Our days come and go with little redundancy or mediocrity. However, there are some moments that will go down in infamy rather than awe. This day had one very unfortunate and extended period where time stood still and not in a good way. It will severely challenge my verbal skills as the photos can never capture the experience and what was happening during this time in Purgatory.
"Henager Memories and Nostalgia Museum" - Buckskin, Indiana (aka. "The Loneliest Museum in the World" - we now know why.
BIGGEST - OLDEST - RAREST - ONLY - LARGEST - SMALLEST - BEST - ONE OF A KIND
Welcome to the bizarre world of James Henager. Everything in this place was the utmost in some manner. There is no way to describe the longest nearly three hour tour (almost equal to the fate of the S.S. Minnow).
It all began innocently enough.... we had trouble finding the targeted museum/road side attraction. A detour, new highways and highway name changes led to an almost invisible driveway with no related signage. We pulled in and were greeted shortly by a face that was not welcoming nor unfriendly. Kind of in a world of his own. We had somehow stepped through some sort of inter-dimensional portal. The first sign that we were in for something beyond our Oddasee desires was when my query about having arrived in the right place was followed with, "Oh, this is the right spot and you're going to be here for a very long time." Uh oh! What does that mean? We find out soon enough. I'll spare you some of the details but let's just say that we were in for a very long ride.....
After finally getting beyond the sales pitch and brochures for his numerous causes, we were finally led through the office into his shop. Jim's "real job" is furniture and cabinet builder. The next marker of things to come was when we had barely set feet upon the shop floor when we were asked, "What is special about this sander?" Well we were told/hammered to death with the fact that is the heaviest portable sander ever made. Then there was the band saw and the pile of saw dust and a friggin sawhorse. All were extraordinary in some sort of "est" way. God we were still in the shop and didn't even know what level of hell he was about to lead us into or where that might even be.
Then came the greenhouse of mostly dead plants (the most "deadest" I might add). There was the largest cactus in Indiana - "Bet you didn't expect to see that." There were tales of hurricanes (in Indiana?) and the loss of the tallest rubber tree in....? The room? Who knows?
Finally moving on from the saddest Botanic Gardens in the World, we were taken to the staircase that we hoped led to the actual museum and not the state's largest suspended commode. Before being allowed to ascend the stairway to Heaven we heard, "Some day this museum will be more important and popular than the Smithsonian. Why you ask? (no we didn't) Because it it will be the much more friendly." Oh... my... God.... let the delusions of grandeur begin.
Eventually being blessed with entrance into the sure-to-be-life-changing institution of great things, we quickly were made aware of the fact there will be no willy-nilly walking around. Oh no, "We (who's the 'we'?, imaginary friends perhaps?) have a very specific order in which you will be guided as best to inform and entertain you. So, follow me." This meant take one step and pause for the longest description of a sign in the shape of a hammer - "The largest in the USA and maybe the world" that has ever been uttered.
We cannot begin to relay the slow step-by-step journey that was inflicted upon us. There was the video of Abraham Lincoln, the "Can you guess who this is singing this?" recording (it was Dinah Shore and if only I could have dredged that from the bowels of my soul, we may not have had to listen to the entire song), the 50's TV stuttering it's way through old commercials, the Hollywood westerns sections, the old albums, the Smokey the Bear display, the endless celebrity photos and the eternal stories about every minutia that related to the best/onliest/largest/most valuable of whatever struck our balmy guide.
In the name of not replaying the whole nightmare this is a mostest abbreviated synopsis that has ever been written about this edifice of, well, everything. There was a room of old military uniforms right next to a room of Christmas trees and holiday related stuff. Say what? It was the longest week/3 hours of our lives.
Throughout we both caught each other's glances and pleas of mercy on our lips. You may ask why we didn't just leave? Oh you poor naive albeit lucky armchair Oddaseers. It was not that simple dear friends. It was a slow slog into Jim's quicksand. Even if one could ignore his "One more thing" statements (made Columbo diatribes sound succinct) or the ever present "What/who is this? quizzes, there was hardly room for two people to pass in this claustrophobic cavern.
The hardest thing to describe was how sincere this poor guy was. He is genuine in his belief that these things are the "Best" and "how lucky we are to get to see them." He relished deeply getting to share it all with us. He is so abjectly lonely that we feared he might take the oldest sword in America and lop off his own most baldest head. He really was the most pathetic creature either of us had ever encountered. It would have been like kicking the proverbial puppy. Try as we may by hinting at having to leave and other appointments or our impending heart surgery, it all flew over his head. We almost made it out a few times but after comments like, "Oh no, she's wandering off" or "Don't look that way, we'll go there later" and my favorite, "Sit here and wait for the video to begin." It was all an impossible maze of eternally trivial but self-aggrandizing facts and information.
Add to this madness that we were kind of hungry before the trap had been put into place and then nothing to drink for the two and half plus hours in the most warmest garage attic in this seventh level of Dante/Jim's hell... Hare Kare seemed the only way out...."where's the Kevorkian panel (everything was a panel)?"
Our life-sentences were f...i...n...a...l...l...y commuted and we all but sprinted to the truck. There was no looking back (sure to turn into the saltiest pillar had we done so). There was no photography of the building or even James (see internet pic as reference) himself. It was a flight not fight. Upon reaching the highway there was an unplanned but unavoidable stereophonic primal scream from your two brain dead and souless wayward travelers. It was the loudest most longest yell fest in the whole entire world. Just think, you only have read the abridged/edited version. Sorry but you simply cannot comprehend how we felt. To get closer to the full affect stick a needle in your eye, a fork in your ear and add a full blown case of fatal hemorrhoids.....oy oh oy!
Then we went to the "Providence Home Geode Grotto" created by Father Thaddeus Sztuczko in Jasper, IN. It was beautiful, serene and had some huge hibiscus flowers. The grotto and flowers helped heal our eyes and souls. Enough said...
The End.
Love and Suicide,
Rodney and Susan - or what's left of them.
The End.
Love and Suicide,
Rodney and Susan - or what's left of them.
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