Museums and Galleries on My Bucket List

Shame on me. This post was supposed to be part of the Weekly Wednesday Blog Challenge for May 29^th. I even had a calendar event set with an alarm a week out, and I missed it. Ah well. It’s still a good topic so I’m still going to write about it.

The prompt was “Museums or Galleries I’ve Visited or Want to Visit.”

Wow, do I have a list.

When I was much, much younger, my parents took me and my brother to visit a number of places. I recall Gettysburg, Washington DC, the National Museum of the US Air Force, and the battleship USS Texas among others.

Decades later, I revisited Gettysburg and the Air Force Museum with our Boy Scout Troop, but neither visit gave me much time to really lose myself in the exhibits. I couldn’t really focus on the experience because there were a bunch of Scouts and only so many adults along. Plus at Gettysburg, we were doing a lot of hiking, focusing on obtaining the Heritage Trails patch. So while we stopped at the Visitor’s Center, we didn’t stay long, and we were pretty beat by then.

Ditto the Air Force Museum at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. I went in middle school on the Ohio History Trip, but that was a very brief stop of just a couple of hours. I think Diana and I took the kids one time too, though I can’t recall much about the trip. A few years later, Number Two Son and I went on a weekend camping trip with his Scout Troop. I recall it was very brisk overnight, probably dropping into the low 40s, but we had a lot of fun. I’d love to go back and spend a couple of days there.

When I was a young tween, my mom’s sister and brother-in-law lived in Washington DC, within sight of the old Watergate Hotel. Aunt Gayle was a docent for the Smithsonian at the time, and the National Air & Space Museum had recently opened. One spring break, I went on a great adventure, flying from Marietta to Pittsburgh by myself to meet up with Uncle Ross. That was a big deal at the time, because as I said, I was 11 or 12. We flew on together to DC, and I got to spend each day at whatever museum I wanted. I know I spent at least two days at the Air & Space Museum, but I can’t remember where else I visited. I could easily spend an entire week making my way through that building and the outside exhibits at the Udvar-Hazy Center.

Aviation has always held a special place in my heart, and I’ll never turn down a chance to visit an aviation-related museum. I’d really like to visit the Intrepid Sea, Air, & Space Museum in New York as well as the San Diego Air & Space Museum. And if I’m going to be in San Diego, it makes sense to hit the USS Midway Museum. Plus, the Hornet is just down the coast, so since I’d be in the neighborhood…

There are eight battleships I’d like to check out, too. I’ve visited the Texas and the Missouri, but barely got to spend an hour on the latter. We didn’t make it into the USS Bowfin Submarine Museum because of time constraints during our vacation last year, though we made our way through most of the rest of the Pearl Harbor National Memorial. I really want to go back though. I felt like we practically sprinted through Missouri, and I could probably spend an entire day aboard her.

I’d mark off an entire week for the National WWII Museum in New Orleans. I had it in my mind to visit there when I was in town for my Uncle Ed’s funeral but decided not to. It’s probably just as well as I’d have only had a couple of hours. I still regret not going though.

I suppose it’s obvious that I have a huge interest in military history. It’s always been that way for me. Some of the first books I checked out from my hometown library were World War Two history books. Somewhere along the line, we collected some WW2 novels about the European air war, and I devoured those too, along with a dozen or so Popular Science magazines from the war period.

Subs

Second Son, Number Three, Middle Son, and I spent a blustery afternoon working on the Batfish not long after we first visited Muskogee, and that’s still kind of a kick to be able to say. I really hope they’re able to reopen her soon. She’s been closed since a major flood displaced her five years ago. There’s talk of moving her to a river mooring to increase traffic, but they’ve been talking about that since the flood.

We’ve also visited the Cod, moored in Cleveland. I thought I’d told that story before. We were visiting Diana’s mom at the Cleveland Clinic for her birthday with 5 8/9 of the kids. It was a long drive up and a long day at the hospital for the kids, who didn’t really have a chance to run off much energy. Oldest Son was maybe 11 or 12, and Middle Son was less than a year old, I think. We had been looking for a park to let the kids run, but couldn’t find much in that part of Cleveland. I had it in my head to go hang out at Burke Lakefront Airport so they could watch the planes for a bit, but there was no free parking available.

Then I caught sight of the USS Cod Submarine Memorial nearby, with a fenced area. We made our way over and I pled my case to the guy at the gate, saying I just wanted to let my kids run off some energy before we strapped them back in the van for the drive back to Columbus. “We don’t even want to go on board,” I said, not letting on that we couldn’t afford admission even for the adults.

After a bit, another gentleman came over to talk to me. “You guys can go aboard if you like.”

I thanked him but then confessed our financial situation. We were really short on cash because I’d lost my job not long after Diana’s mom got sick, and we were trying to raise five kids, keep the house going, and we were building another house at the same time. We just couldn’t afford it, especially considering that we would have to buy gas and food on the way home.

He smiled. “I’m the curator. You guys are welcome to tour the boat.”

Wow. We had the entire Gato-class sub to ourselves for a couple of hours.

The neatest part about Cod is that she’s the only WW2 sub that hasn’t had access hatches or ladders (stairways) added for the public. You get in and out using the same hatches and openings the crew did back in wartime.

Remember I said we had 5 8/9 kids? Yeah, Diana was pregnant with Youngest Son at the time. And she went all through the boat, up and down the same ladders and hatches as the rest of us. I was pretty impressed with her and bragged about her a lot that summer.

Despite the reason for our visit to Cleveland that week, I still have some good memories.

You know, I’ve written all of this and I still haven’t said much about some of the museums I’ve already visited. There are plenty more that I’d like to see. Looks like this will be a two-part post.

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