Random pictures from Pioneer Village

 We had last visited Pioneer Village in Minden, Nebraska, in 1993.  It hasn't been maintained very well, but if you like to look at large collections of unusual old things, it's still a fun trip down memory lane.  It's off the beaten path, which doesn't help with its decline.  I don't look for the place to be around in another thirty years.  There will probably be a huge antique auction, and that will be the end of it.

 

  Welcome to Nebraska.

 

As I told you in the last entry... get used to tipping your head slightly to the left to look at my pictures.  Anyhow, this is Nebraska.  Most non-residents say Kansas and Nebraska are boring but I see beauty in both places.  If you look for beauty, you will find it.

                      
In my farthest-back childhood memories, this is the kind of refrigerator we had.  My head didn't reach the top of the door back then, when I looked inside it.

Just a few of the old stoves in the collection.

A microwave oven from the fifties.  I didn't even know they had them back then!

I cropped the picture so you can (I hope) read the letter from the lady who donated it to the museum.  She must have been rich, to pay so much for an oven.  Read what Wikipedia has to say about the earliest microwave ovens HERE.

This is only part of the collection of washing machines.

There are many, many buggies (as in horse-and-buggies, although there are baby buggies too).  There are cars and bicycles, tractors and typewriters, even a few airplanes.  We enjoyed the place, but it sort of makes me sad, seeing its decline.  There were probably only twenty-five visitors there during the four or five hours we were there.

Today we're gearing up for a trip to Branson.  By Sunday we'll be back to Church, babysitting on Monday, back to our normal routine.  

I have highly-rated restaurants chosen for our stay at Branson, and I have planned a stop at Osceola Cheese on the way down.  Here's hoping I manage to keep my weight below 160 during this trip.  It's been a long, hard road getting to this point!