Time Travel

Yesterday was overcast but it didn't rain until after dark. We decided it would be a good day to visit the Pink Palace. This the name the locals gave to the home built by Clarence Saunders, the originator of the Piggly Wiggly grocery chain. He donated it to the city in 1926 for a museum after he was ruined in a bankruptcy fight with the New York Stock Exchange. It is made from pink marble from Georgia, hence the name. The home was built with 36,500 square feet of living area. Today, it is a collection of museums of both natural and local history and also houses an IMAX theater and a planetarium.

We started out in the natural history museum on the first floor. This has exhibits showing the internal bone structures of many animals and birds from mice to men. It shows the march of time and the development of plant and animal life over the ages, with some information on dinosaurs that have been found in the area.

There is an extensive display of rocks and minerals from around the world.

We interrupted our tour for the show at the planetarium. It was a program on the development of the telescope, which was first invented 400 years ago this year. Then there was a follow-up program on the night sky of Memphis and some of the more easily identifiable constellations.

After the show, we went up to the second floor of the museum to see the local history displays. This is all Smithsonian quality stuff, with many life-size dioramas and lots of artifacts. The time span goes from the early pioneer days up into the 1930's.  At one place, I saw an opportunity to get both of us in the picture.

Also on the second floor was a temporary exhibit, this one put on by the local model railroad clubs. It was a huge display, and very detailed.

The permanent displays ranged from pioneer history up through the 1930's. There is a heavy emphasis on local medical history with many displays and dioramas of medical and dental practice and training. Lots of artifacts. There was also a section describing the "Cotton Ball", a yearly celebration of the importance of cotton to the local economy, as Memphis was the clearing house for all of the cotton grown for a long ways around. It looked like a local Mardis Gras, with specially designed costumes and floats.

But one of the exhibits that I got quite a charge out of was one of a 1930's kitchen. It had the exact same models of clock, waffle maker and mix-master that we had in our kitchen when I was a kid. Talk about feeling old! Now they're putting my life in a museum.