Baltimore – Are you the kind of person who longs to own a shrunken head? Or two stuffed squirrels toting shotguns? An item purporting to be Amelia Earhart’s mummified finger? What about the world’s largest rat? Or the world’s largest ball made entirely of ties?
This evening at Richard Opfer Auctioneering in Timonium, Md., these items – and hundreds of other freak-show curiosities – will go on the block.
The sell-off will be something of a wake, marking the demise of Baltimore’s American Dime Museum, and the unique slice of Americana it represents. Wildly popular in the late 1800s, and the precursor to the traveling sideshows of the early 20th century, the Dime – so-called for the original cost of admission – all but disappeared from American popular culture long ago.
Dick Horne, the current director, and a partner, John Taylor, revived the concept in Baltimore seven years ago, but for financial reasons, Horne closed the doors Dec. 1. And now it’s time for the inventory to go.
“There are just a whole lot of things that are more important in this day and age,” Horne says. “Still, it’s an important thing that has just vanished.”
Horne, 65, is the sole owner, Taylor having taken some of his collection of sideshow items and turned them into a “Palace of Wonders” exhibit at Showbar in Washington. Horne tried to close more than a year ago, announcing he would shut down in December 2005. The final weekend, lines snaked down the block, and regulars begged Horne to stay open. He gave in, and ran it – mostly for groups and tours, with limited hours – for one more year, paying the bills largely out of his pocket. This time he just closed, with little fanfare. The phone has rung with more pleading, but there is no turning back.
“I think I’ll go to the auction and cry,” says Peter Excho, an artist who has volunteered at the museum for a few years. “I just didn’t want to see it go.”
The museum is housed in an old rowhouse, with no heat, rotting carpet and a glass case that contains a mummy and doubles as a table for the telephone and toolbox. It’s a cramped, cluttered, musty place, where visitors were greeted outside on the walk by a stuffed bear wearing a Knights of Columbus sash and inside by a sign promising “a world where the strange is typical, the bizarre happens every day and the amazing is the least you should expect!”
It’s the classic pitch from the old-time carnival sideshows – and a call of nature for some, including John Waters, the eccentric film director and Baltimore native who calls himself a “carny” at heart.
“I liked things like the person who put a nail up his nose,” says Waters, who plans to bid on some items. “I was obsessed by that stuff. When I go to the Dime Museum, I just relive my past. So I’m very sorry to see it go. It’s a loss for tourism in Baltimore.”
As he looks around his shop, Horne is resigned to a life without the squirrel riding on an alligator or the antique cannon he coveted for years, and finally bought from another dealer. The items are all tagged now.
The auction begins at 3 p.m. MST today, and bidders can participate online through eBay.
