When in Rome (or Glouster) you might as well hit an antique store or two. This one was a typical Main Street antique store – small, well organized, suited particularly for tourists wandering by.
This was one was a bit unique in all the posters and vinyls of musicals. Otherwise there was a jewelry case with some nice shinies in it, the usual bricabracs, a few ransom pieces of art including a bag crochetted from recycled grocery store bags, a terrifying portrait of a cat, and some wooden masks.
It was small but enjoyable, a fun jaunt if you’re already gambling down Main Street.
After enjoying The Paper House and Cynthia Curtis Pottery we decided to head towards town and see if there were any walkable streets. We were not disappointed and there’s few things that make us happier than a surprise independent book store! You never know what you’re going to find in these places.
This one had a whole Beat section, some obscure local books, a number of weird antique books, a French copy of Babar, the usual LGBTQ+ section, and entertaining category signs and quotations. David Bowie was sprawled out on the Fashion categorey for example. So much character!
And the shopkeep? Adorable. I was eavesdropping and heard her exasperatedly claim, “I want to sell to queer people, not rob them!” In this capitalistic hellscape we live in such a statement is so refreshing! Not to mention allyship always warms the cockles of my heart.
So yeah, looking for something obscure, old, or weird, this is you place!
So after checking out The Paper House we wandered a few houses down the street to see what Cynthia Curtis Pottery was all about. Again, we drove up to a random house and parked in the small parking area at the bottom of the driveway. We got out having no idea where to go from there. That’s when a woman hopped out of the house and said the shed was open and she’d be out in a moment.
So inside we went. There were lovely big mugs hanging on the door and inside the shed there was all sorts of gorgeous very stylized pottery. Much of it had texture, which I’d later learn were imprints of her grandmother’s lace. It was mostly in blues and greens and gave a wonderful beachy vibe.
I hate going to these little artist places and not supporting it somehow so I chose a little ornament to go home with after chatting with Cynthia for a while. It was a jellyfish made from small pieces of melted beach glass which was incorporated into a lot of the pottery here. I was also told she holds pottery classes here and had been at this for 30 years. It’s always nice to see someone who has made their passions work for them. I only wish I could have been a little more convincingly social but my brain was mush from two hours of driving in traffic and I was already having one of those days (week really) where eye contact was too much to bear. Better luck next time?
This one had been on my list for a long time because it was so odd. And the entrance fee was only $3 a head. Win.
I didn’t actually know where Rockport was. On the other side of Boston of course… so we did that whole fun trip right through the city and all the traffic but luckily it wasn’t that bad on this spring day. When we got to the Paper House it was in a residential neighborhood that was littered with signs reading no parking on this side of the street.
The sign was outside a regular house and up a small city driveway. Was I supposed to go in the driveway??? Could I park on the street?? The driveway had two parking spots, one had what I asumed was the home owner’s car in it. I parked in the other one and we walked awkwardly up the driveway wondering what was going to happen from here. Would we have to ring someone’s doorbell or ring a number? We walked up to the building on the property that read Paper House and looked in the windows. Yep, it was the paper house. It took us a minute to find a sign stating the door was unlocked and we could go in. There was an honor box outside to leave our entry fees.
This place was really small but fun. We were clearly the only ones there. In the structure the walls were decorated with folded paper in the style of “tramp art,” which was common in the 1920’s when these pieces were made. There were chairs, a table, a piano, and a grandfather clock, all decorated with rolls of paper. The information given was that these were made as an experiment to see how long print paper (in this case newspapers) could hold up if varnished and used to make things. There was no explanation as to WHY this experiment was going on, only that it was the homeowner’s grandfather who started in with this quirky hobby in the 1920’s. Some postcards sat out for souvenirs if you wanted to pay an extra 35 cents.
There was also a few pamphlets on other cool places to go in the area including a pottery shed just a few houses down. We’d continue our explorations there. This was a quirky little side quest and if you’re int he area I deffinately think you should give it a little lookey-loo. Otherwise, on it’s own, this probably wasn’t enough for me to say it’s worth any sort of drive, especially through Boston traffic! However, there’s lots of other stuff to do in the area that may make it worth it.
