and other figures here and there, but they are not animatronic, and they are not hanging out at the golf course.

I will close with this pictorial observation from the Richmond factory and my own observation about this post’s title. When I looked for the correct plural of Uranus, I was told that it was a proper noun and there was no need for a plural. Maybe so, but that was before Louie Keen got involved.

Cincy’s Fire Fighting Heritage

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I once ate dinner here. It was sometime in the 1980s. The company I worked for held a banquet for a sales conference here, and we were all allowed to tour the museum before the meal. I recall that I found the Cincinnati Fire Museum quite interesting at the time, but for some reason gave those memories the better part of four decades to fade. During Saturday’s visit, I did find a few pieces of equipment to be somewhat familiar, but I don’t really remember anything about the layout of the museum and have a hunch it has changed more than a little since I was here.

Steps — or for adventurous youngsters, a pole — lead to a lower level where the oldest items in the museum are on display. The city’s first fire engine has been lost to history, but its second survives. It is a pumper built by William C. Hunnerman of Boston in 1816. With a crew of twelve, it could throw water up to 133 feet. The massive drum was Cincinnati’s fire alarm from 1808 to 1824. After the city became too big for the drum to be heard by all, a bell took over, and the drum fell on hard times, which included a period of being used as an oat bin before someone recognized its importance and started to take better care of it. Bored-out logs like the one here were once common components in city water systems. When firemen reached the scene of a fire, they might drill a hole in the nearest pipe to access the water, then plug and mark it for possible reuse in the future. The name “fire plug” has outlived wooden pipes and hand drills by a bunch.

Before the middle of the nineteenth, things called fire engines were merely pumps that were usually mounted, almost always accompanied by some sort of tank, on wheels. Manpower pulled the engines to fires, and manpower operated the pump once they arrived. In 1853, Shawk and Latta, a Cincinnati company, developed the first practical steam pump for fighting fires. Cincinnati soon gained a reputation as a supplier of firefighting equipment. The horse-drawn fire engine (rear view here) was built in 1884 by the Ahrens (later Ahrens-Fox) Fire Engine Company, who had obtained the Latta patents in 1868.

At almost exactly the same time that steam power was dramatically changing firefighting equipment, an equally dramatic change was occurring with the firefighters. Boston began paying some of its firefighters in 1679. Cincinnati went further in 1853 and is considered to have established the nation’s first fully paid fire department. In 1873, Cincinnati firefighters were forbidden from holding other jobs, making them truly professional.

Closing things out is a pair of twentieth-century Ahrens-Fox fire engines. The chain-driven Model M-4 was delivered to Cincinnati’s Company 13 in 1918. The 1958 cab forward Model ECB is the last fire engine ever produced by Ahrens-Fox. It was retired in 1981.

Early TV Museum

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I have more than once seen the Early Television Museum mentioned in posts about under-the-radar museums in Ohio and told myself I should go there sometime. When that happened while early Cincinnati TV history was fresh in my mind from my recent visit to the Voice of America Museum, I decided now was the time. I went Saturday and was quite impressed.

The Kuba Komet in the opening photograph might be the newest item in the museum. I picked it not because of its age but because I thought it the most eye-catching thing there. It’s from England and was, in 1962, a complete entertainment system with a turntable and AM/SW radio concealed by panels. At 7 feet wide and 5 foot 7 inches tall, it was probably a bit intimidating.

I’m not sure what the oldest item is in the museum, but it must be something in the mechanical television gear from the 1920s and 1930s. There is a description of just how mechanical television works on the wall, but it did not help me much. To me, mechanical TV might be even more mysterious than electronic TV.

Apparently, the British were a step or two ahead of us during the earliest days of television. Most of the displayed items from the mechanical era are British. This is a British electronic television from 1938. It originally sold for about 135 pounds (approx. 11,612 pounds or 15,029 dollars today). The earliest picture tubes were often quite long and were mounted vertically to reduce their footprint. Mirrors allowed viewing while seated.

Television was introduced to Americans at the 1939 World’s Fair, and these two General Electric models were part of that introduction. Apparently, G.E. was making some picture tubes short enough to mount horizontally. Both models were priced somewhere around $600 ($13,626 today).

