The Lyin' Thing
After a brief hiatus from Tucson and a nice reprieve from the Tucson summer, I drove home yesterday, arriving in the late afternoon, just in time for rush hour.
On the drive home, I happened to stop in the town of Texas Canyon, Arizona. I needed more gasoline and less urine. The place where I stopped to take care of my needs was a convenience store as well as a tourist trap. Not merely a convenience store that sells Arizona souvenirs, this place included a museum--specifically the one that houses "The Thing" that's advertised on billboards along Interstate 10, written in a font reminiscent of 1950s monster movies. The billboards advertise The Thing from miles away, on both sides of the Arizona-New Mexico border. I can remember seeing the billboards when I first moved to Tucson, driving in from the east. Nothing is divulged about The Thing; curiosity is supposed to convince you to take the exit from the Interstate and find out what it is. I never had any interest in stopping, figuring it was probably just gimmicky crap. But when I went to the convenience store and found out the entry fee for the museum--a mere dollar--I decided that no matter how crappy, gimmicky, or otherwise disappointing The Thing is, I wasn't going to feel cheated for the amount I was spending.
I gave the cashier a dollar, and she instructed me to go through the entrance to the museum and follow the yellow footprints through the three buildings that make up the museum. The "footprints" were painted with a stencil on the sidewalks and concrete floors of the buildings. They lead you through three buildings--all of which are metal sheds--the first of which houses a lot of antiques and wood carvings, some with explanatory signs and others without. All of them are dusty, and the dust is present through the remaining two buildings, along with ambiguous white spots here and there that are probably either paint drips or bird droppings.
The second building houses more antiques, along with an assortment of bizarre wooden sculptures, mostly Daliesque human and animal figures that are made from the roots and branches of trees. They would likely frighten a child or someone walking through the building under the influence of a hallucinogen.
The third and final building houses The Thing. A large sign announces that you've reached the finale. You could easily miss the display if it weren't for the sign. You have to walk up to the case and look down to see it. It's not a monster. It's a cadaver--a real one as far as I could tell. At first I was so captured in looking at it that I forgot about the context. It was one of those moments that was isolated in time, detached from the immediate past and immediate future. I looked down at the empty face and decomposing garments that were exposing a rib and a leg bone. I was oblivious to our surroundings.
Then I noticed a necklace around the cadaver's neck. It appeared to be made of bones. I started to wonder if the cadaver, assuming it was real, was removed from a Native American or Polynesian burial site. That's when the context of the display hit me. They were referring to this once living person as a thing. I wondered how often people walked through the museum and thought the display was racist. Repatriation is probably out of the question, since the cadaver is privately "owned" (inasmuch as it's possible to own a person, living or dead), but presenting the cadaver as a monster, a Thing without a human past, adds the proverbial insult to injury. I started to regret paying money to see it.
In retrospect, I don't really know what to make of it, not knowing the origins of the cadaver, or even if it's real or not. Either way, I was glad to be back on the Interstate toward Tucson after I left the place.
This morning I made a garden out of the waste bin that panther_woman (or perhaps a neighbor before her) left behind. I'll be growing scallions and edible peppers. I couldn't find the bean seeds that I had. If I find them later, perhaps I'll plant them.
On the drive home, I happened to stop in the town of Texas Canyon, Arizona. I needed more gasoline and less urine. The place where I stopped to take care of my needs was a convenience store as well as a tourist trap. Not merely a convenience store that sells Arizona souvenirs, this place included a museum--specifically the one that houses "The Thing" that's advertised on billboards along Interstate 10, written in a font reminiscent of 1950s monster movies. The billboards advertise The Thing from miles away, on both sides of the Arizona-New Mexico border. I can remember seeing the billboards when I first moved to Tucson, driving in from the east. Nothing is divulged about The Thing; curiosity is supposed to convince you to take the exit from the Interstate and find out what it is. I never had any interest in stopping, figuring it was probably just gimmicky crap. But when I went to the convenience store and found out the entry fee for the museum--a mere dollar--I decided that no matter how crappy, gimmicky, or otherwise disappointing The Thing is, I wasn't going to feel cheated for the amount I was spending.
I gave the cashier a dollar, and she instructed me to go through the entrance to the museum and follow the yellow footprints through the three buildings that make up the museum. The "footprints" were painted with a stencil on the sidewalks and concrete floors of the buildings. They lead you through three buildings--all of which are metal sheds--the first of which houses a lot of antiques and wood carvings, some with explanatory signs and others without. All of them are dusty, and the dust is present through the remaining two buildings, along with ambiguous white spots here and there that are probably either paint drips or bird droppings.
The second building houses more antiques, along with an assortment of bizarre wooden sculptures, mostly Daliesque human and animal figures that are made from the roots and branches of trees. They would likely frighten a child or someone walking through the building under the influence of a hallucinogen.
The third and final building houses The Thing. A large sign announces that you've reached the finale. You could easily miss the display if it weren't for the sign. You have to walk up to the case and look down to see it. It's not a monster. It's a cadaver--a real one as far as I could tell. At first I was so captured in looking at it that I forgot about the context. It was one of those moments that was isolated in time, detached from the immediate past and immediate future. I looked down at the empty face and decomposing garments that were exposing a rib and a leg bone. I was oblivious to our surroundings.
Then I noticed a necklace around the cadaver's neck. It appeared to be made of bones. I started to wonder if the cadaver, assuming it was real, was removed from a Native American or Polynesian burial site. That's when the context of the display hit me. They were referring to this once living person as a thing. I wondered how often people walked through the museum and thought the display was racist. Repatriation is probably out of the question, since the cadaver is privately "owned" (inasmuch as it's possible to own a person, living or dead), but presenting the cadaver as a monster, a Thing without a human past, adds the proverbial insult to injury. I started to regret paying money to see it.
In retrospect, I don't really know what to make of it, not knowing the origins of the cadaver, or even if it's real or not. Either way, I was glad to be back on the Interstate toward Tucson after I left the place.
This morning I made a garden out of the waste bin that panther_woman (or perhaps a neighbor before her) left behind. I'll be growing scallions and edible peppers. I couldn't find the bean seeds that I had. If I find them later, perhaps I'll plant them.