Field Trip: The World's Largest Dog Museum

Lately we've been finding ourselves on the road from San Antonio to Dallas. This is not an exciting four-hour trip by anyone's definition. The best way to describe it would be...flat. If there are scenic routes and cultural detours along the way, we aren't familiar with them, nor have we wanted to take the extra time to seek them out. We're in a hurry to get from Point A to Point B and back again, which has thus far meant a stop at the Flying J or some other mega-truck stop (the kind with showers and laundromats) and then another stop at one of those bare-bones truck stops (the kind that's just a cluster of picnic tables, vending machines and bathrooms alongside the freeway). I'm a big fan of roadside attractions, weird museums, funny stores, flea markets, old-school diners so it pains me to be making this road trip—with our kids—and not trying to get something out of it. So this past weekend we resolved to do better than stopping at an HEB in Waco and calling it a day.

Early on Sunday morning, despite suffering the effects of drinking way too goddang much Champagne and letting the kids stay up till midnight just cuz it was daylight savings so how bad could it be, we resolved to hit a few points of interest that we'd noted along I-35. First stop was going to be a shimmering silver monolithic dome called the Starship Pegasus in Italy, TX, but it was closed (it's for sale, though, if you're interested). Next stop was The World's Largest Dog Museum. Hey, we like dogs. And this one was affiliated with an antiques mall, the excellently named Antiquibles. Turned out the museum occupied the back corner of this massive warehouse.

I get pretty excited when confronted with something that reminds me of the final scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark, but I knew my kids weren't going to give me more than ten minutes of browse time before they started clamoring to leave. And that would be after they cashed in on their bribes (you can get anything you want for $2 or less! Now leave Mommy alone!).

I was pleased to see the Green Party had made in-roads in these parts; this is definitely not the sort of sentiment you expect to encounter out in the open just north of Waco...

I was also pleased to encounter a new (to me) genre of literature...

But, really, I should know by now not to get excited about antique malls in Texas, even if they are massive and have a great name and a dog museum housed in the back. I hardly ever find anything I want. The inventory tends to be all overpriced Western collectibles and Texana (stuff I used to purchase ironically when I lived in NYC) and oak furniture and prints and dolls. Blah. I bought two vintage children's books and a totally gratuitous stuffed bear for the 5-year-old ($1.95—she cashed in on the bribe while the older one didn't want to look, she just wanted to LEAVE).

I hit the Dog Museum on my way out; the rest of the family had thoroughly explored the exhibit during those fleeting moments I was shopping. I think the term museum is used loosely here; it is most definitely a massive collection (over 7,000 they say, and I believe them) of dog tchotchkes of every stripe. Some showcases were loosely organized by breed (poodles and greyhounds were very well represented); others were devoted to canine pop cultural icons (Nipper, Pluto, Lassie et al.). I don't think anyone is spending a lot of time with a feather duster in there. Apparently the owners started the collection back in the late ’60s and it just blossomed, the way collections do, into something much bigger than that. As their sign proudly proclaims, the museum was the subject of a segment on An American Moment, a short-lived late-90s TV series hosted by Charles Karault and James Earl Jones. Would that all of our collections could achieve that kind of recognition! I'm thinking particularly of an estate sale I went to a couple of weeks ago, at the home of a woman who obsessively collected and crafted owls. Her grim little tract house was certainly The World's Largest Owl Museum, or at least the largest one I've ever seen. Will post the pics soon.

Field trip: Fred Smith's Wisconsin Concrete Park

The drive from our cabin in northern Wisconsin to Minneapolis on Saturday was five hours, and I withstood a great deal of temptation along the way. I'm not talking about the temptation to scarf entire bags of Combos chased with big bottles of Diet Coke (which I don't even drink in real life!) at every gas station rest stop I rolled into. I'm talking about the temptation to hit the brakes for every yard sale, flea market, junk shoppe and consignment store scattered along our incredibly scenic route. The only thing Wisconsin seems to have more of than dairy farms, cornfields and taverns is thrifting opportunities. God bless America and all of her glorious bounty!

Sadly it was not for me. I wasn't traveling alone and not one of my travel companions shared my junking obsession, especially those companions under the age of 10. They were definitely not interested in stopping anywhere unless it involved copious amounts of ice cream and even that was no guarantee. I had to be satisfied with the memory of the one flea market I managed to hit in Wisconsin (held every Tuesday at the Lions Club in Boulder Junction, should you ever find yourself in that beauteous corner of the Cheese Curd State—it's totally worth it!).

But the disappointment in not being able to spend money on random old stuff that probably wouldn't have fit in my suitcase was forgotten when I found out we'd be able to stop at Fred Smith's Wisconsin Concrete Park.

I've known about Fred's garden of whimsical-sublime statuary since my days of buying Ripley's Believe it or Nots (and Ripley rip-offs) from the Scholastic Bookmobile. His life follows the classic outsider-artist trajectory: Born in 1886, he worked in the Wisconsin woods as a lumberjack, never learning to read or write. At the age of 63, pretty much out of nowhere, he started making art. Don't you love those late-bloomer stories? It gives me hope that one day I'll be overcome by some vision that will inspire me to assemble all my estate-sale finds into art, tapping creative gifts I never knew were at my disposal. Smith's folksy, unhelpful explanation for his sudden and uncanny ability: "It's gotta be in ya to do it!"

I've always been into outsider art and certainly the artist's personal narrative is a big part of the appeal. I've seen exhibits of some of the great—Henry Darger, A.G. Rizzoli—at museums and it's definitely a very different deal to see the art in its native environment; in Smith's case, in the green piney lakey fishy flat north woods of Wisconsin. The garden is located right next to the highway in what used to be the yard surrounding his home and his Rock Garden Tavern, which he built with the help of local stonemasons, in 1936. Sadly the tavern no longer stands on the property but based on the description and photos in the monograph we bought at the gift shop, The Art of Fred Smith by Lisa Stone and Jim Zanzi, it was likely the Greatest Bar of All Time.

The Wisconsin Concrete Park feels like a lot of things, none of which are a museum. Maybe it was just the mossy green carpet, the shade trees, the breezy blue-sky day but it felt like a cemetery. The beautiful kind of cemetery, like I've seen in Helsinki and Rome. The statues, many of them clad in identical hats, staring sentry-like, reminded me of that terracotta army in China, not that I've seen them in person, only in Ripley's (are they in a museum?). It's also like one of those roadside outdoor furniture/garden statuary emporiums (Fountains of Wayne?). Mostly, it's like, wow.

I wish I'd had all day to study the garden, to unravel all the allusions. Seriously, if this place were a poem, it would have more footnotes than "The Wasteland." To commune with Smith's sculptures of Abe and Mary Todd Lincoln, the Budweiser Clydesdales, the Lone Ranger's horse Silver, the Statue of Liberty, Iwo Jima, Paul Bunyan and all the anonymous deer, moose, not mention the mythic muskie dragged by a team of horses. To ponder the cryptic stories he'd dictated to a typist, which you can now read on aluminum plaques alongside some of the sculptures (I've included one below).

But the kids, you know—the kids. They were into it but they have limits. After storming the gift shop and availing themselves of the restrooms, they were ready to motor. I was pleased that my older daughter read the monograph for the next half hour of the journey, before getting sucked back into the Sound of Music DVD playing on the laptop. I think it's time I dust off my collection of Ripley Believe It or Nots—someone is definitely ready.