MO Day 6 - Miniatures, Monstrosities, and Mishaps
Today, I started out with a trip to a cafe my friend recommended called Shameless Grounds. The cafe has great sandwiches and coffee, but they also have a fun and unique second function as a sex-positive lending library. The owners wanted to create a cafe that was a true safe space, where visitors could get a bite to eat and be able to find any book they wanted about any gender and sexuality questions they might not feel comfortable asking people in person. The only shaming they did was for people who didn’t return their library books, so it was a very wholesome approach to something that might otherwise seem taboo at brunch-time. It also didn’t hurt that they really did have excellent food. I got the LGBTQ which was a funny play on a BLT but with a delicious queso sauce adding the Q. Not a bad way to start the day at all.
Fueled up on good food and strong coffee, I made my way to the first sight-seeing destination of the day: the delightfully strange Miniature Museum of Greater St. Louis. The museum began as a labor of love for a collective of miniature loving St. Louis-ians, but it soon grew in popularity and now occupies a 6,200 square foot building with two floors of displays, making it a very big place filled with very tiny things. There impressive collection encompasses the classic (like the dollhouse on the left), the more imaginative (like the bee hive city on the right)…
… and the downright strange:
Regardless of the tone of the miniature, the attention to detail was always pretty astonishing. This was particularly highlighted in displays like the ones below which featured beautifully handpainted mini-ceramics It really blew me away to see such delicate craftsmanship and artistry go into something so small. It’s just so much work for something so niche.
The next displays featured two pretty different structures. One was a hyper-realistic scale model of a temple which really impressively nailed all the different architectural textures, and on the other end of the spectrum there was the more whimsical Little Critter Retreat designed by Louise Levitt as a charming woodland bungalow.
Next up was a series of displays of different ceramic figurines. These ranged from different fairy tale characters to more lifelike animals to a shocking number of mugs shaped like different people’s heads.
Next up was a series of more traditional scale model homes though they covered a variety of different architectural styles (and in one case also randomly had the two main guys from Fantasy Island standing out front).
The next display of “MicroMini” rooms showed that even in the world of miniatures some people still need to go smaller.
One of the more wild, but also beautifully rendered, models was this scale Pharaoh’s tomb complete with three mini sarcophaguys.
Next up were some more traditional miniature rooms but with more creatively non-traditional displays. These included: a cute doll house seemingly situated above spooky underground caverns; a rotating display of hilariously unrelated themed bedrooms (old west above ancient Egypt because why not?); a totally charming suburban home in the center of a hollowed out log; and really lovely mini-rooms carefully prepared in metal tins with added windows.
Walking up to the next floor, I was greeted with one of the larger miniatures, an impressive and impressively goofy haunted house. The glare from the display case really messes with my photos, but I hope you can still see the joyously campy attention to detail put into every spooky nook and cranny of the house. Personally, my favorite detail was that in one room it looked like Michael Jackson was just lounging around with a ghost.
Next up was a collection of more residential miniatures that had a real vitality and lived in vibe. There was even an entire mini-neighborhood!
My favorite part here was this bohemian city block that seemed to capture a romanticized mid-century New York. I liked all the weird choices of things to include like a man working in the sewers, and a group of friends getting together to paint a nude model (notice the one guy who just made a stick figure). You know, typical city things.
Leaving the realism behind for a bit, a series of fairy tale inspired miniatures. These included a house made out of a children’s book, a recreation of the three houses from the Three Little Pigs; and a teddy bear house in the shape of a big teddy bear.
Next up were some display cases featuring (literal) miniature works of art including tiny table ceramics, itty bitty Wedgwood pottery, and little paintings because even dolls deserve to appreciate high art.
Next up were some more residential miniatures but of a slightly bougie-er variety. These included snazzy mansions, townhouses, and lots of ornate interiors.
After the fancy houses, there was a series of miniatures embracing the natural world. These included elaborate tree houses (in every sense of the term), lush gardens, mountain villas, bonsai trees (which means that it’s a mini version of a mini version of a tree), and even a monastery courtyard filled with little gardening nuns.
