![]() ![]() As yet another of those signs says: “This museum was built for amusement purposes only. Still, this is the kind of place where you can’t help but walk out with a smile on your face. I can understand the impulse to contribute: while I’m chatting to Preble on our way out, he asks me if I make things too, and I feel I’m letting him down when I confess I don’t. (Another sign reads: “Reduce clutter, give me your stuff.”) Preble has been working on the collection for the best part of 20 years and people show up quite often with items to donate. These days, the Abita Mystery House’s website proudly proclaims it to be Lousiana’s most eccentric attraction and quotes the long-time former director of the New Orleans Museum of Art, who called it the State’s “most intriguing and provocative museum”.Īdmission, in the end, is $US3 - small change for somewhere you could happily spend hours. He in turn was inspired by a visit to Tinkertown, a folk-art museum in New Mexico. But there’s also something labelled “the harmless Quackigator”, with the head and webbed feet of a duck and the body of an alligator, and “the ferocious, feathered, flying Alliduck”, with an alligator head and duck’s body.įounded in 2000, this self- made world is the brainchild of local painter John Preble, who waves us through from behind the counter on our way in (“you can pay later,” he tells us). Of these, Daryl the Dogigator (part dog, part alligator) is a kind of mascot for the attraction - I later buy a badge featuring his likeness in the gift shop. ![]() Then there’s the taxidermy, which is often downright odd. ![]() There’s a jazz funeral, a plantation, a barbecue spot, even one titled Martians at Mardi Gras. Photo about gallery, springs, display, trace, destination, exhibit, museum, rural, myster, tammany, tourism, building. Particularly absorbing are the dioramas depicting scenes from southern life, which light up and move at the push of the button. There’s an Elvis shrine, collections of antique barbed wire and of beer cans, even short treatises on quirks of regional culture and history, signed “The Night Shift Historian”. There are old pinball machines and arcade games, out-of-date electronics and paint-by-numbers pictures, battered numberplates and old shoes, stickers and photographs and vintage ads covering the walls and the ceilings. Spread throughout the main exhibition hall, outdoor areas and other spaces is a kaleidoscope of memorabilia, kitsch, Americana, folk art, curiosities and straight-up junk. The signs are just the beginning, though. ![]()
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