You Came to Me from Out of Nowhere
We left Santa Fe and the Scottish Rite on October 23, 2016, heading toward Austin, Texas. It would take us two days to get there and Christee Lee was determined that we visit the UFO Museum in Roswell. While touring the museum, I thought of the CEO’s comment regarding the creation of the Minnesota Masonic Heritage Center’s Ladd Museum. He said, “Anyone can design a museum.” Looking at plastic Kmart frames showcasing copies of questionable facts hung from pegboards, I thought, “Yes, ANYONE can design a museum, but that doesn’t mean that they SHOULD.” I knew that at some point, the owner and investors had walked through with immense pride for their creation, not understanding that it could have been so much more.
After lunch in an alien-themed Mexican restaurant, we continued on toward Texas in the repaired RV. Now complete with new tires and a repaired septic, we would face yet another trial.
It was rush hour when we entered the Austin City limits. I had just finished transcribing the last page of Moses’ 1931 Diary and noticed that we had pulled into a parking lot. We were waiting for the rush-hour traffic to diminish and I said “What timing!” We were almost to our final location and decided to stop for dinner. I was still mentally processing the final entries by Moses as I crawled out of the backseat. In December of 1931, Moses shipped his designs and theatre model off to Chicago in two massive trunks that necessitated excess handling fees.
Stepping out of the truck onto the warm asphalt, I took stock of our new surroundings when I heard an exclamation from Christee. Unbelievably, the RV door wouldn’t open, it was jammed shut. After determining that prying open the door with a crow bar or shoving me in thru a broken window was not the soundest of plans, we called AAA and headed to our new campground. The remainder of the evening was spent waiting for a locksmith. Luckily, the lock on the exterior bar worked and we were able to relax while waiting for the locksmith and discussing our schedules for the next few days.
I had waited for over twenty years to visit the Harry Ransom Center and I was going to spend every single one of my moment there looking at the 1920s electric theatre model, Moses’ typed manuscript, and Moses’ scrapbook. This was the same manuscript and scrapbook that I created an index as an undergraduate student. I was extremely curious about the 1920’s model and the miniature lights that lit the stage. Lance Brockman had once photographed it and raved about miniature lights, explaining how the painting could change each scene from daytime to nighttime. So amazed was he with it, that he had included images in his catalogue for “Theatre of the Fraternity: Staging the Sacred Space of the Scottish Rite” in 1996.
Eric Colleary, Cline Curator of Theatre and Performing Arts at the Harry Ransom Center, was going to personally take me into the bowels of the archives the next day as the two trunks could not be moved to the reading room. It had taken over a month to plan my trip to the archives, but Brockman had connected me with the Colleary who also held a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota’s Department of Theatre Arts and Dance.
While driving across the plains of Texas and reading Moses’ diary entries, I began to wonder if there might be any connection between the theatre model that I was traveling to see, rumored as a Sosman & Landis Studio artifact, and Moses. Would there be any of Moses’ 1920s designs in with the collection, such as the unique Fort Scott compositions from 1924?
The next day, we wound our way to the model, pushing aside rows of hanging puppets that blocked our path. How ironic, I thought, here is this magnificent model tucked away behind rows of puppets – the painted stage’s smallest performers. I looked at the two massive trunks sitting on palettes against the back wall and had a growing sense of excitement. Could these really contain Moses’ work?
To be continued…