My favorite of the nature scenes for it’s simple but effective storytelling was this piece depicting a party working to build a railroad bridge over an impressively convincing bubbling brook.
One of the wilder miniatures appeared to be a small wooden house filled with a family of potatoes because that’s exactly what it was. Craziest of all, the text that accompanied the piece was all built around a weirdly Tom Brokaw-centric potato pun.
The last of the big miniatures was a dramatic piece entitled San Andreas, featuring a Spanish monastery being torn asunder by an earthquake.
Last up, if seeing all these miniatures lit a newfound passion in you, the museum gift shop had plenty of teeny knick knacks available to begin crafting your own little worlds.
Across from the Miniature Museum, there was some pretty whimsical architecture of the full-scale variety in the form of the Bevo Mill, a German restaurant founded by August Anheuser Busch (of the Anheuser-Busch brewing family) famous for its distinct windmill structure.
Before my next stop, I recharged with some good strong coffee at Vivid Cafe, which had a sleek futuristic vibe, and made for an excellent pit stop.
After coffee, I took in some presidential history at the Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site, an estate and national historic site belonging to former president Ulysses S. Grant’s wife’s family where he lived during an economic downturn pre-Civil War. In a neat bit of curation, all of the site’s main exhibits are housed in this massive horse stable that Grant designed and helped his father-in-law build.
Grant’s an interesting historical figure, in that despite having been dead for well over a hundred years it seems like historians are only just starting to figure out how to feel about him. He was long maligned as a terrible president and a drunkard, but current evaluations are much kinder and paint him more as a man simply not suited for politics who tried to do much better things than he was given credit for while also frequently trusting the wrong people. Most of the exhibits on the site were dedicated to trying to untangle this complicated legacy and figure out just who the man really was. Humorously, the first exhibits point to one potential source of these conflicting readings of Grant being the fact that he simply didn’t talk all that much in public so there are very few first-person quotes from the man for historians to go on. Right away that shows him being radically different from any modern politicians, who frequently have the opposite problem of saying way too much, and sets the tone of the historical narrative still sort of being written.
As a smaller historical site, they didn’t have as many displays or artifacts as perhaps a larger presidential library or museum, but the things they had did help paint a portrait of the tumultuous time period Grant lived in and the complicated legacy he left. This case of artifacts really showed a little bit of everything featuring a pistol of the type used in an assassination attempt against Grant, some text from the commission of Indian Affairs, and text from the Tribunal of Arbitration that helped settled the Alabama Claims.
The gun most succinctly illustrates the turmoil that Grant inherited as President. Lincoln marked the first time a sitting president had been assassinated unleashing a dangerous idea in the public consciousness, and while the Civil War had ended the country was still massively divided. Lincoln’s successor Andrew Johnson was an old-fashioned southern Democrat genuinely guilty of a lot of the incompetence that Grant gets accused of. Johnson actively thwarted the ratification of Civil Rights legislation in favor of quickly trying to get southern states back into the which at best was an ineffective handling of Reconstruction post-Lincoln and at worst a Presidential support of growing White Supremacist powers in the post-war south. Grant had to essentially undo many if not all of Johnson’s reconstruction efforts while also coming up with effective alternatives. He did effectively pass Civil Rights laws and used his military expertise to successfully crush the first incarnation of the Ku Klux Klan. For these genuinely good things he did during his life, he was met with assassination attempts, and even his legacy wasn’t secure because more radical bills he proposed protecting the rights of Black citizens were never passed and just about every successful thing he accomplished during Reconstruction was undone by his successor, Rutherford B. Hayes, ushering in the era of Segregation. It’s easier to see Grant as an ineffective president when you look at what lasted but it does a disservice to things he actually did accomplish that were then chiseled away at by racist politicians.
