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Plymouth National Wax Museum
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Written by Historic Tours
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Page 1 of 2
HISTORIC TOURS
Plymouth, Mass
Every American has to come to terms with the Pilgrims of Plymouth. It look 50
years, but we finally made it to the land of our founding fathers. We started
at the ROCK and then visited the "official" wax museum of the men and women who
made this country great -- and straight. Our PHOTO tour follows.
Plymouth National Wax Museum
15 Carver Street
Plymouth, Mass. 02360
overlooking Plymouth Rock
(508) 746-6468
Visit the museum official web site
Waxing Nostalgic with the Pilgrims
Despite a childhood of Cape Cod summers, I never made it to Plymouth until I
turned 50. Before taking in the scholarly reconstruction of Plimouth Plantation,
we wanted to see the real tourist stuff – the rock and the old wax museum. It
doesn’t cost a dime, except parking, to view the famous stepping stone. No, the
Pilgrims did not land on this rock. Yes, it is a hoax, or a myth, or a symbol.
Once it represented the sacred spot on which the first whites arrived in a primitive
land. Today we know better. Hundreds of ships, possibly thousands of Europeans
had arrived first, fishing the fertile waters and trading with a very advanced
tribal society that had inhabited the region for tens of thousands of years.
 Yet the stone still has power, even on a drizzling s[ring day. The magnificently
reconstructed Mayflower II floats nearby. Between them, what looks like a 1620s
house, is actually a souvenir outpost for all your Pilgrim needs.
We stopped to pay homage to the mighty Massasoit, who was looking very buff,
before hitting the museum. The brochure says this is "America's only wax museum
dedicated entirely to the story of the Pilgrims." We’re going to bet that is true.
While some historians dis the old fashioned display of wax figures, this is my
kind of show. My brain needs help visualizing life in the 1620s, even if the details
are not scholastically perfect. The Plymouth National Wax Museum, inside what
looks like a huge suburban house, is a haunted-house style self-guided tour. Dark
halls reveal a couple dozen tableau featuring hundreds of wax-headed figures aboard
the Mayflower and in eatly Plymouth colony.
Plymouth was one of the earliest museums using Dofrman figures. The presentation
feels like it hasn't changed for fifty years, but we liked it all the same. Kids
love it. The only animated figure we saw was a drunken figure that snores while
his stomach goes up and down. Figures are posed dramatically as if in a 19th century history painting.
Things went so badly at Plymouth that most of the original founders died of starvation
and disease in the first year. In order to hide their dwindling numbers from Native
Americans, the Mayflower settlers buried their dead at night. It was, of course,
the intervention of Indians that allowed any settlers to survive. And, of course,
there was that visit by New Hampshire's first settler David Thomson in 1623.
In one scene, rain pours in an endlessly perfect sheet as a boat roacks. The
wax pilgrims land on a plaster duplicate of the famous rock just a few yards away
at the Plymouth waterfront. Inevitably the tour deposits us in the gift shop,
heavily stocked with Native American and Pilgrim kitsch A kid could go crazy here
trying to spend his $5. Rubber snake, a rubber knife or a plastic Plymouth Rock
bank? Welcome to America.
Text and photos by J. Dennis Robinson
SEE ALSO; Visiting Plimoth Plantation
CLICK TO VISIT WAX MUSUEM
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| Sunday, November 08, 2009 |
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