Tinkertown Museum

Stephen has been spending a lot of time working on his Camaro, and he has to go to Texas for work this week, so he proposed that we spend Sunday afternoon doing something fun together.  We first noticed the Tinkertown Museum last fall, but it had closed for the season.  Since then, the daughter of the founder has had a book published about the place, and interview on the local University radio station renewed my interest in seeing it.  Here is an excerpt from the Museum website,

"It took Ross Ward over 40 years to carve, collect, and lovingly construct what is now Tinkertown Museum. His miniature wood-carved figures were first part of a traveling exhibit, driven to county fairs and carnivals in the 1960s and ’70s. Today over 50,000 glass bottles form rambling walls that surround a 22-room museum. Wagon wheels, old fashioned store fronts, and wacky western memorabilia make Tinkertown’s exterior as much as a museum as the wonders within."

There is a sign in the museum that reads, "This is what I was doing while you were watching TV."
The dioramas of Old West scenes with carved wooden people, some of which move when you push buttons in the wall, are detailed and feature a very specific sense humor.  In addition to these, the building itself, with its low ceilings, wood or cement and bottle walls,  and narrow hallways that change level room by room, is amazing.  There's no possible way to see everything in one visit because you could spend hours standing in one place, turning 360 degrees then looking down at the floor, which is decorated with license plates in many areas, then up at the ceiling to see pictures, signs, or architectural oddities.  There are hand painted signs everywhere featuring wit and wisdom from various sages and from Ross Ward himself.  The outside is as interesting as the inside.  At one point, you leave the building, walk across a ramshackle footbridge over a weedy, grassy area, and come to a pole barn with a sailboat inside it and the story of how a man circumnavigated the globe in this dubious craft.  We never did figure out how the boat got to New Mexico! 

I'm afraid my photos don't tell a complete story, so you'll just have to come visit.  For those of you who were on the Maine Mission trip, it kind of reminded me of Corinne's place with the yurt and cabins connected by walkways.  It was hard to take pictures of that too!