Monday, October 7, 2013

Get the hell outta....

One of my goals when I set out in March was to see a lot of museums, the good stuff and the oddball places. Last week I stopped in Dodge City, Kansas, and it was one of the good ones. I expected tacky and didn't get it.


Most of the items in the collection came from Charlie Beeson, who apparently had them piled here and there around his house before moving them to the Beeson Museum. I can only assume his wife said to get all that junk out of the house. Boot Hill Museum acquired many of the 60,000 items in the collection, which date from the 1870s through the 1920s, from the Beeson Museum when it closed in 1964.
 
A nice row of store fronts, maybe the original strip mall, has working sections such as the saloon, the photo parlor, and the restaurant. Other stores have museum exhibits of such things as farm equipment, dry goods, a barber shop, and a tooth-drawer.


The apothecary has a display case of tonics and patent medicines, including Canadian Hemp, Persian Pills, and Cramp Bark. No idea what good they were supposed to do.




Another section of the store fronts displays a bank teller's cage with a marvelous safe.




Here's something I can identify with, having peeled bushels of apples over the years with an automatic peeler, but nothing as formidable as this.




The Union Church:

This is from the Boot Hill museum's website:

"The interdenominational Union Church, which our church exhibit replicates, was built in 1874 or 1875 at First Avenue and Spruce Street, north of the downtown. It cost $1,000 to construct and held at least 100 worshipers.
"The Union Church used circuit preachers and hosted a wide variety of community functions. Dodge City had a reputation in its early days of being a place so wild and sinful that even God did not venture into her city limits. The Rev. Ormond W. Wright sought to change this when he went to Front Street saloons and gambling houses to solicit funds to maintain this church as a place where cowboys and settlers alike could join together to practice their faith in Christ.
"Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson were deacons of this new church. The Union Church was the first building constructed in Dodge City dedicated to the practice of religion. With the construction of this building began the taming of the 'wickedest little city in America.'"










These communion cups fascinate me. Catholics used nothing of the kind and never got wine at all until after Vatican II.



A separate building had an impressive exhibit on the Plains Indians. I was especially taken with how the arrowheads were displayed, which reminded me of the head of a stalk of wheat.


Imagine the skill involved in knapping arrowheads like these. Just think of working for a couple of hours and dang! the final strike turns it into rubble.


Lamp posts around town are flagged with historical scenes such as this one. Dodge City has made the most of its history in a very nice way. I'm glad I stopped.

 =======
Thought of the day:

What is life?
It is the flash of a firefly in the night.
It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime.
It is the little shadow which 
    runs across the grass 
       and loses itself in the sunset.

(Crowfoot, Blackfoot Warrior and Orator)