That's the Song I Sing...

Cooooooca-Cola.

Call the Cheese Brigade, folks.  It might get a little maudlin in here.

The truth is, my family's been a Coke family for as long as I can remember.  The only carbonated beverage my mother ever let into the house was Diet Coke.  She hated the taste of Pepsi, and regular Coke, she said, was just "too syrupy."  So if it wasn't water or juice, the only thing we'd drink growing up was Diet Coke.  (I'm not quite as high strung about this as my mother, but even today, ordering a Pepsi feels a little like blasphemy.)  

I don't say "pop" or "soda."  When people came over, I offered to "get [them] a Coke."  And on the rare occasion we had something that wasn't Diet Coke in the refrigerator, it would be "a Coke, or something."  Now, I just offer "something to drink," and hope that something is a Diet Coke.

So it wasn't a surprise to anyone when, once we realized that Atlanta was the perfect half-way point for the long drive between Florida and Home, my mother announced, "We're going to the World of Coke." 

Before we're even allowed into the museum proper, a helpful young woman in a bright red shirt describes the rooms we're about to see.  A short animated film, commercials from around the world, Coke Art, a "4D" movie (the kind where your seats move and the chairs in front of you blow water past your ears), advertising, advertising, and more advertising.  She excitedly tells us about the last room, the Tasting Center, which features Coca-Cola products from all over the world, making special mention of the Italian specialty.  "The Beverly from EEE-taly," she says.  "Say it with me now."  Beverly from EEE-taly.  

(The woman in the next holding room, the one who points out some of the more significant museum artifacts, also mentions the Beverly, as does the animated short we're made to watch.  When one computer-generated Weeble wryly drawls to the other about "grapefruit rinds," I think, as I'm sure those around me thought, "Grapefruit rinds?  That drink must be terrible!  I can't wait to try it!"

The museum, once you can actually get into the museum, is kind of fascinating, if only to see just how far the company's fingers reach.  The World Cup.  The Olympics.  The Space Program.  There's a leaf of turn-of-the-century sheet music (that's 20th century, not 21st) with the Coke label on it.  In walking through the rooms of memorabilia you realize that, if a thing has ever existed in the world, there's a version of it complete with the famous Coca-Cola script.  

The "Pop" art exhibit is great, although the portrait of Mickey Mouse made out of Coke logos is almost on the wrong side of the hipster ideal.  The rest of it is...I hesitate to say reverent, because it's a word I use a lot and it's perhaps a bit extreme for the situation, but there is a sense of genuine respect in the pieces.  There's nothing superficial about the use of Coke imagery in this art, no cynical commentary of the state of commercialism in America.  Just a sincere love for a brand that happens to be a little bit universal.

I think that's why I like the rooms full of old advertising.  There's nothing jaded or boisterous about the campaigns.  No bravado, and few gimmicks.  None of this "The other guys suck, and you should drink us because we'll make you awesome!" nonsense.  Just "Drink Coke because it tastes good, and that will make you happy."     

And there's just something about coke advertising that gives me the warm fuzzies.  I used to get so excited when the winter holidays rolled around, knowing that polar bear was sure to make an appearance.  Those commercials always flash me back to my younger days, when I'd wake myself up earlier than I needed to for school, just to be the only one up when the house was dark and quiet.  And to pass the time until the bus came, I'd watch the kind of terrible cartoons they only show at 6 a.m. on a weekday.  Things at that hour always have lots of commercials, and once we got into November, my mornings were filled with frolicking polar bears.  Sometimes even the hint of the Coca-Cola theme sends me to those mornings in my father's easy-chair, wrapped tightly in the big blue blanket, trying to stay warm because he'd turned the heat down that night and the house hadn't had a chance to warm up yet.

Okay.  I'll say it.  Coca-Cola makes me think of home.

The last room before the gift shop/exit is the tasting room, with its plastic sample cups and variety of international Coke products.  The African and South American drinks are refreshing and fruity, while Asia has a sharp, citrusy bite that I halfway expected.  There's a big crowd around the Europe station, no doubt for the siren call of Beverly from EEE-taly, and with all the hype, I can't say I blame them.  I even stand in line for it.