My earliest memory of television comes from 1950 when I was bribed with a Coke to sit quietly on top of the cooler while my Dad and a few other men watched the Saturday (I think) fights at the village’s only store on a screen about the size of one of the smaller ones in these pictures. Most items on display have a placard with considerable information about the item and most of those placards have a QR code that accesses even more information on the museum’s website. There is a tremendous amount of history on display here.

Voice of America Museum Revisited

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The nearby National Voice of America Museum of Broadcasting reopened last month after a seven-month closure for refurbishing. I visited the museum back in 2022 but had been hearing about the update and decided to fill an idle Saturday with a return visit. One thing that is different from the last time is noticeable from the outside. Visitors now enter from the side rather than the front. I’m guessing that’s part of the recent rework, but it might have been that way beforehand.

I arrived a few minutes ahead of the day’s first guided tour, and I used those minutes to look over the Cincinnati radio and TV displays near the entrance. Cincinnati was a real leader in the early development of both forms of broadcasting. The pictures are of the Larry Smith Puppets and the Ruth Lyons set. Smith came to fame on the Uncle Al Show and later had a show of his own. Ruth was a true pioneer in daytime talk TV. Note the converted-to-color Predicta TV next to Ruth’s sofa.

When I visited in 2022, the display of Cincinnati’s commercial broadcasting history was kind of like a big attic. These nicely designed exhibits are typical of the improvements made during the recent refurbishing. 

When the United States entered World War II, Cincinnati’s WLW was using this 50,000-watt transmitter to broadcast entertainment to South America via shortwave. The newly created Voice of America initially rented the transmitter and started broadcasting on February 1, 1942, less than two months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. In the second picture, Joe, our guide, demonstrates how shortwave signals reflect off of the ionosphere and bounce around the globe.

The Volksempfänger (people’s receiver) existed to bring Nazi propaganda into German homes, and USSR-built transistor receivers did the same for the Soviet Block. The VOA never managed to get its programming to the Volksempfängers, but the BBC did. People figured out how to tweak the Soviet radios to pick up both. Incidentally, VOA has never broadcast propaganda, rightfully believing that broadcasting the truth is more effective.

Within about a year and a half, the building that is now the museum was complete, equipment was in place, and a huge array of antennas was erected. The last picture is just the front panels of the 250,000-watt transmitter, which is not just room-sized — it’s a room. I think at least half of our tour group stepped inside at the same time without a hint of crowding.

Here is something left over from World War II that is still pretty useful. 

America’s Packard Museum Revisited

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On Friday, my friend Terry and I visited America’s Packard Museum in Dayton, Ohio. This seems to be a once-a-decade thing for me, with my first visit coming in September 2000 and the second in March 2011. Even though this was my third visit and Terry’s first, we both saw — or at least noticed — some new things. For me, those things embarrassingly included this Adonis, a.k.a, Sliding Boy, hood ornament. 

I was familiar with the Goddes of Speed and Cormorant ornaments described here. But, despite having seen plenty of Packards, both in and out of museums, the existence of the Adonis ornament had never registered with me. The ornament in the opening photo is on a 1930 Boat-Tail Speedster and is the one that finally caught my attention. Any thoughts that this was my first time being exposed to an Adonis ornament are completely done in by this detail from a photo of that same car taken in 2011.

By coincidence, we were there on a day when Lola Signom, widow of museum founder and namesake Robert Signom, was volunteering. It was Lola who explained to me that a choice of three different hood ornaments was once available to Packard buyers. The Sliding Boy seems to have been the least popular of the three. Another friendly museum staff member also answered multiple questions and supplied lots of information. Although I read his name tag with the best of intentions, my memory has again failed me, so I have to thank him namelessly.

And now for some cars. Straight ahead of the entrance is a 1902 Model F, which I believe is the oldest car in the museum. Just to the right of the entrance is the museum’s newest car, a 1958 Packard Hawk. Packard merged with Studebaker in 1954, and the products essentially became Packards in name only. The prominent front corner spot is occupied by a 1934 Super 8 7-passenger Touring car that has carried General Eisenhower, Admiral Nimitz, and other big names.

