In a little town of Wamego Kansas, not too far off of I-70 (yes, the same one that runs through Dayton), there is a museum dedicated to the Wizard of Oz series by Frank L. Baum. This is a little hole-in-the-wall museum, located in the middle of a strip mall. For those of you who aren't aware (and apparently are unamerican) the parts of these novels/movies that is set on earth rather than the mystical land of Oz is set in Kansas.
My family, as many of you are probably aware by now, is military, and as such has moved around a lot. Whenever we move to a new place, we make a checklist of places that we want to visit. When we lived in Kansas, one of those places was the Oz museum. At the time, I didn't properly appreciate it. I was used to bigger museums like the museum terminal in Cincinnati or COSI in COlumbus. I had never been to a small museum before, and at the time, my sister and I kept laughing at what we viewed as unprofessional-ism. Now, having gone through even just a semester of this program, I feel a little bad about my judgement of that small museum. I understand a lot better about the challenges that the staff have to deal with. Maybe one day I'll get to go back, see it through new, trained eyes.
I don't remember too much about the museum. It focused more on the novels than the Judy Garland film. I've watched the movie, but I've never read the books. So I was a little lost while going through it. It did make me want to read the books. But I did appreciate what little they had on the movie. I'm a film buff, and I love trivia about movies and movie memorabilia. So it was nice to be close to a little piece of movie history. So if you ever find yourself in Kansas, make sure to take a stop in Oz. Maybe you'll meet a good witch and have the time of your life!
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