If you've ever had a glass of orange juice after brushing your teeth, and found you didn't like the taste, perhaps you should skip the Beverly. 

And at the very end of it all, you get your very own bottle of Coke, filled on the day of your visit in the slow moving factory display on the first leval.  I assume it's Original Recipe Coke, but I couldn't tell you for sure.  It's not like I'm going to drink it. 

I walk through the gift shop searching for a few pins to add to my collection, still sucking bits of Beverly out of my teeth, and yes, even feeling a bit nostalgic.

He Can Soothe You Like Vanilla, The Gentleman's a Killer

Behind the iron lung in the Allen County Museum basement is a jail cell and two wax figures.  A prisoner, standing inside the cell with his hands around the bars, staring down the sheriff who sits behind a big desk, pouring over the Lima News.  Against the wall in a big glass display case is a records book, forever open to the same page.  Halfway to the bottom, in neat black cursive, a name, a date, and a crime.  1933.  Bank Robbery.  The man at the desk is Sheriff Jess Sarber, which means the name on the page, and the man in the cell, can only be John Dillinger.

If you saw Public Enemies, you didn't see Johnny Depp waiting patiently in an Allen County jail cell, and you didn't hear one character utter the name "Jess Sarber," but this tragic jailbreak is immortalized in Lima.

The placards on the wall tell the story better than I ever could.  Dillinger and his gang swept through Ohio during the summer of 1933, knocking over banks and nearly uncatchable.  Dillinger himself only got caught in Dayton when he stopped to visit a girlfriend in September of that year, and was jailed in Lima to await trial for a bank robbery in Bluffton.

The important thing to know about the Lima jail is that the jail building itself was built on to the sheriff's house as the world's most unwelcoming house addition.  That's why it's not unusual that both Sheriff Jesse Sarber and his wife, Lucy, were present when three men calling themselves police officers from Michigan City walked in to the jail and asked to see John Dillinger.  When Sheriff Sarber asked to see their badges, they drew their guns instead, shot Sarber in his left side, and demanded the keys to Dillinger's cell.

Obviously, these men weren't police officers.  They were part of Dillinger's gang; Charles Makley,  Russell Clark, and Harry "Pete" Peirpont.  While the bullet Peirpont fired at Sarber worked its way down his leg to sever an artery, Peirpont and Makley beat Sarber with the butt of their guns as his wife cried and begged for his life.  She would be the one to find the key that released Dillinger, but the damage was already done.  Jess Sarber would die that night, and John Dillinger would walk free for another year, until that fateful night in Chicago.  But you've already seen that movie.

Makley, Clark, and Harry Pierpont would be tried for murder almost a year to the day of Sarber's death.  Their trial would be overseen by the new sheriff, Donald Sarber, who watched his father's murderers with one hand on the machine gun resting in his lap.  The black and white photograph hanging on the wall that captures that moment belies the tension in the room.  Sarber leans far back in his chair, one leg propped up over the other, one hand holding the gun at a restive, almost jaunty angle, the other wrapped around his chin.  If you couldn't see his face, you might think he was relaxed.  But his eyes are sharp.  Focused.  There are killers in the room, and he knows it.

There's no one else here in the basement with me, so I reach out and wrap my hand around one of the bars.  The metal is cool under my fingers, making my palm feel indescribably hot.  I wonder how it felt for Mr. Dillinger.  Was he hot-blooded and itching for escape?  Or did he know his men were coming for him, and waited here, calm and confident?  His men found him playing pinochle.  I'm inclined to believe it was the latter.

The Ones That Mother Gives You Don't Do Anything At All

When you walk downstairs into the basement of the Allen County Museum, try not to get too  distracted by the iron lung (which is a terrifying thing in person, by the way.  Just thinking about being trapped inside a giant fishbowl with this noisy machine breathing for me makes me claustrophobic).  And don't stare too long at the portrait of Phyllis Diller hanging over the landing, proudly declaring her to be a native of Lima, Ohio.  But when you reach the bottom of the stairs, do look left.

There's a display case hanging from the wall.  It's filled with little objects, most smaller than your finger.  It seems innocuous enough, until you read the title plate fixed to the top of the case.    

