5844. OLD TIME MUSEUMS

OLD TIME MUSEUMS

Old time museums were the best : the kind, the funky kind

with shrunken heads and scalped soldiers shown in disarray.

Earthquake upheavals where the shards and ash were still stuck

onto people's bodies in glass cases. Vesuvius and Pompeii kind

of stuff. And then paintings of all those beheaded monsters and

befouled maidens dying in lust for Jesus. Stigmata and sacred hearts,

girls muttering prayers while the devil ate their parts. A six-gun

on display, from 1881, with a barrel  -  the card said  -  as long as

'Wanderlust Billy's penis'. A gift from some showgirl at a hotel

in Philly. The shovels and the pickaxes of the forty-niners who never

came back. San Francisco Earthquake gold. The shoes of Diamond

Jim Brady and the waistcoat of Tom Thumb. And then, those huge

rooms filled with paintings of old Egyptian scenes  -  finding the

Sphinx half buried in sand, Oriental Masters levitating  -  all that

fine and crazy stuff for maybe twenty-five old cents. 

I loved those old museums best.