Maybe not in that order. Wait. What?

This is the third and final post from my visit to the Frontier Times Museum in Bandera, Texas. The first post is Two heads are better than one shrunken head. Possibly. The second is Only the best dressed fleas for MY pets. (If you haven’t already read them, read this one first and end with those. They’re better and I should have finished with them. This is the part where procrastinators win.)

A Woman After My Own Heart

A collector of many things, Mrs. Louisa Gordon’s collections of bells, bed pans, money and stones take up an entire wing of the museum.

According to a sign posted in the wing, she and her husband traveled extensively. Many of the items in her collections were acquired during their travels. Upon her death in 1941, she willed her collections to J. Marvin Hunter’s museum, now the Frontier Times Museum.

Ring My Bells

That same sign introducing Mrs. Gordon’s collections also says this is likely the largest collection of bells in the world. I wanted to ring one, but I didn’t want to get kicked out before I found that elusive two-headed rodent. I should’ve rung the bells. (If you don’t know about the elusive “two-headed rodent”, see the first post.)

Mrs. Gordon must have had cold feet. Or not.

At first I thought the items pictured below were bed pans, but they’re smaller than those I remember seeing years ago. They also seem to be missing the bottom portion, where you put the coal. Maybe these are a different type of bed pan?

*synapses fire, a light comes on*

Like door locks!

I looked closer after posting this photo and realized the “bed pans” all seem to have a key hole. Whatever. Hey, anyone could’ve made the same mistake. I blame the museum for not having a sign saying “These are not bed pans.”

An arrangement of agates.

Just because this is Texas. Everyone should have a rifle handy when in Texas. Why not mount it in the fireplace?

Money, money, money. Ahh, I love this collection most of all.

First, because it’s money, and money is just lovely. But another reason I love this collection is how much more complete it is than mine. In case I haven’t confessed to you all, I have a few collections of my own: Stamps, tiny glass bottles, match books, coins, and foreign bills. All of these are beautiful miniature works of art to my view.

Until now, it never occurred to me anyone other than another collector of the same item would ever be interested in viewing one of my (very modest) collections. Maybe I will bequeath my several shoebox-sized collections to a little museum like this. It seems a fitting end for the collections of a lover of all things cheezy to end up in a museum of the weird, the wacky, and the wonderful. And it would warm my heart to know they continued to bring a smile to others. (However, seeing as how I’m the only collector in my family, I suspect they will probably throw them out upon my death. Hmm, perhaps I need to revise my will. Now accepting inquiries from museums.)