Many things about this 1934 Super Eight Sport Phaeton impressed me, but I think the two biggest are that it has not been restored and that it was purchased new for a 16-year-old girl who might have been a little bit spoiled. Read its placard here. 

Although this 1941 One Twenty convertible is only seven years newer than the convertible in the last paragraph, it has a column shift which our poor little rich girl may have found easier to drive. Of course, she still might have disliked the color.

Here is that Boat-Tail Speedster whose hood ornament appears in the opening photo. Packard built trucks between 1908 and 1923 and they were used quite a bit by the Army in WW I. The top speed of this 1919 Model E Five Ton Truck is 11 MPH which is no doubt more than enough for a driver depending on those solid rubber tires for cushioning. The 1918 Twin Six Runabout competed in the 2002 Great Race and is now available as a photo prop at the museum.

There is now an enclosed walkway to the museum’s annex. Signs say that post-war cars are featured there, though some might see a problem with the first car pictured. It sure looks like the “Dutch” Darrin-designed cars that people like Clark Gable and Errol Flynn liked to be seen driving in the late 1930s and early 1940s. It is exactly like those because it was built by “Dutch” Darrin using existing castings and molds in 1971. There is no question about the other two pictured cars being post-war. The 1951 200 Club Sedan placed fifth overall in the 1951 Carrera Panamericana with the help of a young mechanic named Pablo Merrigan. In 1995, Merrigan completely restored the car and began racing it himself. The last car pictured is the one that took Don Corleone to the cemetery in The Godfather. It’s a 1948 Henney Landau 3-Way Hearse. The 3-way designation comes from the rear-hinged side doors allowing coffins to be loaded from either side or the rear.

Packard began building cars in Warren, Ohio, in 1899 but moved to Detroit, Michigan, in 1902, where it remained until the merger with Studebaker in 1954. Plans to restore various parts of the immense complex never came to fruition. According to Wikipedia, “By late December 2024, all structural components of the plant had been razed, except for two adjacent sections along E. Grand Boulevard which are slated for preservation.” This is the lintel from the west entrance to the Packard office building on East Grand Boulevard in Detroit.

There is a Packard museum in Warren, and I’ve visited it three times (2011, 2012, 2023) between Friday and my most recent visit to the Dayton museum. The National Packard Museum in Warren and America’s Packard Museum in Dayton are both great museums, and both are worth visiting. I do naturally feel some regional pride in the Dayton museum, and I like that it is housed in a building constructed as a Packard distributorship, which served that purpose for many years and now has its original neon sign hanging outside. Visiting either is good. Both is better.

St. Clair’s Defeat Revisited

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When I got the email about a preview of a new exhibit at Ohio History Connection, I quickly signed up. Only as the date approached and I started looking into the exhibit did I realize that, while I would get to preview the opening of “St. Clair’s Defeat Revisited: A New View of the Conflict,” this would not be the exhibit’s premiere. That had occurred at the Fort Recovery Museum, the actual site of St. Clair’s Defeat, in November of 2023. After spending about two months at Fort Recovery, the exhibit had appeared for nearly four months in Fort Wayne, IN, and more than six months in Miami, OK. The opening I was previewing was its fourth.

The disappointment I felt in this not being the world premiere I initially thought it was, was outweighed by my embarrassment in not knowing of the true world premiere that had happened more than a year before. Food and drink were pretty good compensation, however, and both disappointment and embarrassment were pretty much forgotten at the member’s reception. 

The member’s preview also included a panel presentation and a question and answer session. Bill, whose last name I failed to record, acted as MC, while Kim Rammel and Dr. Kristen Barry supplied the information. Rammel is president of the Fort Recovery Historical Society. Barry is a professor at  Ball State University and a member of the team responsible for the exhibit.

It has been said that history is written by the victors, but while that is generally true of wars, it isn’t always true of individual battles. The “new view” this exhibit provides comes from descendants of the nine Native American tribes that nearly annihilated the entire United States army in 1791. Specific details of the battle differ very little as related by the two sides, but there are differences in its overall assessment. Virtually every description of the battle that I have read attributes the overwhelming success of the native force to errors, poor training, and incompetence on the part of the Americans. Those certainly contributed, but the native’s brilliant plan of attack and its near-perfect execution were at the heart of their victory.