Objects Removed from Esophagus, Bronchial Tree (Lungs), and Larynx 

of Patients of Drs. Estey C. Yingling and Walter E. Yingling 

The Yinglings were a father and son act, doctors in Lima who often treated the patients at the Lima State Mental Hospital.  It stands to reason that some of these objects might have been pulled from those throats, but the identifying card each object is tied to makes no mention of where the object was retrieved, just when, who, and how old they were.  There's nothing that says why they held on to and so neatly catalogued their findings.  I can only assume one turned to the other and said "Take a look at this.  Isn't this weird?"

It's an impressive collection, if only for the sheer variety.  It's amazing what some people will try to fit in their mouths.  Some of them are to be expected - lots of buttons and coins, bone fragments from steak and chicken dinners.  More safety pins than I expected.  They're all displayed open, their still sharp points glinting evilly under fluorescent lights.  For my own piece of mind, I imagine they went into the mouth closed.  There's also a handful of rusty screws and nails, mostly pulled from children.  I can only hope that they're rusted with age, and weren't that way when they went into the mouths of babes, but I wouldn't put it past a kid to think a brown nail looks delicious.

Among the stranger things in the display is half of a set of false teeth (the top half, I think), and about five inches of rubber tubing, pulled from a teenage girl.  There's nothing on the i.d. cards that says just how these objects ended up in anyone's throat, but I think, when it comes to rubber tubing, I'm grateful for the mystery.  I don't think I want, nor to I really need, to know how or why a young lady ends up with that much tubing in her mouth.

In case you were wondering, the oldest person in the display is Herbert Painter, who had what looks like a piece of T-bone taken out at the ripe old age of 83.  Thomas Hermiller swallowed a two inch screw at 3 months, which proves you really can't let them out of your sight for anything. 

And my favorite?  Well, I'm partial to the false teeth, but I'm utterly charmed by what looks to be a heart shaped plastic dog tag hanging in the corner, extracted from another Herbert, Herbert A. Norld, aged 8 months.

Two by Two in a Big Skidoo

The sign above the door says "Noah's Ark."

"Do you want me to turn those on for you?" asks another Allen County Museum docent, sneaking up behind me.  I try to politely decline, but she's not having any of that.  "It doesn't take hardly anything," she says, barreling past me into the small room. 

Four big wooden cabinets, one pressed against each wall, each with a brass plate carved with the name "J. E. Grosjean" screwed to the top.  No one seems to know much about Mr. Grosjean, or why he devoted so much time to collecting and stuffing the animals crammed into these display cases.  He was an undertaker, once, according to the newspaper clipping hanging next to the door.  An embalmer.  Perhaps he just loved dead things.

"We don't turn that one on anymore," says the docent, pointing to the display closest to the door.  It's full of stuffed birds, all with the same fixed glassy expression, tied to a ferris wheel.  "The feathers are too dry," she explains, "so the movement does too much damage.  But this one works just fine!"  And she pushes a button on the back side of the case marked "Special Albino Collection."

The old cabinet rumbles to life, and so do the animals inside.  Sort of.  A handful of birds spin on a turn-table, and the pink eyes of a white badger moves closer to the glass as the animal darts in and out of its burrow.  The docent makes sure I notice the little bird's nest at the bottom of the display.  "See how it opens?" I do.  "There are little baby birdies inside."  There are.  

(She calls it a nest.  It's actually a human skull, allegedly from Cuba.  I wonder if she knew that.)

After a minute of watching the animals jerk about inside their case, the docent cuts the power, and bustles over to the display titled "Noah's Ark."  "This one lasts about seven minutes," she says, hand disappearing behind the cabinet.  "I'll just turn it on, and you can watch," and she disappears as the motor gurgles to life.  

What happens is a display of first-rate 1901 electric technology, supplemented by a static-filled soundtrack added during a 1966 restoration.  The ark rests on a pile of dirt, twisted vermin carcasses, and snake skins, helpfully identified as "Showing Everything Dead and Destroyed After Deluge."  Little light bulbs flash, and the Voice in the Box pops and hisses the story of Noah and the Ark.  A little set of doors opens on the ark, and out flies a raven, up and up, disappearing behind hand-painted rain clouds.  More lights, more reedy thunder.  A second set of doors opens, and here comes the dove, twig already in beak.  It flies out to the far side of the display, then turns around and flies back into the ark, doors closing behind it.  The big doors of the ark open, and out come the survivors.  In the first row, pairs of carved human figures and stuffed toy animals, like elephants, horses, and lions.  The second row is real stuffed birds, walking two by two.  Together, they all march behind Mount Ararat, where a stone tablet carved with Bible verses swings away to reveal Noah and his family burning a sacrificial lamb.  One last round of flashing lights, and the crackling music tries desperately to sound inspirational, and the whole things hiccups to a stop.  That was weird.  That was wonderful. 

