Dream Bigger
Missing: Three little pigs
One of the common dramas of domestic life is the wildly inappropriate gift of artwork given to you by someone who expects you’ll hang it with pride in a prominent spot in your home. Parents of young children deal with this all the time, of course. You may think refrigerators were invented to preserve food. In fact, they were created solely as a temporary display board for kiddie artwork (with emphasis on the “temporary”).
My guess is the Stephenville Museum wishes it had a really big refrigerator.
Earlier this week, I mentioned to a Stephenville resident that I’d briefly stopped at the museum one afternoon. “Did you see the wolf?” she asked. There was something between a smirk and a grimace on her face.
“No, I didn’t stay long,” I said. “But I’m going back tomorrow.”
“Oh you can’t miss it,” she said, and left it at that.
Boy howdy, she was right. That thing cannot be overlooked. To see what I mean, walk with me now around the grounds of the museum. Here, for instance, is the Berry Cottage, built in 1869 by Col. J.D. Berry (who was actually a sergeant in the Confederate army, but as the museum explains, “Confederate veterans were frequently referred to as Colonel regardless of their actual rank”):
There are also pioneer cabins, some with flowers out front …
… and one with cacti and a windmill:
Here’s how one of them looked inside:
Every museum of the Old West needs a covered wagon, of course:
Then there’s the schoolhouse:
A little beyond the schoolhouse, at the back of the museum grounds and out of sight of most of the other attractions, you come upon this huge metal wolf:
Note the lascivious look on its face. Note the money clutched in its hand and jammed in its back pocket. What the devil is this thing? That very question was asked, a bit more politely, by an elderly couple from Michigan visiting the museum at the same time I was there. Our guide explained that the wolf is a longstanding Stephenville landmark that had been donated to the museum by the fellow who’d commissioned it. I later noticed a few more details on this sign attached to the wolf’s leg:
The guide added, “[The donor] wanted it right out in the front, but that wasn’t going to happen.” I think this is the museum equivalent to hanging a bad gift painting in the garage.
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