Town Revisit: Plymouth

We've been to the Clock Museum and the Watch Museum. There is also a museum in Connectiuct that is devoted to locks, so of course, I knew we had to stop there on Bruce's birthday eventually. It turned out that this was the year!
Because Connecticut had a rich industrial history, this is the kind of unusual museum that's somewhat commonplace here. It's one of the most rewarding parts of living in New England. The experience of seeing a huge amount of one particular common item (and one that you probably pay very little attention to in daily life) can give you some interesting perspective.

It reminds me of a scene from the movie My Dinner with Andrei. The film takes place in a restaurant and is basically two hours of philosophical meanderings.

WALLY: I mean, isn't there just as much "reality" to be perceived in the cigar store as there is on Mount Everest? I mean, what do you think? You see, I think that not only is there nothing more real about Mount Everest, I think there's nothing that different, in a certain way. I mean, because reality is uniform, in a way. So that if you're--if your perceptions--I mean, if your own mechanism is operating correctly, it would become irrelevant to go to Mount Everest, and sort of absurd! Because, I mean, it's just--I mean, of course, on some level, I mean, obviously it's very different from a cigar store on Seventh Avenue, but I mean...

ANDRE: [Interrupting:] But, well, I agree with you, Wally! But the problem is that people can't see the cigar store, now. I mean, things don't affect people the way they used to.

The message is one that I've long been fascinated with. The more we are exposed to something the less special it becomes to us. For example, the first time you flew on an airplane it was a memorable experience. But how about the 16th time?

The museum itself is inside what used to be a house in more than half a dozen individual rooms. An elderly man was our guide, walking with us through the museum until we got to the last room where he turned on a machine that directed us, quickly, from one exhibit to the next and then turned off abruptly. To the right you can see Bruce's favorite item at the end of tour: the beer lock.

For me, one of the best things I saw was the bathroom. I think the writing on the wall was to denote the direction to turn the lock handle. But I was just imagining how funny it would be to find yourself unable to unlock the bathroom door while inside a lock museum because you couldn't understand the locking mechanism. Then museum volunteer would eventually have to get you out and would look at you with sheer disappointment. After a dozen so incidents that would lead to writing on the wall, or at least that's how I imagine it.


Perhaps there is a more sober statement there, too. One about how we don't just find commonplace things subliminal, but that in some way our tools limit our imagination. We get used to every form of something (like a lock) working in pretty much the same way, everywhere, every time we encounter it.

Check out our first Plymouth visit.