The Thing?

It got 3 stars on Yelp and the 30 or so billboards we saw advertising it painted a picture that dripped with intrigue.  When we reached the exit, we had no choice but to investigate what the thing was.  What we found was The Thing?. 

As soon as we left Joe’s and Cindy’s and got back onto I-10 we started seeing billboards advertising “The Thing?”  We saw one, then another.  And then another…  After we realized that the only 10 billboards we had passed were exclusively for “The Thing?” I pulled out my phone and googled this thing.  After 5 minutes of painstaking research, I could conclude that this was the cheesiest tourist attraction in the Southwestern United States and that we had to go check it out.

We continued on the interstate to “The Thing?,” located in Dragoon, AZ, about 60 miles east of Tucson.  Literally each and every billboard along the way—about 30 or so—were for “The Thing?”  When we arrived at the place all we found was a gift shop, gas station, Dairy Queen, and a few sheds out back that contained the museum tour we would take.  The gift shop had your standard collection of Americana and Native American jewelry and home decorations.  It also sold a collection of t-shirts with various country-themed slogans on them, and lots and lots of fireworks. 

After browsing the store and picking up a $5 t-shirt, we each paid the $1 admission for the tour and began our journey to discovering “The Thing?.”  My research proved correct.  The tour looked like it consisted of a random collection of items purchased at various garage sales across the country, and then put up on display without any logical or aesthetic order.  The attraction’s curator—if you can even use that term to describe the person responsible for “The Thing?”—must have been on some kind of substance when he or she put it all together. 

The first shed we entered had several vehicles in it and an S&M scene carved out of wood.  There was clearly an intended order in which the attraction wanted us to see the “artifacts” because there were giant yellow footprints that we were instructed to follow.  The logic guiding this order is lost upon me, however.  The things we saw in that first shed were an old WWII jeep, then a covered wagon, then a car from the 60s, then a car from the 80s, then a rickshaw carriage, and finally the S&M scene.  The exhibits weren’t even in chronological order.  Each exhibit had a very brief explanation of what it was that incorporate some “clever” use of the words “the thing.”  For example, the covered wagon said something to the effect of, “this was just the thing our forefathers used to travel west.”  But the next shed got even stranger.  There were old Italian paintings, books from the 17^th century, old pottery, and wood carvings.  The things were put into display cases and I remember one case as so bizarre because it had an old printing press in it and a pot.  The only description was “this is a printing press, and this is a pot.”  It was the least educational “museum” I had ever seen. 

Next, we continued along the footsteps and entered the third and final shed where we finally got to see what “The Thing?” truly was!  When my eyes fell upon it I was as overwhelmed by it as I was by the rest of the attraction.  Feelings of fear, anger, sadness and joy all hit me at once.  “The Thing?” was simultaneously the greatest and worst thing I had ever seen in my life.  I wish I could tell you what it was, but that would take all the fun out of driving 1,000 miles and spending your $1. 

While “The Thing?” is incredibly lame and I’ve spent most of this post ragging on it, I must note that it was very enjoyable.  The sheer ridiculousness of the whole thing made it almost too hilarious to bear.  And truly the most mysterious part of it all is, how in the world can they afford all those billboards off of only $1?  This might be something the IRS should check out…