Potter's Wax Musem

Man, this is a really cold winter.   I can't help, but continue to have dreams of Florida.  So, let's take a look at another great Florida tourist attraction:  Potter's Wax Museum in St. Augustine, FL.   Being built in 1948 Potter's was the very first wax museum in the United States of America.  At one time the collection boasted at least 300 hundred figures.  Sadly, when the original owner George Potter died in 1979 his family could care less about the collection and sold off the majority of the figures.   Luckily, a passionate employee salvaged a portion of the wax figures and opened a much smaller venue where it currently sits.

Potter's easily has the most figures per square footage.  Figures are dog piled on top of each other.

So let's take a look around and see what they have.  In the scant 3 rooms they have quite the comprehensive collection.

We have our local Floridian Legends.....Fingerless Hemingway and Pounce De Leon....

We have historical figures.....

 We have Willie Shakespeare and his sidekick Yorrick.....

Napolean....

Princess Di.....

Thomas Edison with his trusty light bulb.....

And here is Mark Twain Dreaming up Huck and Tom.....

Here we have the Evil leadership of the Axis during WWII.   Subbing for Hitler is Stalin, who I guess we like to forget was on our side in the war.

I have noticed that despite being the most notorious human being in World history, I have never seen a Hitler Figure in a Wax Museum.  Maybe it is bad luck to have a Hitler.

Potter's does meet us half way, by giving us Hitler's head on a platter.

Then of course we have our pop culture figures......

And let's not forget Potter's Potter.....

And the saddest Nicholas Cage ever.....

But what really sets Potter's apart is that they are not afraid to pull back the curtain and show you some things that Wax Museums usually don't let the public see, such as their works in progress....

Can you find Stonewall Jackson's shapely thighs?

I don't think anyone wants to play with that thing, Thank you!

They also have an interesting collection of damaged wax figures, that had a really awesome ghoulish effect to them.

 

And don't forget to check out their extra creepy wall of heads.....

And check out this bulletheaded Lincoln?  Ha!

Too soon?

Potter's is an awesome old school Wax Museum.  While their space is small, you will not believe how many figures they crammed in.  I only touched on the surface.   There is a lot to see in St. Augustine, but I would definitely include Potter's in your visit.


The Carpetbagger

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Where is the South: A Carpetbagger Video

Hey everyone!  Head over to Youtube to check out the newest Carpetbagger video!


The Carpetbagger

Please feel free to email me at jacobthecarpetbagger@gmail.com
And don't forget to check out my Flickr Photostream and my Youtube Page

The Carpetbagger

Please feel free to email me at jacobthecarpetbagger@gmail.com
And don't forget to check out my Flickr Photostream and my Youtube Page - See more at: http://www.thecarpetbagger.org/2014/01/the-wonderful-world-of-water-towers.html#sthash.QBfGPBm1.dpuf

The Carpetbagger

Please feel free to email me at jacobthecarpetbagger@gmail.com
And don't forget to check out my Flickr Photostream and my Youtube Page - See more at: http://www.thecarpetbagger.org/2014/01/the-wonderful-world-of-water-towers.html#sthash.QBfGPBm1.dpuf

The Wonderful World of Water Towers

Even as a kid I loved Water Towers.   I had no idea what they did, but I loved the massive structures sticking up into the sky line.   Even more impressive is when a town decides to customize their water towers.   Let's take a a look at some of the most impressive water towers you can find across the South.

By the way, in case you didn't know their function is to pressurize a local water system using gravity.

This baseball water tower is found in Zebulon, NC.   I'm not really sure what the inspiration is, but I am guessing that somewhere in Zebulon there is a baseball team of some sort.

I include this water tower from Gwinnett, GA, not for how impressive it is, but how unimpressive it is.  "Gwinnett is Great" has to be one of the most half-hearted civic statements of all time.   Let's not forget that Gwinnett is named after a semi-great man.

This water tower in Andy Griffith's home town of Mt. Airy, NC depicts the iconic opening of "The Andy Griffith Show".   That is if you can see it through all these damn power lines.

This atom shaped water tower can be found in Seneca, SC.  It advertizes "The World of Energy", which is an educational display inside a nuclear power plant.  Yes, I did stop and sea it and it was pretty boring.  My wife said that growing up she took a feild trip there every year and has dubbed it "The most boring place on earth".   Cool water tower though......