I know we have hit Stillwater Antiques numerous times by now but it’s a fun one! Always something new every time we go. It’s big and ever evolving. Though this time around there were more empty booths than usual and I hope this isn’t going to be a continuing pattern that I’ve seen kill other antique malls… especially in this economy. Here’s hoping they stay in fine shape through it all!
On this particular day it was a treasure trove of terrifying dolls and mushroom swag as well as a new booth which had a jacket reading, “Have the day you deserve” which is the current mood these days! So enjoy the gallery below!
Sadly, I have fallen WAY behind on writing these entries. This was 15 of 17 I had let pile up and as such I don’t remember why I was here. All I remember is it was a hot day and we’d already done our adventuring and were looking for good grub before driving home. So, I did the usual dance of trying to find parallel parking (BOO!) and then walking half a block to see what we had chosen.
This place… it was a trip. You would not be wrong in thinking it was closed based on the fact there was no light in this place, not via windows or electricity. Did we just walk into a swinger’s club? I couldn’t be certain. The only lights were fairy lights and I…. am not a bat. So, even though the menu was on the wall in huge font I was still having a hard time reading it! Though I admit I was deeply amused that one of the options was a grilled Fluffernutter. How very New England! I was overheating at the time so I knew my stomach was going to reject basically anything I tried putting in it. A Fluffernutter would have ended up painting the walls if I tried it. None the less I got The Tomboy which was loaded grilled cheese with heaps of fried chicken thrown in. Funny, this was the first autistically coded menu I’d come across but I’d bet money based on the fact this choice was named after gender variance and contained a pile of common “safe” foods that whoever it was named after was most likely autistic. We have an obscene amount of gender variance and love of over processed food in the community. It made it an easy decision. We also ordered fries as potatoes are my “safe” food (something I won’t hurl up even when my stomach’s being an ass, like today.)
We wandered into the back room and sat down. It had this delightful 20-watt chandelier which I wanted to bring home with me. And the music? It was wild. Literally anything that had been popular in the last hundred years would play at random. Ella Fitzgerald followed by some random 90’s garage band? Check. Also some Bob Dylan which luckily didn’t trigger me like the last time I’d heard a Bob Dylan song by surprise. Nothing quite like sobbing alone at a Panera! (To be fair it was a BAD point in my life and I think it was triggering because it reminded me of all the parts of myself I’d lost while in long term relationship with a narcissist including listening to 60’s folk all the time like I did in my teens. It’s a story as old as time and I wish so many women [and others] didn’t have to go through it.) This time I found myself singing along to Tangled Up in Blue and thinking to myself, “Jesus Christ, that’s insane, it makes me happy I’m not still 20.” Funny how things hit differently when you age..
This is when the food came out and I ate it quietly in the dark. Actually, the dark was very calming after having spent a few hours being active in the outside world. My autistic ass thrives in the dark, even if my eyes no longer adjust to it. And the grub was good! Perfect stoner food if that’s your thing, the sort of faire that goes straight from your mouth to your arteries. Good times.
My travel companion’s need for novelty is what ended up making him pick something unusual for this particular destination. I’d seen it on lists of places to go before but I was a little unsure what it actually was and if it was worth the long drive to Connecticut. It was however only $5 per adult ticket so why not go and see?
This place was something else. Driving there was interesting. It was easy enough to find but the sign aside the road looked small and very aged and the driveway really looked like it was bringing me to a household. There were two small parking lots each big enough for four or five cars. To my surprise this was two buildings, not one, and the property around the building seemed to have cut outs and other fun things to take photos with.