The last case isn't wired.  The card at the bottom of the display reads "This Case Contains Specimens Soon To Be Extinct."  The display was created little over a century ago, but the contents may surprise you.  A number of animals have gone extinct in that time, but more than half of the animals in this case are still around.  Certainly the Duck-Billed Platypus, of which there are two, mounted near the bottom and almost looking over their shoulders at visitors.  Neither is the African Hornbill, nor the Andean Condor, though the latter is still considered 'near threatened.'  Only the lone Ivory-Billed Woodpecker is critically threatened, though not officially extinct, so at least Mr. Grosjean got one right.  

A group of teenagers come in (with the docent, naturally), and since the room is barely big enough to hold just me, I make a hasty exit.  Though I can't help the feeling I'm being watched while I leave.

I got this tip from Roadside America.  Things Swallowed! it said.  Death Masks! it said.  Taxidermy! it said.  It didn't come right out and say it, but it heavily implied that the Allen County Museum might be a Things in Jars museum, which, of all the museums, might be my favorite kind.  All of that weird stuff right at my fingertips, and all it takes is the short drive up to Lima, Ohio (yes, Glee fans, it does exist!).

The Allen County Museum is a museum of gifts.  Every artifact comes with it's own little placard, finished with the words 'Donated By,' or 'Gift From.'  I wonder how long some of these pieces were left in Lima attics, gathering dust while the family puttered around below thinking, "Oh, we can't just throw Grandpa's gramophone away.  It's practically historic!"  Did the artifacts demand a museum of their own?  Or did the museum send out the call for Lima's near forgotten relics?  

19th Century Homestead says the sign on the wall in the first big room.  The big display of an 1800's kitchen dominates the room, and really makes a show of how much the kitchen was the woman's space.  There's a spinning wheel next to the fireplace, far enough away that the wool won't catch the embers, but close enough that the prairie mother can still be productive when she's doing something as trivial as making dinner. 

I get a bit waylaid by a display case full of 19th century cutlery.  Some of the pieces look very familiar (you'll be happy to know that forks, knives, and pie crimpers have remained unchanged by time) while others sound familiar, but look much different than expected (the nut cracker looks...problematic, while the baby bottle looks a bit like a dalek).  Still more look charmingly archaic.  Who uses a butter mold, anyway? 

At the end of the case is a collection of tiny little irons, matching with tiny little dresses, and a tiny little washboard propped up in the corner, all perfect for tiny little girls who need to learn how to be tiny little homebodies.  

A docent corners me next to the covered wagon.  He's just itching to tell me all about it, and that pack of children that just went racing through the exhibit aren't likely to listen, so I let him.  He rests an elbow on one of the wagon's big wheels and describes a family pushing everything they owned into the wagon, then walking along beside it.  "No riders on the covered wagons," he says with a grin, then wanders away.  I never quite know what to think about docents.  Do they just have incredible amounts of knowledge tucked away in the corners of their brains, or do they collect informational odds and ends and then wait to spring it on unsuspecting visitors, whether they want to hear it or not?  Watching the docent hover by the covered wagon with an eye trained a young couple that's just wandered into the room, I suspect it might be the latter.

A line of Burma Shave signs hung from the ceiling draws me in to the next room.  

Dear Lover Boy

Your Picture Came

But Your Doggone Beard

Won't Fit the Frame!

Burma Shave

There's a big, horse-drawn hearse in the next room, and I can just see the glass eyes of stuffed birds peeking around the corner.  This might just get interesting.

No pictures in the museum, I'm afraid, but come back all this week to learn about Noah's Ark, John Dillinger, Mt. Vernon, and the rest of the Allen County Museum.