Sometimes, it can be easy to be a bit cynical about being an
American. When I was more engaged and outrage-addicted to social media, I
wouldn't find much of an argument when international friends would tease that
America doesn't have its own cultural identity besides war, money, and
McDonalds. A horrific and grim "joke," but one that I think upset
people so easily because they could feel the stinging introspection it elicits. I deeply love history, learning local lore, and visiting all of our natural treasures... but I'm reminded of other posts I've seen online, again (and always) posted in a
depressing light, of schoolchildren sharing what they think of when asked about
their country, and then seeing loads of crudely drawn brand logos, such as
Starbucks, Apple, and the aforementioned McDonalds.
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| An allegedly haunted doll greets all visitors to the museum |
Is this really what our children view as their culture?
Brands? It was a dismal thought. But I dug into it a bit deeper and tried to
find some positivity in that realization. Sure, in late-stage capitalism,
corporations have of course forced themselves into some sort of
pseudo-religious grip over the masses and overconsumption seems to be the
hallmark of all "trends" online, but was it always like this? I think
in any society geared first and foremost towards serving capital, that is a
natural conclusion. But I think it's easier to find novelty and sincerity
around marketing the further back you go in history.
The almighty dollar always had a hand in things, for better or worse, but it felt more human when it wasn't blasted at you from every angle at every single waking second of the day. It wasn't a handful of megacorporations forcing a monoculture, maybe the phrase "mom and pop shops" actually meant something other than socially incoherent small business owners who have a blood oath to vote against their own interests while being loud about it on Facebook. Companies felt compelled to draw customers and attention with whimsy, beautiful art, or just plain weird attractions. They weren't broadcasting to the world in some sort of meaningless, knuckle-dragging culture war manufactured online, but just creating something that would make people pull over to the side of the highway and ask, "why is there a giant dinosaur outside of this gas station?" Or, "do you want to have our child's birthday party at a pizza place hosted by an electronic singing rat?"
There is a place, one free from the cynicism of living under
this bloated structure, that instead chooses to celebrate and curate those
charming oddities of yesteryear. A lot of it could be called junk, and the
direct descendants of the overconsumption that is "celebrated"
today... but the fact that they were once contemporary and a piece of our
everyday lives, and are now secure and properly taken care of, is something
admirable.
Not too far from the Valley Forge National Monument is the
American Treasure Tour Museum, which proudly displays and celebrates all of
those weird things you saw on the side of the road during family trips, things
that once lived in temporary amusement attractions or carnivals, and all sorts
of decor that might have once lived in a theme park somewhere. The lights and
sounds you remember from your childhood, the characters that interrupted your
Saturday morning cartoons once upon a time, the traffic signs that once got you
safely from the airport to a favorite family vacation spot... they're all
there.
And my time visiting allowed me to drop that cynical front
and simply appreciate these pieces for what they are.
The building that the Tour now resides in was formerly a tire
factory for the B.F. Goodrich Company and opened in 1937. It closed in 1986 and
was then repurposed. During the tour, you can still see many telltale signs of
its former life, with various industrial grooves dug into the concrete, sliding
metal doors, etc. but with how well-constructed the collection and its design
are, it feels as if it was purpose-built for the Tour.
All of these weird pieces of Americana belong to a private
collector, one anonymous individual who has gone out of their way to remain in shadows.
The collector had been accumulating for many years and then opened the Tour to
the public in 2010. Its current iteration is a tour situated on a long tram
car, guided by a recording that talks about the collection, with some humor added
to the mix by the driver of the tram car caravan.
Once seated, the tram guides you through a large collection
of classic cars, vintage advertising signs, animatronics, store displays,
figures, dolls and their houses, movie and pop culture memorabilia, and more.
Before and after the tram tour, you can browse a smaller collection, as well as
a room full of Nickelodeons, the large automatic music machines, on foot.
The museum's stated goal is to celebrate, broadly,
"popular culture," and items from the pre-digital age, offering both
nostalgia and curiosity. The collector believes that preserving these items
might give them a home, otherwise they may have become lost to history. That
much I can appreciate.
There's no stated theme or period represented in the Tour.
There will be Halloween decorations from Spirit Halloween 2010 posted up next
to vintage decor from the 50's, and then you'll see the original band from
Chuck E. Cheese next to a giant gas station Gumby, followed closely by a decommissioned
golf cart from Disneyland. It's not an academic museum, but is instead a
nebulous snapshot of what may have once been the American Dream. And... it's
beautiful for it. Truly. I smiled for most of my visits.
When we first took the public tour, we greatly enjoyed the
experience, but did feel a bit disappointed that we were confined to the tram
car for a majority of the museum's collection. We wanted to roam. Some of the
scales of the pieces were massive. Sometimes the tram tour didn't take as much
time as you may have wanted at a certain part of the collection. As we had
left, we both had remarked that we'd love to do just that: roam the collection,
on foot and unfettered.
I was lucky enough to find a way to do just that. Later in
the year, I was able to access the museum after hours, with a handful of others
who wished to take closer photographs, free from the confines of the tram car.
We were outgunned from the get-go, as neither of us are hardcore photographers,
but we took this opportunity to do just what we had wished aloud to do after
our first visit. Let them set up tripods and take long-exposures... I wanted to
look up Gumby's leg like I was about to slay a colossus.
There was something much more intimate about being able to
approach these displays. As I described in the beginning of this text, so many
of these pieces seemed ripped from our childhoods, or resemble something that
may have belonged to a memory your parents may have once relayed to you. Or
even one passed down by your grandparents. A vast majority of the items are
commercial displays, sure, but they no longer have the ability to sell you
something. They're simply odd pieces of tacky art, something that was once out
in the wilds of this turbulent, adolescent country.
While there are many historic accounts, technological
breakthroughs, all-too-human experiences, and medical breakthroughs in the
canon of the American story, in the cynicism of today, it could be hard to find
a positive, single image of an identity. But all of these bizarre components of
a unique collection kind of dissembles all of those historic perquisites.
Perhaps all of those images and colors and sounds all do congeal and blur
together and form some sort of collective memory that we all share in and add
to. Maybe they add to the palate of what many of our everyday lives consist of.
They might not be fine pieces of art, but they are the neighbors of our
everyday struggles and triumphs, elations and heartbreaks. They are the saccharine,
inorganic set dressings of our actual stories, but they are no lesser for it,
when seen in the aggregate. There is a beauty there.
And maybe that's even something close to approaching a
shared, definitive culture.