The papers from the Tribunal around the Alabama Claims illustrate a rare unambiguous success for Grant, but credit is usually given to his secretary of state Hamilton Fish (incredible name) rather than Grant himself. However, since Grant is largely maligned for the scandals of his other cabinet members it seems only fair that he should also get some credit when he did pick people who were actually good at their jobs as well. The Alabama Claims proved to be a landmark case for international relations generally and for the US and UK specifically (in general Grant’s presidency had pretty uniformly strong foreign relations which tend to get overlooked due to the messy domestic stuff). The claims being disputed were a US claim for damages from Great Britain incurred after they violated supposed neutrality by building 5 warships, including the Alabama hence the name, that were used by the Confederacy against the Union. The UK in turn claimed that the US was illegally fishing in Canadian waters along the Northwest border. The matter was settled through an International Arbitration (the first of its kind) where delegates from both the US and UK and neutral countries convened in Geneva to evaluate the claims peacefully and objectively. It was decided that the UK would pay the US a couple million dollars in damages, and in return the US would stay out of Canadian waters and cede some disputed Northwest Territory to Britain. These mutually beneficial arrangements marked a huge turning point in the relatioship between the US and Britain turning them from on again off again enemies (the War of 1812 had not been that long ago) to genuine allies and it set a precedent for peaceful international arbitration that has positively endured in contemporary international relations.
Lastly, the reports from the commissioner of Indian Affairs illustrate one of the messiest facets of Grant’s messy legacy. Some modern historians have cited Grant’s relatively progressive policy regarding Native Americans as a check in his plus column but that honestly seems like more of an indictment of every other president than a real win for Grant. Truthfully, Grant did seem to genuinely believe that indigenous Americans should be treated with at least basic respect and he tried to enforce a policy of peaceful negotiation of Western Settlements. He even appointed the first actual American Indian to serve as Commissioner of Indian Affairs, something that seems like it should have happened from the moment that position existed. At the time, Grant was heavily criticized for this decision so it does seem like he was progressive for his time, but he hardly stands up to scrutiny under contemporary values. While he believed that violence and genocide were wrong (depressingly a step forward in presidential mindsets), he still didn’t really fully respect Native cultures on their own, believing that Indians should fully assimilate, convert to Christianity, and become citizens. He vetoed bills protecting bison because he agreed with advisors that attacking the largest Indian food source would curb their ability to rebel, and when white settlers barged through sacred lands to look for gold in the Black Hills he told Native leaders essentially that they should get used to White life. Good for his time still lands a pretty far way away from actually good. Worst of all, even despite Grant’s efforts for peaceful coexistence (and wars between settlers and Indians did decrease substantially under his presidency) the US Army seemed positively incapable of not committing atrocities against Native Americans with several (!) massacres happening regardless of the official policy against such abhorrence. It all goes to show how tough Grant can be to place, because he tried to do good things even when he could have been much better, but regardless of what he tried to do so much of his presidency was marred by people outside of his control doing absolutely the worst thing in most possible situations. I think things would have sadly been worse if anyone else had been in charge, but it seems that instituting any sort of consistent order in post-War America was just a herculean feat.
The next display focused on a fun chapter of Grant’s life post-presidency. Faced with idle retirement (and possibly a little burnt out on America), almost as soon as they were out of the White House, Grant and his wife, Julia, embarked on a World Tour serving as a goodwill ambassador and unofficial diplomat to countries all across Asia and Europe. Grant met with notable leaders like Queen Victoria, Pope Leo XIII, and Otto von Bismarck. Mostly they just hung out and tried to boost America’s international reputation, but occasionally other leaders would ask for Grant’s advice on matters and he proved to be a skilled arbitrator in his own right. Most notably, he helped peacefully settle a dispute between Japan and China over disputed territory in the Ryukyu Islands, which was one of the first instances of active international diplomacy carried out by a former US president.