We ended up walking into the gift shop which is where the tickets are purchased. Another family was getting attended to so the woman working the counter told us to go have fun checking out the gift shop and the adjoined gallery and she’d take our money when we were finished. The gift shop was darling. Dr Suess taxidermy lined the walls, to the other side there was a lot of little Disney things and other very recognizable cartoon merch. The gallery was also a lot of fun and a lot larger than it looked at first. It was several rooms and hallways filled with stills, paintings, and prints of every iconic cartoon figure you could think of from Betty Boop to Jack Skeleton. As well as some I didn’t recognize. It was a fun little jaunt down memory lane. I especially appreciated the one of a kind pieces of art, some of which were more 3D than you’d expect of a cartoon with layers of paint or paper to make them more interesting. All of it was for sale – for some hefty serious collector prices.
When we finished we circled back around, got our tickets, and then headed outside to the other building which was the actual museum and oh my god, this place was OVERWELMING! There were display cases against every wall and creating numerous isles. They went from the floor to over our heads and even the ceiling had every inch of it decorated with hanging cartoon characters.
I had come here expecting Disney and WB characters but this place had everything. And it was all organized into sections. There’d be a case of Popeyes, some Wizard of Oz stuff, a gaggle of creepy puppets, and a pile of my childhood phobia: Teletubbies. Those were out, you could totally boop them. As a child I only saw still photos of Teletubbies in the news. I had no idea until recently they’re HUGE and talk like possessed baby dolls. I was re-traumatized.
ANYWAY, as we looked around we found all sorts of delightful things – Mork and Mindy, Animaniacs, Felix the Cat, Betty Boop’s entire disturbing squad (including that goddamn clown) and another childhood favorite the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Every INCH of this place had something. There were just layers and layers. And no cartoon was forgotten, they even had cartoons that existed only as brand mascots – Betsy the Cow, the scrubbing bubbles brush, Big Boy, Cracker Jack, and the M & M’s. And as is usual for this blog there was also an alarming amount of ventriloquist dummies. Each creepier than the last.
Sometimes I dream of owning a house, a house with a guest room, a house with a guest room full to the brim with haunted dolls. It’d be exposure therapy for me as I find them terrifying and would also be hilarious to use as a bet. You want to come visit ME? THEN YOU SLEEP WITH THE DOLLS. If you make it the night I’ll give you a prize, if you end up on the couch I will tease you until your last dying day.
This museum looks like it probably started in a similar fashion to the Scrubs-like fantasy I wrote out above. Clearly this was someone’s collections which got way out of hand and thank goodness it did because it was an absolute joy to visit. More so I think I could probably go there again, even several more times, and see something different each time. This was totally worth the drive for any children or children at heart.
Oh, and the distressing cow I took a photo of for the header of this entry? That’s Betsy. If I am to believe her plaque she was once more popular than Mickey Mouse. Her job was to sell dairy which apparently, she did very well! And now… she’s just a statue in a creepy photo that could be the cover of a horror movie. Bless.
You know what’s a great way to end a day after adventuring? Some good grub! That’s how we ended up at the Pig Rig devouring a tender pile of pulled pork, mac and cheese, potato salad, and corn bread.
It was a weird time to be eating so there weren’t any other patrons there but this place looked popular. All the walls were covered with rock posters. They had posters from all the five origional British Invasion bands except the Kinks. Why no Kinks?? They’re awesome!
There was also a display case full of random retro rock memorabilia. Kinda fun. So was their assortment of sauces for the pulled pork. Dear God they were delicious. This place knew what people want. One food coma later and we were on our way.
It was another gorgeous spring day so we decided to spend it outside. In a cemetery. Because that’s what normal people do. I left the choice of which cemetery to my travel companion who chose the Holyhood Cemetery because it was said to be haunted. Aren’t all cemeteries haunted? Probably, but this one seems to be mostly ghost children running between the stones and in the 1920’s people claimed to hear Gaelic lullabies in the wind.