It was great to see the event so well attended even though it meant space to study the exhibits was in short supply. l snapped these pictures during the reception period when the display area was not quite as crowded as it was following the presentation in the auditorium. In addition to the battle, parts of the exhibit are dedicated to Background, Aftermath, and Persistence. The victory brought only a brief respite. In just a few years, a new U.S. Army was victorious at the same site and elsewhere, and the Treaty of Greenville soon followed. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 was followed by forced relocation and the systematic suppression of native culture. The tribes have survived, however. This exhibit spent those months in Oklahoma so descendants of the people who defeated St. Clair could see it.

Two smaller versions of the exhibit have been created. One is on permanent display at Fort Recovery. The other will travel and is currently at the Hopewell Culture National Historical Park near Chillicothe, OH, where it will remain until April 13. The exhibit at the Ohio History Connection runs until August 17.

British Transportation Museum

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I am about to start a string of canned posts during some travel and wanted to put that off a little by making one more “current” post. Remnants of Hurricane Helene have caused many outdoor activities to be canceled or at least made them uninviting. Visiting a new-to-me museum in Dayton was just the sort of indoor activity I was looking for. The British Transportation Museum was founded in 1998 but I first learned of it less than a year ago. Apparently, it was an “appointment only” operation until fairly recently when regular hours, 10:00 to 4:00, were established for Saturdays and Mondays.

The museum is home to sixty-some British cars, a number of bicycles, and a couple of motorcycles and boats. It is an all-volunteer operation, and a round-table discussion was in progress among several of those volunteers when I entered. A fellow named Dave broke away from the group, gave me a brief overview of the museum, then provided a personal guided tour of the whole place.

We started with some small “family” cars that were the heart of the British car industry for many years. The yellow car is a 1961 Morris Minor Sedan. The red one is a 1964 Mini Cooper. About 1.6 million Minors were built between 1948 and 1970. Nearly 5.5 million Minis were built between 1959 and 2000.

I have included the red 1951 MG-TD out of sequence relative to the tour. It and its MG-TC predecessor introduced the sports car concept to the United States. The Lotus Elan was a major influence on the design of the Mazda Miata. A 1972 model is shown here. The Sunbeam Alpine has been repainted to match the one James Bond drove in Doctor No.

This 1979 Triumph Spitfire has just a few thousand miles on the odometer. It was won as a prize in Las Vegas and spent most of its life in a garage.

Following a visit to the museum, members of the British Embassy enquired about supplying cars for an event in Washington, DC. The museum was unable to meet the request but this beautiful 1959 MG-A did make an appearance. The photo propped against the windshield shows dignitaries admiring the car at the ambassador’s home.

Of course, not all British autos were two-seat sports cars or tiny sedans. Several Rolls Royce limousines and big Jaguar saloons are on display and not even all MGs were as small as we Americans tend to think. I believe Dave said the light-colored 1939 MG WA was the largest MG ever built. The darker-colored 1950 MG YA isn’t much smaller.

As mentioned, the museum’s collection includes bicycles, motorcycles, and boats. At present, there are no experts on any of these vehicles involved so no organized displays exist excepting this boat. Donald Healey was quite the collaborator in building cars. Think Austin-Healey, Nash-Healey, and Jensen-Healey. At one point he made boats and collaborated there as well. This time it was with Stirling Moss. That sign is readable here.

There are many more cars on display than I’ve shown here and Dave supplied much more information than I’ve relayed (or remembered). This place is definitely worth a visit.

Entertrainment Farewell?

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On Wednesday, I visited the “World’s Largest Indoor Train Display” for only the second time. My first visit to  Entertrainment Junction was in January 2009 when it was in the news for having recently opened. News articles about the attraction were also behind this week’s visit but this time the stories were about an impending closing rather than a recent opening. As a fan of old roads and the stuff beside them, I am somewhat accustomed to restaurants, motels, and the like facing survival issues when the owner retires. I can even see some similarities between this news and the news in 2020 that Roadside America in Pennsylvania was closing permanently. But Roadside America had operated for eighty-five years before closing. Current plans are for Entertrainment Junction to shut down in January after just sixteen years. 