Next up was a series of displays grappling with the question of to what extent was Grant a prejudiced man. While the museum definitely seeks to show Grant’s more progressive side, I give them a lot of credit for also acknowledging his failings. I think the most charitable read is that he started out with essentially all the prejudices of his time, but the more he traveled and the more he met different people the more he grew and changed his mind which like 90% of white people in the 1800s never did. He fought in the Mexican-American war as a soldier, but then went on to say it was possibly the most amoral war America had ever gotten involved in. He made anti-semitic orders while a general, but later espoused his regret and appointed more Jews to political office than any president before him. Unsurprisingly for US history, his relationship to Black Americans is a bit thornier. Grant came from a staunchly abolitionist family, but his wife’s family owned slaves. His parents even refused to come to their wedding because of it. I don’t know that either Grant or his wife ever got to the point of believing in true equality (and the idea of a benevolent slave owner is simply a myth), but they did seem significantly better than a lot of their contemporaries. Grant very quickly freed the only slave he ever owned (a man who had been offered as a gift from his wife’s dad naturally) even though the family was in dire economic straits and selling the man could have helped them significantly. Owning a man at all, even reluctantly, is pretty hard to forgive, but I think it does reflect positively on Grant’s character that he was able to get to the point of putting someone else’s humanity above his own gain which, while an exceptionally low bar to clear, proved to be a stumbling block for so many. He was far from perfect, but at least he was open to admitting he was wrong and trying to change.
The next few displays seemed to illustrate just how horrible the times in which Grant was living good be. There were nightmarish etchings of KKK sneak attacks, actual photographs of Civil War ambulances collecting dead bodies, and political cartoons very pointedly suggesting that the South during Reconstruction would rather drown than take any help from Black people. It’s kind of crazy just how much national trauma that we’re still reconciling with stems so much from essentially one 16 year period from the start of the war to end of reconstruction.
Next up were more displays directly addressing common complaints about Grant. The text was genuinely interesting but I did think it was hilarious out of context to have big pictures of Grant’s face with things like “Drunkard? and “Incompetent?” underneath them hanging on the walls. Regarding Grant’s reputation as a drunk, it is possibly one of the most enduring insults to have followed him around and yet it seems almost wholly unsubstantiated in his adult life. He did get chastised a lot in his early days as a soldier for his drinking, but who among us can say we weren’t way worse at drinking in our early 20s. This section also had a collection of presidential rankings starting from 1999 to show how Grant’s reputation has gradually been improving. That being said the big takeaway from looking at these rankings is how bad most presidents have been quite honestly. Outside of the largely agreed upon top 10 (though the order changes a bit) it feels like an exceptionally mixed bag. I guess to some extent it shows what a near-impossible job being president is, but also how maybe we as a country have never really been particularly great judges of character. I was surprised to see Polk ranked so high considering that, like Grant, I think the Mexican-American War was a huge national moral failure and one that hastened the onset of the Civil War, but then I read that part of how these rankings are assigned is by how well the president delivered on what they said they would do. So I guess it doesn’t always matter if what they said they were gonna do was just awful. It certainly explains how Reagan and Jackson almost always crack top 20.
Lastly there was a really sweet photo of Grant looking a bit like Santa Claus sitting with all his kids and grandkids. It’s a rare photo where he looks sort of happy, and he does seem like a pretty legitimate family man. He seemed to genuinely love his wife, and I read a cute exchange where she felt like she should get surgery to fix her slightly crossed eyes once they entered the national spotlight but he talked her out of it, because he said those were the eyes he fell in love with. Even when he knew he was about to die from throat cancer, his last big actions were to ensure the financial future of his family. He had lost almost all of his money after his son was ripped off by an investment partner (because trusting the wrong people seemed to run in the family), so he furiously set about writing his memoirs with just months to live. He died three days after the book was published but it proved a massive success and ensured that his wife and children would be able to stay afloat.
After finishing up with the stable and galleries, I walked around the rest of the property. The Dent family home, known as White Haven for some hilariously on-the-nose racism, was a beautiful home even if Grant’s in-laws were not great people. The green was an odd choice, but it actually looked really nice alongside the foliage. The rustic stone Summer Kitchen behind the house is an interesting document of the practicalities of life in the muggy south pre-air conditioning, where a cool outdoor space was needed for cooking. It was also only used by the Dent’s slaves, so it’s also a neat reminder that almost any history of the south at this time is inseparable from the institution of slavery.