 

 I'm not sure of the meaning of this water tower in McBee, SC, but I have to assume that it refers to some sort of special flavor of water.

 

This Egg-Shaped water tower can be found in Newberry, SC.  Its kinda cool, but the fact of the matter is that water towers kinda look like eggs to begin with, so it didn't take a lot of effort to make this.

This water tower painted to look like a basket of apples can be found in Mt. Jackson, VA.  I like how I got the moon in this pictures.

This water tank in Savannah, GA is painted to look like plant earth and its pretty awesome.   An interesting easter egg is the fact that the it depicts a giant hurricane headed right towards Savannah (upper right hand corner).   As cool as it is, the old version was even cooler as it was painted as a globe.  The globe can be seen in its original form in the Ben Affleck film "Forces of Nature."

This tower, shaped like a bottle of bourbon celebrates Kentucky's bourbon industry.  One can only assume that it contains actual bourbon.

This beloved Water tower in Florence, KY actually came about as a legal loop-hole.  The tower originally said "Florence Mall".   Someone pointed out that it was illegal to advertize private businesses on a public structures.  The town didn't want to repaint the whole thing so they did a quick fix and changed "Mall" to "Y'all".  The thing is that people loved the change and the tower has since become iconic.

This whimsical hot-air-balloon shaped water tower is found off the freeway in Wytheville, VA.  What I found most amusing is that truckers refer to this tower as "The Doorknob to Hell".

And we end with the legendary "Peachoid", which is easily the most well known and most impressive water tower in all of the South.  Found in Gaffney, GA the water tower has been connected to some controversy with some saying it is too distracting to the drivers on the road, while others say it looks like a giant ass.   I should also mention that I am not at all bitter about the fact that I licensed this image to be used in the show "House of Cards", but they ended up using someone else's pictures.  Oh, well, their loss.

The Carpetbagger

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The Chicago Man-Eaters

A few weeks ago I took my early trip outside the South to visit the arctic tundra of my motherland: The Midwest. 

I had an opportunity to visit I museum I have not visited before: The Chicago Field Museum.  Its a nice old style museum with tons of great taxidermy.  It is most well known for "Sue" the most complete T-Rex Skeleton ever found.  

Hey Sue, How's it going?

But the thing that excited me the most was these two guys.  Meet the Tsavo Man Eaters.

These two adorable lions are the most prolific man-eating lions in history, picking off 135 railroad works off in Africa.  Despite having no manes the lions are both male.  They believe the lions first developed a taste for human flesh by feasting on Hindu funeral pyres that had been left by the river. 

Now, one would think that it would be the most viscous ferocious of the Lions would be the ones that would feed on human, but actually the opposite is true.  Weaker and sicker Lions are usually the ones that become man eaters.  Apex predators like lions and sharks generally do not like to eat people, they are too bony and lean compared to the prey they normally eat.  Some feel that the Tsavo lion murder tour was the caused by a damaged tooth in one of the lions, preventing him from hunting faster stronger prey.

The Man Eaters were hunted down by John Henry Patterson, an Irish Author and Hunter.  The Lions spent 25 years as his rugs, but then donated them to the Field Museum, where they can be seen in all of their glory.

But WAIT, that's not all......

There is another Man Eater at the Field Museum.....

Meet the Man Eater of Mfuwe!

Another maneless Lion (apparently baldness leads to murder in the Lion Kingdom) who had a love of man meat.  Unfortunately for Mr. Mfuwe he only ate 6 people, so he is relegated to the food court in the basement of the Museum and not the main exhibit Hall.  One interesting thing about the Mfuwe man eater is that wherever he went he carried around a bag of laundry he stole.  This behavior lead to locals believing him to be either a demon or a shape-shifting sorcerer.

Other notable taxidermied animals at the Museum are Bushman, the famous gorilla from the Lincoln Park Zoo.

Also, they have Sun Lin, the first Panda to ever live in America....

I am a huge fan of celebrity taxidermy.  I think all famous animals should be stuffed so that they can live in immortality.  The Field Museum seems to understand this.

While seeing dead animals at the Field Museum was awesome, we also took the opportunity to see live animals.   In what is becoming an annual tradition we went to the Milwaukee Public Zoo for the second year in a row during a snow storm.  

