For the low price of $12.99 you can enter the Lucky Leezard Curio Shop and buy a ticket to the Museum of the Weird, where you will see such marvels as wax recreations of sf/horror characters in dramatic lighting, mysterious relics to baffle the mind, and various uncategorizable oddities. There’s also some sort of freak show, which I didn’t attend because I was afraid it would put me off my feed. The whole thing is well presented for something so goofy. It’s much smaller than the Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine, but it has the advantage of allowing photography.
For my final experience of Major Fun on this trip, I visited the Mapparium at the Mary Baker Eddy Library in the Christian Science Publishing Society building, which is part of the sprawling Christian Science Center not far from Fenway Park.
Mary Baker Edifice
The Publishing Society building is a great example of the economic clout of publishing in the 1930s, with grand marble-floored entryways and globe lamps that function as a clock and a calendar.
The actual publishing is done elsewhere now, and the first floor of the building is given over to a presentation of the life of Mary Baker Eddy, with interactive video displays and films and inspirational quotes.
Entrance HallDedicationYou can watch a film!
The Mapparium itself is a giant stained-glass globe, with countries and borders as of 1935. The globe is inverted, so the layout appears normal from the inside. The globe was restored and enhanced in 2002, but they kept the original 1935 layout, which is good, because how else could you see Chosen, French Indochina, and Königsberg?
There’s dramatic audio about how seeing the world unifies us or something, but it doesn’t really add anything. The globe is really very impressive on its own. Unfortunately photos weren’t allowed, due to “copyright issues,” which I’m starting to suspect is just an excuse.
I stayed at the Inn at St. John in Portland, Maine. It’s a well-maintained Victorian building that’s been a hotel continuously since 1897. It’s so old that it still uses metal keys.
I followed my usual well-formed plan of wandering around and looking at things.
As I was wandering, I happened across the Lobsterman statue that’s mentioned in Roadside America. It’s really more notable for its history. As maritime-themed statues go, it can’t compare to the seal-gutting statue in Copenhagen.
At the top of the hill in downtown Portland is an observatory that was built in 1807 by an entrepreneurial sea captain who set up an annual subscription service to notify ship owners when their ships were arriving. That sounded interesting, so of course it was closed for the season.
The following morning was cold and rainy with high winds, but I still walked over a mile to visit the International Cryptozoology Museum. I could have driven, but I had a good parking spot and I didn’t want to lose it.
The Cryptozoology Museum takes a very broad approach to cryptozoology. There are your serious cryptids (Bigfoot, chupacabras), the “intersection of cryptozoology and popular culture” (Godzilla, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the Creature from the Black Lagoon), hoaxes and fakes (jackalopes), animals thought to be extinct that later turned out not to be (coelacanths), animals that really are extinct (mastodons, dodos), animals that are extinct but that people claim to have seen anyway (thylacines), and things that are included for no readily apparent reason (Disneyland travel posters, some antique Santa Claus figurines, a rather nice collection of tiki mugs). There’s even a display case of “cryptoscatology” with artificial (I hope) poop from different animals (and humans), plus a giant pile of Bigfoot poop for comparison.
There’s a small section on lake monsters, but the only Ogopogo items are a souvenir ashtray from Kelowna and a couple similar knick-knacks.
Sadly, they prohibit photos except of the items below. Copyright issues, according to the friendly but somewhat intense owner.
Cryptozoology MuseumBigfootCreature from the BL
The sun came out in the afternoon and I did more wandering.
Recreational SkeeballVictoria MansionAlligator With Ice Cream
Most of downtown Portland is kind of grimy, but State Street, at the top of the hill, retains a lot of its 19th century grandeur.
State Street
The grandest mansion is the Victoria Mansion, built in the 1850s. That one has tours, but it was closed for the season.
So I went down to Wharf Street and had a Bissel Kickflip at Mash Tun.
In the town of Wells, Maine, is a cheese shop shaped like a cheese. They even sell cheese, although I didn’t go inside to verify that. The shop has seen better days.
More impressive is Lenny the Chocolate Moose in nearby Scarborough. Lenny is accompanied by three chocolate bears and really looks very good for a 25-year-old piece of chocolate.
Lenny gets the coveted “Major Fun” rating, as well he should.
There was snow and graupel through Vermont and into New Hampshire, but I am not one to complain about such things.
I checked in at my hotel in Concord—”Tru by Hilton”—which was nice enough, although it had cartoonish decor that looked like it was designed by Ikea, and the pillows smelled faintly of bug spray. On the plus side, there were no bugs in the pillows.
After checking in, I went downtown to Concord Craft Brewery and ordered a flight of beers before I found out that they weren’t serving food that day (Easter). So I drank the beer on an empty stomach and staggered around the block to a restaurant across from the capitol building and had a bison burger.
Concord Craft FlightNew Hampshire State Capitol
The next morning I checked out and drove to Portsmouth to see the massive tidal flows, which at about ten feet are second only to the Bay of Fundy. And I don’t doubt it, but shortly after low tide isn’t really the ideal time to see it. What you see is a lot of mud.
So not wanting to wait around for several hours, I drove a few miles south and toured the USS Albacore, a research submarine that was active from 1953 to 1972. As with St. Edmund’s severed arm, Roadside America rated this “Major Fun,” and I daresay it was even more fun than the arm.
Also notable is the fact that I didn’t hit my head even once.
In a small chapel on Enders Island, just south of the town of Mystic, CT, the incorrupt arm of St. Edmund of Canterbury moulders peacefully in a glass tube.
Edmund of Abingdon died in 1240 and was canonized in 1246. Most of him reposes in France, except for one leg that’s in a town north of London, and this arm, which found its way to the US in 1954 and eventually to this particular chapel in 2002.
Ed’s Arm
Seeing any severed arm is unusual, but seeing a consecrated one from the 13th century is a real treat. Roadside America rates this “Major Fun”.
