A Trip to Tinkertown

One of my many interests is finding and enjoying the off the wall museums you run into on the road.  I was really thrilled today when Drake found one of these jewels, and THEN, he actually suggested we go tour it.  These types of outings go all the way back to when we first moved to Texas in the early 1970's, and I discovered "The Beeville Museum".  This was the outcome of the Beeville Texas historical society (which no doubt met around someone's kitchen table) trying to preserve their local history through collecting and displaying pioneer family artifacts.

It was carefully curated in a surprisingly sophisticated way.  I've seen this style of museum all over the United States, and even in Twillingate, New Foundland.  Some are successful, and others less so. They all have one thing in common:  They are a community's vision of who their people are.

First, you have to admire the execution of a pretty complex idea which involves lots and lots of people having to agree.  Second, these kinds of places have a 'vision' of who they think they are.  Third, to sustain these museums takes real dedication to the idea and vision their history is important.

It's a step farther to see the display of one obsessive person's collection. There was the "Fairbanks Museum of Natural Science" in Vermont which was the collection of a self proclaimed naturalist who gathered monumental amounts of everything that came into his path.  There was the bird carving museum in Nova Scotia.  And who could forget "The Christmas Museum" in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.  The Tinkertown Museum, on the Turquoise Trail between Albuquerque and Santa Fe is this kind of museum

RJ Ward (1940 - 2002) was a 'whittler'.  For those of you who have never tried whittling, you take a pocket knife and a block of wood and carve out 'something'.  It could be a person, a thing, a building, an animal - well, you get the idea - the world's your oyster.  Mr. Ward whittled and whittled and whittled.  He carved an entire circus.  He carved an entire New Mexican pioneer town.  He carved a boot hill.  He carved a doll house and all the furniture.  He cared horses, wagons, carts, and just about anything else you can think of.  He just kept whittling.  

When he wasn't whittlin', he was collecting license plates, bottles, and horse shoes to name a few things.  He was constructing his museum out of concrete which he used like modeling clay.  There are embedded shells, stones, bottles, pieces of turquoise, broken china and just about anything else you can  push into soft cement before it sets up.  And, there are the old 'booth' fortune tellers, grip measuerers, love meters, and one man band each of which you can get to play for just a quarter.  If you are mystified, think the 'booth' fortune teller Tom Hanks encounters in the movie "Big".  

Then, hand paint signs which offer all sorts of witty advice generally said by other people over the ages.  Connect the various 'rooms' with a boardwalk painted barn red.  Stir it all together and you have The Tinkertown Museum.  It was a hoot and a half.  It's still being run by family members, and all these obsessively whittled and collected objects so carefully arranged are slowly rotting away.  I think cleaning the place and the objects would take two full time people working 52 weeks a year.

The pictures tell the story:  Prepare to be amazed.

  https://goo.gl/photos/YZYN7sKoCWt7MP3e6