The building looks very nice from the outside, and I was optimistically anticipating a good time looking at old cars, coaches, and trains. I went inside and paid my $7.00 admission fee, and then entered a cavernous building chock full of the history of transportation.
Here was a little horseless carriage from 1906 that caught my eye.
Here's a shot at the back.
Note the 2 cylinder engine and the hand crank to start the vehicle. You can also see the chain drives for the wheels, similar to a bicycle chain.
I loved the cloth roof and tassels on this one! From 1903, according to the sign.
I continued to wander through the museum, enjoying the old cars (for that was the section in which I was wandering), then something unusual caught my eye. They have these reproductions of old car ads and magazines posted throughout the museum. Below one of them I noticed an unusual item, pictured below.
I thought to myself, "hmm, this is rather odd. Maybe it is part of the original ad (which you can see in the top of the picture). Certainly a modern museum of transportation wouldn't just gratuitously put up this kind of stuff, I thought. I walked on, and saw another sign, posted below.
I mean . . .really! Who the hell do these people think that they are, drawing me into a perfectly normal seeming Museum Of Transportation all for the opportunity to preach at me? Talk about gall! Talk about nerve! Talk about chutzpah! For crying out loud, I paid $7.00. Getting preached to was not part of the quid pro quo, as far as I could tell.
I walked over to the next car, but I was pretty bothered by the entire situation. I essentially felt like I had been slapped in the face--that they might have well have posted a sign that read: "atheists not welcome here."
I sought out a staff member. I wanted an explanation for this. I found two of them. One of them was apologetic, saying that she agreed that it was inappropriate, and that posting these items was a personal directive from the president of the museum. The other staff member saw nothing problematic with these little attempts to preach to me. I explained to him that I had paid my money to look at old cars and trains, not to get preached to, and that a museum like this was not the place for preaching. I told him that they might as well post a sign that said "no atheists allowed." (in retrospect, it would have been more satisfying to say "no dogs and atheists allowed" as an allegory to the old discriminatory signs about the Irish, but that's hindsight for you). At the mention of the word "atheist" the staff member got red in the face, started shaking, and said that he had to leave. Obviously he had never knowingly been face to face with an Evil Atheist before and just could not stand to be in my presence any more. So he rushed away. What a jackass.
Anyway, I was half tempted to ask for my money back, but there were some more things that I wanted to look at, so I wandered around some more. The whole preachy signs thing had been quite a buzz-kill.
This was a really big car I thought was pretty cool.
An Edsel.
Proof that it was an Edsel.
A U.S. Postal Service carriage, not a horseless carriage, a carriage.
And old electric car, but no information posted.
The Big Boy. The largest steam locomotive ever built.
The wheels of the Big Boy. Very large
Here I am with my little megaphone explaining an upcoming grievance to be aired.