The model train layout at the Junction was huge when it opened and I don’t know that it has grown much in size since then. It has grown in details such as buildings, people, and other “decorations”.

Familiar names and scenes stand beside tracks occupied by trains that match the represented period. Details, sometimes a little quirky, are everywhere. Examples are the fellow escaping from the jail with the Fox Theater in the background and the shake shop in the full frontal view of the Fox.

Model railroading occupies the bulk of the space but there are plenty of displays devoted to the full-size variety too. The “American Railroad Museum” contains lots of interactive and stationary displays and there is a small theater with railroad videos playing non-stop.

You can also catch some video entertainment at the drive-in where excerpts from Flash Gorden movies and others are playing. There is also a video of the entire model train layout taken by a camera riding one of the trains.

I think the biggest addition that I noticed compared to my 2009 visit was a set of balcony-like structures providing overhead views of some of the train layouts. One of the raised levels contained a model representing Cincinnati’s Coney Island. This was the amusement park on the banks of the Ohio River that was replaced by Kings Island north of the city.

The miniature Coney Island is nice but the main purpose of the upper levels is to provide views like this. From here I could see the kids swimming from the bridge at the left of the middle picture and the fenced-in area just out of frame. The overhead view of the roundhouse offers a great opportunity to show how things have been filled in since 2009 and here is a ground-level look at that turntable in action.

The picture of the step was taken on one of the upper levels but it is just an example of raised platforms that exist just about everywhere there is something to see to help younger and shorter visitors see it. The subway station is an example of something that younger and shorter people can actually see better than us oversized folks.

A “behind the scenes” tour was offered in 2009 and I was treated to a look under some of the tracks and behind some of the magic by owner Don Oeters. There doesn’t appear to be anything like that offered now but there is a big window that provides a view of the railroad’s control center. It is Don’s desire to retire and the lack of a ready buyer that has the Junction scheduled for closure early next year. It is hard for me to imagine this fantastic handbuilt world being abandoned but as things stand that may be what happens. $6.5 million could change that. 

Dulcimers Galore

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A couple of weeks ago, I didn’t even know that a dulcimer museum existed let alone that it was within a dozen miles of my home. On the last Sunday of August, I visited the American Folk Music School/The National Dulcimer Museum and learned that the museum has been in operation for about two years and that the school it shares space with has been there for about five years.

US-42 (a.k.a., Reading Road) splits into separate north and southbound sections in Sharonville, OH, where the museum is located. The windows in the opening photo face the northbound lanes. The entrance and a parking lot are at the rear of the building. When I entered, Vickey Sasser, the knowledgeable and energetic lady behind the operation, had just started a museum tour with a group of people who knew much more about dulcimers than I did. Some were wearing shirts with the logos of assorted area dulcimer clubs and Vickie knew several by name.

There are, of course, factory-made dulcimers but most of the more interesting ones, which means most of those in the museum, are made by individuals. The wide variations in design, materials, and craftsmanship are part of what makes them interesting.

Some well-known builders or performers have multiple instruments in the museum. By far the largest collection of this sort is associated with performer Kevin Roth. That’s Vickey Sasser in the third picture holding a dulcimer that, if I understood her correctly, Kevin had made specifically for a single performance of the national anthem at the 2016 Democratic National Convention.

The museum is preparing a space for a collection of instruments from performer Bing Futch. Bing has performed and conducted workshops at the museum in the past and will be doing both again next June. Available right now is his video of a recent visit to the museum in which he and Vickie provide a much better overview than my few photos and uninformed commentary.

Although the bulk of the instruments displayed at the museum are mountain dulcimers, there are others including hammer dulcimers, autoharps, and flutes. Here Vickey is holding a hurdy-gurdy that I believe was made specifically for the museum. I have seen a few hurdy-gurdys in the past so already had some of my early misconceptions corrected but this one is small and simple and even opens for an up-close view of the internal workings. I think I finally understand how these things work.

Being open just two hours a month is clearly not a lot. Plus, due to another commitment, Vickey will not be opening the museum for its “last Sunday” showing in September. On the other hand, she is often on-site giving lessons and such so, if the scheduled monthly window can’t be made to work for you, there’s a pretty good chance it could be arranged for her to let you in that back door at some other time.