But the cemetery’s real claim to fame was the fact it was the burial grounds that contained the Kennedys. Specifically, the mom and pop of the never forgotten former president John F Kennedy. And his sister… the one who at 23 had too salacious a lifestyle for her parents to handle so they had her lobotomized, then institutionalized, and no one ever spoke about her again. Shame, I think she seemed like the sort of live wire I would have loved to have read about if she weren’t turned into a human vegetable for the convenience of her rich family. I pondered for a moment what they must think of their legacy now being carried by RFK Jr, their nephew, who is currently succeeding at killing dozens of children through his campaign against measles vaccinations. He also thinks germs aren’t’ real and was recently stopped from starting a non-voluntary register for autistic people for… reasons. Oh Rosemary, you were the only sane one in this whole family weren’t you? I am so sorry you were robbed of becoming way better than any of your male family members. Also, at the risk of making a political statement on a blog which is not… Fuck you RFK Jr, go back to the rock you crawled under and die. We do not need or want you.
BUT BACK TO THE CEMETERY! It was well spaced out and pretty large making for a nice little amble. The majority of the stones were very typical but there was enough more individualistic ones to make it worthwhile. My favorite ended up being a woman angel made in bronze who was just… dramatic.
We spent maybe an hour or so walking around here. I can’t say I saw any ghost children or heard any Gaelic lullabies but it was still enjoyable. Perhaps worth it if you’re in the area.
And I’m back with another great CHEAP museum! Only $2 for admission! Unless you wanted to splurge and buy a planetarium ticket of course. We would have but it’s only open certain days and times which didn’t happen to be when we showed up.
Today’s destination had been chosen not just because it was free but because it was the home of a very unfortunate lioness and her cubs which… I’m honestly not certain they weren’t horrifically deformed prairie dogs. Such is the guesswork that goes into bad taxidermy.
But before we even got to the museum we first had to find it near the Roger William’s Zoo which… consider this the afterlife for random zoo animals and wildlife. The parking lot wasn’t very big and only had one tiny entrance that if you missed it you’d literally have to loop around the entire goddamn block to get back to it. Ask me how I figured that out!
It was surprisingly bustling. We were met by a clerk who told us if we wanted there were several treasure hunts we could enjoy, which were usually for kids but came in three levels of challenge. We’re big kids at heart so we each took one sheet with our questions, a clip board, and a tiny pencil. I haven’t written in pencil in decades. And between the fact it was a pencil and barely big enough to hold my hand writing came off as quite serial killer-esque. No matter I had the hardest treasure hunt and I was going to complete it!
The treasure hunt paper told us which room worth of displays each question’s answer could be found it so it was mostly easy peasy pudding and pie.
First off we had the dinosaurs because… well they deserve to always be the first thing you see as they’re awesome. There was the obligatory T-rex skull (complete with janky teeth!) Some dinosaur egg shells and for reasons I’ll never understand a marble statue of a beautiful woman and her baby.
The wildlife room was next and filled to the brim with taxidermy coming from all skill levels! The perfect ones were lovely but I was most endeared to the ones who looked like they were melting and malformed including one morbidly obese squirrel I’m positive got that way eating cosmic brownies. He just had that look. This room was just local wildlife but other parts of the museum had everything from a polar bear, to a koala that looked like a crumpled bit of fuzzy newspaper, to the aforementioned lioness who was the coup d’etat of bad taxidermy, Jesus Christ was that something.
But my favorite bit of taxidermy was the kakapo, otherwise known as the world’s chonkiest parrot. So fat it can’t even fly. I laughed and then sadly sighed because this parrot was the same kind that was featured on that Stephan Fry nature documentary that went from a sweet segment about a nearly extinct parrot to some poor bastard getting savagely humped for 15 minutes while Fry and crew just laughed. It’s here if you need a chuckle today. My sigh was because I’d recently had an out with the friend who would have known why this particular specimen was so funny.
But anyway, parrots with no grasp of consent aside, this museum also had a section for all things outer space, a room of curious bark textiles, more taxidermy, and a geology room with a map of Rhode Island and what it’d look like if all the ice caps melted. RIP Providence, Newport, and most of the rest of the state. May you sleep sound with the fishies. Amen.
This was a happy fun little museum if you happen to be in the area or are coming back from the zoo and are wondering what those animals look like stuffed.
