Indy Has New Fabufantastic Museum
“Indianapolis doesn’t have a bad reputation; it has no reputation,” says retired award-winning Indianapolis Star writer Will Higgins. He’s only half kidding, which means he is half right. According to Will, the quirky, eccentric stories about his home city have never been really celebrated. Higgins learned of some of these untold tales by listening to old-time reporters back in the 90s as they recounted their experiences tracking down stories. “We’ve got a freaky cultural history and I want to tell it,” Higgins proclaims.
The result is the Museum of Fabulosity on the southeast side of Indy in the Garfield Park area. The exhibit is part of a contemporary art museum called the Tube Factory, 1125 Cruft Street. The neighborhood is dotted with charming businesses like a tattoo parlor, a vintage clothing store, a retro kind of hardware store and coffee shops.
Inside Will’s space are some 16 displays that reflect the cheeky history of the Circle City. As you enter the museum, a myriad of “props” draws your attention to stories that Will has written in his inimitable style. For example, the pole in the corner of the room is not the actual pole that Mauri Rose Kirby sat atop of back in 1958.for almost a year as part of a restaurant promotion, but the story is true, all 71 feet of it. While the artifacts are not authentic, they direct you to the stories that chroniclea rich history of unconventional and unusual Hoosiers.
No, it’s not the real pack of Pall Malls that Kurt Vonnegut once smoked, but it gives Will an opportunity to reflect on this unhealthy aspect of the celebrated author’s life. In Will’s words:
“Kurt Vonnegut smoked Pall Malls nearly his whole life… Vonnegut’s 84-year lifespan would have given him time to smoke one million Pall Mall cigarettes. Do the math: 70 years of smoking, two packs a day, 50,000 packs, 20 cigarettes per pack. At five minutes per cigarette, smoking would have eaten up nine-and-a-half years, or 8.8 percent of Kurt Vonnegut’s time on earth.” By the way, Vonnegut threatened to sue Brown &Williamson because he didn’t die from smoking despite the package warning.
It’s also not the actual purple velour shirt worn by the flamboyant and convicted pimp, the late Jerry Hostetler, whose equally ostentatious house on East Kessler Blvd. was not a sight for sore eyes, but an eyesore for many years. And still is.
Then there was the so-called hanging farmer from Illinois who came to Indy to assist in the execution of George Barrett, convicted of killing an FBI agent. The Illinois man was summoned because he, well let’s say, knew the ropes.
Then there’s the fascinating story of Elfrieda Mais, a racecar driver wannabee who often ran a few laps prior to regional races around the country to demonstrate her prowess. Maybe she was the country’s first female racecar driver. She also walked on the wings of planes, possibly the air-apparent of future stunt women.
And then there’s John Dillinger whose proficiency at baseball led to his learning how to rob a bank. Yes, it’s quite a story.
The exhibit is only open till September 20th. Enter Museum of Fabulosity in your search engine for details.
Will Higgins is pleased with the success of his exhibit and is thinking of doing a future display of Indy 500 offbeat memorabilia. How will he pull that off? Where there’s Will, there’s a way.
Dick Wolfsie is a retired TV personality, author, speaker, teacher and all-around good guy. His award-winning column appears here weekly. If you’d like to learn more about joining Dick on an upcoming trip to Costa Rica, go to this paper’s website and click on the Collette Travel ads.