Photos: The Road Home (Deming-Luna-Mimbres Museum, Deming, NM)

[thehefner]

TL;DR's rejoice! No long-winded writings this time! This is pretty much purely a photo post!








That's right, I remember now. I slept in the "Welcome to New Mexico!" rest area. I remember because the first thing I wanted to do was to head down to the town of Lorsburg, one of the book's suggested destinations, to snag some Mexican food from El Charro, a 24-hour diner. Leave it to me to find the only 24-hour diner closed at 7 in the morning.





In the town of Deming, NM, I visited the strange Deming-Luna-Mimbres Museum, housed in an old armory building, which accounts for the random tank out front:





This is one of several small-town museums that feel more like emporium-sized antique shops. It's like someone found a whole bunch of odd stuff that they couldn't sell, but couldn't stand to throw out either, so they opened a museum. Maybe they did it out of love. In my Tombstone post, pure_doxyk mentioned a special kind of love, and I think it applies here. It's the kind of love that "transcends uselessness."

















Typewriters!















Of course, the only thing to get a genuine rise out of me was that they had a Stay-Puft figure in its original packaging! MEM-REES. (who would win in a fight between Stay-Pufy and Jesse "The Body" Ventura?)

Comments

[gnort.livejournal.com]

I have that Stay Puft figure! Not in the original packaging of course, but it's sitting on top of my television in my room.

[kiffie.livejournal.com]

No picture of you, riding the tank, going "Pew! Pew!" ?

I am disappointed.

I want that Underwood.

[tragical-mirth.livejournal.com]

Dude, I don't know that I could have left without that Jesse Ventura action figure.

[superfan1.livejournal.com]

Nice pictures! Didn't know there was a Jesse Ventura action figure lol.

[pure-doxyk.livejournal.com]

IRON LUNGS WITH DUMMY HEADS.

Okay, I think that's all I need for today...going back to bed. Any further Win the Internet has will have to wait for tomorrow.

[jackolantern.livejournal.com]

I read somewhere that most big-city museums, even the ones that are now serious academic institutions, started out as places for rich people to dump stuff when they cleaned out their attics. Small-town museums are like that, only the people generally aren't rich and the stuff doesn't get restored or even properly preserved. I went to this "pioneer village"-type place near Fargo (which is pretty small-town in feel, if not exactly in size) several years ago, and one building had a lot of things like your room-o-typewriters above--old phone equipment and such--and although some of it was arranged in that sort of scrapbooky/curio-cabinet fashion, a lot of it was just sort of plunked down, sometimes with a label, sometimes not. Did it still work? If not, could it be made to work? Is there anyone who is still alive that could fix or restore it? Who knows? We've got space and plenty of it, let's find a Formica table to put it on.

[jackolantern.livejournal.com]

Well, whaddaya know--it's called Bonanzaville (http://www.bonanzaville.org/) and has its very own Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonanzaville,_USA). I may have been more impressed if I'd been there during Pioneer Days.