Circus World Museum

Memories, Things, Travel, ,

I’ve just come across a souvenir booklet for the Circus World Museum that my parents must have bought for me on our trip there in the summer of 1972. I’m not sure why I felt I needed a booklet about the museum because I don’t remember really liking it much. In fact the only thing I remember about it was a clown talking to my dad out of character. I wrote about it on my Snapshots of my Life blog.

Baraboo is even more memorable to me. It was there I began my dislike for clowns. The museum put on a circus show several times daily and we got in late and didn’t have a seat so we stood by the opening to the tent. The clown act ended and one of the clowns came over, stood by my dad and said, “Hell of a way to make a living”. That in itself is not a reason to dislike clowns, but it ruined the magic for me. Clowns were supposed to be happy or tragic, but not dislike their occupation.

Me 2005

Colleen Moore’s Fairy Castle

Musings, Places, Things, , , ,

I grew up in a town not far from Chicago. Chicago has several museums and in grade school our classrooms visited them often. My favorite museum was the Museum of Science and Industry. Its exhibits were memorable including the coal mine where an elevator took you “below the earth” (actually you started up high and it only seemed you were far underground) where a train awaited you and took you on a tour of the mine and the, now gone, room of fetuses in glass jars and cross sections of a human body that were preserved between two pieces of plexiglass.

My favorite exhibit, however, was Colleen Moore’s Fairy Castle. I could stand for hours looking into that exquisite dollhouse at the tiny rooms filled with miniature furniture. I imagined myself suddenly becoming tiny enough to wander through the fairy castle, napping on Sleeping Beauty’s bed in the princess’ bedroom, bathing in the princess’ silver tub, eating at King Arthur’s table in the dining room.

I loved it so much that I bought myself a souvenir booklet describing the dollhouse so I could see inside the dollhouse from the comfort of my own home. I still have that booklet and I still look through it now and then. And still, fifty-something years later, I like to pretend I’m small enough to live in the castle, but now I visit the magic garden and library too.

Grandma’s Tablecloth

Memories, Musings, Reading, Things, ,

I’m reading a book, Wish You Well, that takes place in Southwestern Virginia in the early 1940s. In it the great-grandmother of one of the protagonists sews her a “feed sack dress”, a term new to me. Of course I asked Professor Google and was surprised to learn that feed sack companies made feed sack material dual purpose. The first, a container for the feed, the second a dress or apron or other cloth-made item. The material was not just white or off-white with lettering printed on it, but floral, or striped, or otherwise decorated. I remembered a cotton tablecloth my Grandma Patrick had on her kitchen table and wondered if it could have been made out of a feed sack. I was lucky to be given it and used it on my table for a while. I had no idea where it was, but today I serendipitously came across it while going through boxes for a different reason.

The tablecloth has a pattern of different types of flowers on a gray background with a crochet trim. The material is is soft to the touch, but strong. I’m willing to bet it was made from a feed sack, but of course no one is left to confirm my suspicion.

I’ve decided that it should not sit in a plastic bag in the storage area of my attic, but be displayed somewhere in the house. It’s now covering a too-dark bedside table in the purple guest room.