In Search of the Weird

Welcome to Chugwater, Wyoming. Population: basically nonextistent but still not as bad as that town in Nebraska with only one resident.

Chugwater is a small town in south-central Wyoming that lured me off the highway with the promise of world famous chili and museum. I understood this to be a chili museum, which, by the way, it was not. I stopped by the Chugwater Chili Corp, where I kindly refused to try the chili because it was 11:00 am. I bought some spices for the Cajun King and some huckleberry syrup for my brother and inquired about the museum.

Apparently, the museum is only open on the weekends but the lady was so excited that I was interested in the Chugwater History Museum (that's right, no chilis) that she called Jean, who operates the museum, to come down and open it for me. I said that that really wasn't necessary and I didn't want to bother anyone, but she insisted. Jean needed to change out of her shorts so I was told to wait at the last living soda fountain in the United States.

I had a blueberry soda, which I assure you is not as good as it sounds (and has a funny after-taste) before heading across the street to meet Jean. By the way, the "street" in Chugwater consists of one block with 4 buildings on either side and 3 of those four buildings have already been mentioned.

This is Jean, who was kind enough to inform me that she can't hear anything unless you scream at her 2 inches away from her face. Really.

Jean talked to me all about the history of Chugwater and let me take pictures for an hour or so, during which, I found this nifty booklet providing informative facts about Jews in Wyoming. Apparently, yes, there are Jews in Wyoming, although I didn't see any.

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Home of the Jackalope

Ok, first off I originally thought that the Jackalope was just that weird skit from America's Funniest Home Videos. Then, everybody told me that it was a myth originating in New Mexico. In fact, the legend of the Jackalope stems from a taxidermist in Douglas, Wyoming who attached the antlers of an antelope to the body of a jack rabbit [shudder]. We all know how I feel about jack rabbits. Apparently there are a bunch of crazy people who believe that the Jackalope is a real animal. These same people also believe the moon landing was a hoax. At Jackalope Conspiracy you can read all about controversy surrounding the Jackalope, including its alleged mystical powers.

Jackalope heads are for sale everywhere in Douglas. Even the grocery store.

I assume this is where Jackalopes come to buy their guns and workout. In my head they run on little treadmills and lift weights on machines specially made to support their antlers.

In the town square you can read all about the history or "birth" of the Jackalope. And how Douglas became obsessed.

The benches bear, what I have since dubbed, "The Mark of the Jackalope."

Even Ronald Reagan claimed to have hunted one of these illusive "animals" which, quite frankly, doesn't surprise me in the least bit.

Here, we have the Douglas town square and an ode to everyone's favorite example of when mating goes wrong, and where, apparently there has been a severe problem with people mounting the Jackalope:

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When I got to Wyoming, I was most excited about visiting the Wyoming Frontier Prison Museum, an extremely morbid tribute to punishing criminals of the Wild West. First of all I must tell you that my guide lady was one of the top five most obnoxious human beings I have ever encountered in my entire life. Really. She constantly said they “hanged” people and nobody seemed to want to tell her it’s “hung.”

Plus she would ask these ridiculous questions that I suppose you might know the answer to had you been paying attention to what she was saying, but nobody was so nobody knew the answers. She would say, “Well? Anybody? Come on?” and then wait for a full sixty seconds then ask again, “Come on, you know this one…” Finally she would realize that it wasn’t going to happen and gives some completely obscure answer that nobody would have know anyways. For example, she was telling us about some prisoners who attempted to escape by digging a 50-foot tunnel under the prison wall. She asked if we knew where they put the dirt and seemed absolutely dumbfounded that nobody instinctively knew it was in the ceiling. Yes, the ceiling,

Besides her most obnoxious Q&A, she would do things like lock people in cells and pretend she couldn’t get the door open. Then she would say, “everybody’s laughing at you, you’re going to have to spend the night in solitary confinement… they’re all laughing.” But nobody was, in fact, laughing. You see my point. However the Wyoming Frontier Prison Museum and Tour did have two very important highlights:

1. I have always wanted to photograph a prison.

2. I got to have my picture taken in the gas chamber:

Hey, I feel like it’s just about as morbid as taking your kid on a tour of a gas chamber that was in use until very recently. Or the part where she was showing how they “hanged” people and she messed up the scale model so that the body/doll dropped, snapping its model neck, and dangled in front of the little kids. Then she had to set it back up to show how a person is properly "hanged." Oh yeah.

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