Note: Since I don’t have anything new to talk about today, I am reposting a blog about an interesting place we visited years ago in New Mexico that is still popular with visitors.
After spending yesterday morning checking and answering e-mail, we spent the afternoon playing tourist. We took a ride to the Tinkertown Museum, which is billed as New Mexico’s premiere folk art museum. Several readers had suggested we go there and I’m glad they did. This place was amazing!
The lifework of artist Ross Ward, who spent over 40 years carving, collecting, and building Tinkertown, it will delight the child inside of everyone who visits, no matter their age. Ward used over 50,000 glass bottles to build a maze-like 22-room attraction that houses a fascinating collection of antiques and memorabilia, including old coin operated sideshow machines like Otto the One-Man-Band and Esmerelda the Fortune Teller. Drop a quarter in the coin slot and they come to life.
Most fascinating are the thousands of animated miniature wood carved figures arranged in hilarious scenes. One diorama is an Old West town, another is a circus complete with trained tigers and acrobats, yet another is a spooky Boot Hill, complete with dancing skeletons. The figures were originally part of a traveling exhibit that appeared at county fairs and carnivals across the country in the 1960s and 1970s.
There are also collections of antique tools, wedding cake figurines, old toys and dolls. Even a neat old 35 foot long wooden sailboat that Ward’s brother-in-law spent ten years sailing around the world in!
Outside there are Old West storefronts, metal sculptures from trash and castoff farm machinery and more. One of the many signs in the museum pretty much sums it all up with a quote by Thomas Edison, “Invention consists of imagination and a scrap heap.”
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Thought For The Day – I know the voices in my head aren’t real, but they do come up with some really cool ideas!
Nick Russell
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