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.

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