Roadside Connecticut – Connecticut seems to have this reputaion for being buttoned up and preppy but there is a wacky, side of Connecticut also. After all the great showman PT Barnum was born and died in Connecticut. He even served as the Mayor of Bridgeport.
The state of Connecticut is no stranger to the strange, odd and weird. Look at Holy Land USA in Waterbury, the now closed bible based attraction. conceived by John Baptist Greco, a Waterbury-based attorney.
Greco, a Roman Catholic, founded a volunteer organization called Companions of Christ, with the purpose of creating an attraction that would replicate Bethlehem and Jerusalem of the Biblical era. Construction commenced in 1955. Closed in 1984, the year I graduated from High School, it has just sat vacant being slowly destroy by drunk teen vandals.
This kitchy stuff is in my blood, one of my distant relatives was Johnny Meah the acclaimed banner painter for the circus sideshows. But I’ve always enjoyed things on the edges – magic, mentalists, weird sideshows, roadside attractions and amusements.
Johnny Meah: Czar of Bizarre from Watson on Vimeo.
Of course I often feel like I was born out of time. I see all of these cool things from the past, before people simply flipped through images on a little chunk of glass in their hand. A time when people actually experience things in real life rather than just sat around staring at screens.
I never miss the opportunity to explore a Ripley’s Believe It or Not Museum or find some old roadside attraction like Perry’s Nut House in Maine (before it closed, was divided up and then partially reassembled).
Down in Florida we managed to visit Solomon’s Castle which is a wacky attraction in the middle of No Where’s Ville and the artist is thankfully still alive although getting up in years.
Solomon’s Castle covers 12,000 square feet and stands (at the moment) three stories high. It’s impossible to photograph in the blinding Florida sun, as Solomon has covered every exterior surface with discarded aluminum printing plates. The broad, sweeping brick walkway that leads to it is impressive, until Solomon points out that the “bricks” have simply been painted on poured cement. He laughs as he demonstrates crude, handmade stamp he used; the whole process only took a couple of hours. Whereas other men fight and die for their castles, Howard Solomon fights to keep from laughing at it.
Sometimes we find out about places when they are just on the verge of closing or in their final days. The Wonder Gardens in Bonita Springs, a great old animal and alligator attraction, closed a few years after we started going down to visit our retired parents.
Another was the Higgins Armory Museum is the name of a collection in the Worcester Art Museum. It was formerly a separate museum located in the nearby Higgins Armory Building in Worcester, Massachusetts, dedicated to the display of arms and armor. I found out about it when planning a trip to the area and found out it was closing the next month!
Sometimes I’ll see something, take a picture of it and its gone the next time I drive by, like these old phone booths.
Wild Bill’s Nostalgia Center, Middletown, Connecticut
Sadly, I often find out about place when they are already gone, like Wild Bill’s Nostalgia Center. Wild Bill unfortunately died last year, but his legacy still continues.
Wild Bill’s is a crazy kind of place, not the usual type of store you imagine for Connecticut. Many people travel from New York to shop at the outlet malls in Connecticut and shop at the same old boring stores like Banana Republic or Calvin Klein. Wild Bill’s provides great old nostalgic stuff like record albums, bobble heads, VHS tapes and vintage posters.