Ken:

I went back in the summer of '78 when the museum was located in a Victorian
house in downtown Hammondsport.  I wonder if maybe they were trying to tie
the Curtiss Museum and the house together to try to save both.  I don't
remember actually looking at much besides one or two rooms of the house (I
was with a young lady and I think we were passing through from a winery
tour--just needed to use the rest room, thank you very much...).

Last summer they had the debut of a recreation of one of his flying boats
and I really wanted to see that.  They were going to fly it off the lake.  I
had too much going on that weekend and so couldn't make it.  Amazingly, none
of my flying buddies went either even though we have several float plane
pilots (or in my case a wannabe) in my group.

Here's their web site (I see what you mean about the building):

                http://www.linkny.com/curtissmuseum/


Bruce


-----Original Message-----
From: Ken Follett [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Wednesday, May 24, 2000 4:58 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Glenn Curtiss Museum


In a message dated 5/24/00 2:36:07 PM Central Daylight Time,
[log in to unmask]
writes:

> The Glenn Curtiss Museum in Hammondsport is supposed to be a good one to
>  check out for olde aviation/motorcycle stuff...

Bruce,

I liked the Curtiss Museum when I was a kid. You would spend most of a day
with the parent's driving around and you in the back seat looking out the
window and bored, wondering when it would be over before arriving at this
really funky white masony building. Question as to why the parent's would
bother to stop at this dump. Another relative with bad breath? Inside the
building it is crammed full of Curtiss's junk. You wander through what looks
like a mad scientist's collection of silent gizmos with piles of dust, as if
it had been dropped in midlife. Black and white photos of a smiling guy with
a leather helmet and goggles standing next to what looks like a bare bones
motorcycle. Then you look up and here is this wood pole and canvas glider
hanging from the ceiling and suddenly you realize that this was a real nut
job proficiency at work. Anybody that would jump off a hill cradled in that
thing had to have bronze casters for nuts. And looking at it you also see
that you could go home and build one of these things with a bit of wood,
lashing and canvas.

The new museum is clean, metal building with a real parking lot, and feels
sterile by comparison to the old one. I took my son there years back, I was
all excited on the way and talking the place up with a sense of mystery, and
on arriving soon realized he would never get out of the Curtiss Museum
anything of what I got. I don't plan on going back, but I keep looking for
similar epiphany experiences.

][<en