My favorite buildings on the premises were the Ice House and Chicken house, because their placement on this little hill really makes it look like they’re actively sinking into the ground. I doubt this was intentional, but it makes for a real whimsical aesthetic that I’m all about.
After the presidential site, I made my way to St. Louis’ historic district, Laclede’s Landing, where I got nice view of the next state on my itinerary, Illinois, just over the Mississippi.
Naturally, I had to pay a visit to this part of the city to see the patently absurd Laclede’s Landing Wax Museum. The deliriously campy museum is housed in a historic warehouse, which gives helps enhance the charmingly spooky atmosphere generated by the over 200 nightmarish wax figures in the collection. Walking into the front lobby, I was greeted with the museum’s recent acquisitions which included recent world leaders on one side and Shrek and ET on the other. Obviously, why wouldn’t those two things be grouped together?
First up upon entering the museum, there was a tribute to the most famous matriarch of Wax Museums, Madame Tussaud. It would be a lovely tribute to the history of wax sculptures and the places that display them if it didn’t also look like an old pilgrim witch gazing upon her collection of severed heads.
Next up were wax versions of the moon landing and Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (I can’t stress enough how little effort was made to arrange the rooms with any thematic continuity). I also loved how much Neil Armstrong and Dopey had virtually the same facial expression:
Up next was a collection of presidential wax figures in various states of mania. My personal favorites were Richard Nixon laughing deliriously while sporting a very Dracula hairstyle and FDR apparently giving a fireside address from beyond the grave.
After the presidents came scenes from the life of Christ, that I’m sure technically fall under the purview of blasphemy.
In a very charmingly on-the-nose transition between rooms, right after Jesus came Superman.
Up next was Henry the 8th and his wives followed by characters from Star Wars. I think old Henry and Jar Jar Binks would have gotten along.
Up next was a series of famous musicians (allegedly). If I had to guess, I’d say that the two below are John Lennon and Elvis, but anyone’s guess is as good as mine.
Next up was the museum’s biggest selling point: the Chamber of Horrors. The museum is very endearingly self-aware about how unsettling many wax figure appearances are to people with eyes, so they really lean into it with an entire basement of their most intentionally monstrous collections. Luckily, to keep people from wandering into the chamber of horrors without knowing what they’re getting into, they’ve got an incredibly helpful doorman.
The Chamber of Horrors is not for the weak of heart, but it’s so far down the bizarro rabbit hole that you have to admire the gonzo creativity of it. There were all manners of monsters and deformed figures, with some coming from famous movies or folktales while other presumably just emerged fully formed from the darkest recesses of the artists’ minds.
As you left the Chamber of Horrors and exited the museum, you were greeted with Jack Nicholson’s version of the Joker seemingly jumping down from the ceiling at you. How could the museum experience have ended any other way?
After the wax museum, I made my way to a nice Italian restaurant called Charlie Gitto’s, that claims to be the originator of the St. Louis specialty toasted ravioli. They’ve been operating out of the same location for the past 40 years so the restaurant has a very classic, rustic atmosphere which helps add to the feeling that you’re enjoying a bit of the city’s history along with your meal. Everything looked fantastic, but, if you can believe it, the wax museum took some of my appetite away so I kept things light and just got an appetizer platter. The platter consisted of mozzarella sticks, chicken wings, and of course some toasted ravioli. Everything was delicious but the signature pasta easily stole the show. The toasted breading on the outside gave the ravioli an excellent crunch but they were still soft and fluffy in the middle and filled with a perfect mix of beef and pomodoro sauce. I can definitely see why it caught on.