The awesome thing about going to the Zoo in the snow is that there is no one else there and the animals seem more relaxed and alive.  They seem to be less shy and more willing to come out when there is no one there.  Plus, as a cold weather zoo, they have excellent indoor enclosures. Check it out.

To my knowledge this Lion has never eaten anyone.  

The only downside to visiting the zoo when it is 10 degrees is that we had to skip the arctic blast booth.

 

The Carpetbagger

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The Legend of Harland Sanders

Is there a larger icon in the South, then Colonel Harland Sanders?  Hell, is there a larger icon in the whole world?

Colonel Sanders is easily one of the most recognizable people to ever walk the planet, right up there with Jesus Christ and Mickey Mouse.

His haunting visage can be found in any country, any town, anywhere in the world.

I recently traveled from my home in the Smoky Mountains of NC to my birthplace near the great Lakes and the ONLY person who has their birth place on a historical sign on this trip is Colonel Harland Sanders.  He is a true Southern Icon and a true American Icon.  He is the man who invented the fast food restaurant.

First of all, for a bit of background.  Sanders was in the military, but his illustrious career only lasted 3 months and he never reached the rank of "Colonel".

Sanders is a "Kentucky Colonel", which is an honorary title that is handed out by the governor of Kentucky to prominent individuals.   Notable Kentucky Colonels include: Bill Clinton, Tiger Woods, Pope John Paul II, Winston Churchill, Whoopy Goldberg, Betty White, Bill Ray Cyrus, Muhammad Ali, and Ronald Reagan.

When this honor was bestowed upon restauranteur Harland Sanders, it meant something more to him then it did these other individuals.  It changed Harland.  From that moment one he insisted on being addressed as Colonel.  He altered his wardrobe and only wore a pure white suit combined with a black string tie, making him look like a civil war era Southern Colonel.  For the last 20 years of his life, he was never seen wearing anything but this uniform and when he died he was buried in it.

The man certainly had an ego, that is clear, but it is something he earned.  The Colonel literally invented fast food.  Kentucky Fried Chicken was the first franchised food chain in the world.  For this alone he is a great American.

The Colonel was notoriously crotchety and cantankerous.  He would should up randomly at Kentucky Friend Chicken Restaurants and if the food wasn't up to his standards he would take it out of the kitchen and chuck it into the parking lot.

After selling the KFC corporation he would bad mouth the food, calling the mashed potatoes a mixture of  "wall paste and sludge".  The KFC corporation would give him a pile of money to get him to shut the hell up and continue to use his iconic image.

For Americans who want to honor the Colonel, there is no shortage of opportunities.

The original Colonel Sanders Cafe is still standing in Corbin, KY.

Its actually a functioning KFC, making it possible the only combination fast food restaurant and Museum in the country.

There is even a photo op where you can pose with the Colonel's Ghost.

Head on over to Louisville and pay respects to the man's final resting place,

All true American's make pilgrimages to this shrine and leave gifts of friend chicken legs.

It doesn't end here though!  Our Colonel Sanders road trip continues!

Stop by the Louisville Welcome Center (which is oddly located in the center of the city) to see this fantastic Wax Figure of the Colonel, complete with a nice bucket of wax chicken.

 Along with one of his original suites.

Of course, for hardcore tourists like me, ONE Wax Sanders and ONE original suit just simply isn't enough.

Head on over to WHY Louisville, a wonderful set of gift shops in Louisville that goes great lengths to honor the colonel.  They have a Wax Sanders WEARING an original suit.

They also have a comic foreground that allows you to BE the Colonel.

Most impressively, Sanders is emblazoned on their mural of "Kentucky Rushmore".

That is Muhammad Ali (which we previous learned is actually Colonel Muhammad Ali), Abraham Lincoln, Sanders and Secretariat.

The Kentucky Rushmore was actually supposed to be a real sculpture, but the plans fell through which is sad.  I love the idea of the Kentucky Rushmore, but I am not happy about the inclusion of Abraham Lincoln.  I think there should be a rule that you are only allowed to be on ONE Rushmore.  Its not fair for him to get to pull double duty.  Plus, let's not forget that Lincoln was actually born in North Carolina......but we'll get to that later.....

The Carpetbagger

Please feel free to email me at jacobthecarpetbagger@gmail.com
And don't forget to check out my Flickr Photostream and my Youtube Page