While working on some personal writing projects from home I tend to get a little stir-crazy. Yes, yes, now that school has started I have all the peace and quiet I need to work on the mighty literary works I’ve planned.
And sometimes I hate it. I miss deadlines, and I miss getting in my car and going somewhere!
So I made an arrangement with the online publication Red Dirt Report. When the peace and quiet gets to much for me I head out on the road and find something to write about. A decade of rural journalism has shown me the boonies are just full of interesting people doing interesting stuff.
Case in point, a private museum in Warwick, Oklahoma a town of about 250 people on old Route 66. Two guys who like motorcycles bought a brick building getting near a century old now, and made a private museum. I dropped by and interviewed the co-founders and wrote it up here.
I visited on a Thursday morning, somewhat concerned about whether there would be any visitors to interview – and met people from France and China!
I am fascinated by the phenomenon of the local museum in this country. I lived in Europe for 13 years, and I don’t believe there is anything like this there, or at least not on the scale there is in the U.S. Small towns and counties in rural America support museums, and sometimes guys like these with a hobby put one together.
Jerry Ries one of the co-founders told me they get anywhere from 20 to 500 visitors a day. Now consider that’s on a two-lane highway long bypassed by the Interstate system.
Build it and they will come!
Note: The bikes are a 1909 Triumph and two motorcycles used in the movie “Captain America: The First Avenger.”