On my way back from dinner, I was talking to my cousins on the phone because they had recently been to a Ween concert in Vermont and had a series of misadventures along the way. I was grateful for the call not just because I got some fun stories out of it, but also because when I got to my car I found that me and everyone else on the street I had parked on had had our windows smashed in and it was nice to have some friendly voices on the line while I processed this. I had hoped that leaving my car in a state of perpetual disarray would give the (accurate) appearance that someone was living out of it so there would be nothing of value to steal. It had worked for 44 states, but I suppose all good things must come to an end. My backpack had been stolen out of the front seat, which had my laptop, my passport, and my joke notebook in it. Truly there was nothing of value to anyone else but me (the computer was several years old and literally held together with duct tape), but I’m guessing whoever broke in just took a gamble on what was most likely worth stealing and didn’t actually look in the bag. All in all, I was lucky that most of what I lost was just of sentimental value as I backed up most things, but there were a few writing projects and photos on the old laptop that are mostly gone for good. I was most fortunate that it was only things that were hurt, but I was also very happy to find that my iPod had been glossed over in the detritus of my car so I wouldn’t have to reassemble my music library which would have been a real bear of a task.
My cousins waited on hold while I talked to the police who essentially said there was really nothing they could. What was done was done.
I couldn’t wallow too long (I’m being glib now but I was certainly devastated at the time), because I had a show to get to that night. My friend, Ella, had recommended me to a local show producer, Christian Lawrence, who had agreed to give me a feature spot on his show Bareknuckle Comedy which was a mixture of sketch and standup. It was too nice an opportunity to let some little old break-in get in the way of so I made my way to a local supermarket (the delightfully named Schnuck’s) where I improvised a temporary window replacement:
The show was at a fun bar called the Heavy Anchor which had a great sort-of-punk sort-of-hipster vibe that generally entails good craft beers and jovial crowds. I couldn’t have had a better time, which I really needed on this night in particular. The host, Christian, was super kind and funny, and the sketch portion of the night his group performed was genuinely fantastic. I feel like sketch is possibly one of the hardest comedy forms to really pull off (as evidenced by the fact that even with the full might of NBC behind them SNL still has a wonky hit-to-miss ratio), so seeing a great sketch show always feels like an act of magic. I particularly remember a sketch about one on of the cast deciding she wants to become the pope, naturally featuring a Rocky-style training montage, being just a blast. It was a real winning combination of sly social commentary on organized religion with real goofy physical comedy and silly hats. What’s not to love?
I got to ride off the momentum of the sketches and do a 20 minute set where just about everything worked (I lost some energy a little bit with darker material but when I veered back to silly nothing was beyond salvaging). It was exhilarating, and as a newer comic having somebody take a chance on you and then not making a fool of yourself is an exceedingly wonderful feeling.
Best of all one of my friends from my college marching band, Cara, had recently moved to just outside of St. Louis, and she was able to come to the show, so I got to do a good show and share it with an old friend which made me forget for a little bit that I’d have a lot to figure out in the morning.
Favorite Random Sightings: an autoshop called Nads Custom; a license plate that just said BIG RAY; an advertisement for a drag brunch called Dining with the Divas; and this absolutely insane poster I came across in a bathroom:
Regional Observations: Maybe it’s the history of German immigrants but I never noticed how good Pilsners are as a beer before I got to the midwest. 4 Hands Brewing out of St. Louis’ City Wide Pils was a real winner.
Random Joke of the Day: Three men are about to be executed for crimes.
Two guards brings the first forward, and the executioner asks if he has any last requests. He says no, and the executioner shouts, "Ready . . . Aim . . ."
Suddenly he yells, "earthquake!!" Everyone is startled and looks around. He manages to escape.
The angry guards then bring the second man forward, and the executioner asks if he has any last requests. He says no, and the executioner shouts, "Ready . . . Aim . . ."
He then screams, "tornado!!" Yet again, everyone is startled and looks around. He too escapes execution.
By this point, the third man had figured out what the others did. The guards bring him forward, and the executioner asks if he has any last requests. He also says no, and the executioner shouts, Ready . . . Aim . . ."
The man shouts, "fire!!"
Song of the Day:
I feel like I had to put something from Meet Me in St. Louis, but I prefer this one to the title track: