Strange Daze in Abita Springs

Gator Mama in a Red Dress, originally uploaded by bamaphan79.

Welcome to the UCM Museum, pronounced "You-See-'Em Museum," located in picturesque (even when it's raining) town of Abita Springs, Louisiana. Although not our original destination — in fact, it wasn't even our second choice — it was by far the best time I could imagine having on a gloomy Saturday in South Louisiana. Amy and I drove over from Mobile and met up with her sister, Ashley, at the Abita Brew Pub. 

Plan A: Our intentions were to take a trip to the Abita brewery, spend some time in the tasting room, take a tour of the place and then head back for a late lunch/early dinner at the pub. But, upon getting there, we soon learned that the brewery was inexplicably closed, and tours weren't being offered. 

Plan B: Figure out a plan B.  We had all been to Abita before, and I remembered seeing a pamphlet for a museum of oddities, a spot that Ashley learned about from a travel television show. We couldn't remember the name, but Abita's small enough that a simple stop at the fruit stand yielded directions that took us pretty much about 2 blocks, where we discovered the UCM Museum. A one-time service station along La. Highway 36, the collection of oddities and artwork has been in Abita since "around 2000," according to the self-titled curator of the place, John Preble. We were fortunate enough to arrive at this unique roadside attraction on a day when Mr. Preble (rhymes with "pebble") was manning the front desk, something we'd later learn doesn't happen all too often.

We were greeted with a welcoming sign on a mid-July afternoon in the swamps, and one look through the door at which the flashing sign pointed made us realize that we were in for a real unexpected treat. Just to the left of the door, you can see the same alligator in the first photo, clad in a red dress and Mardi Gras beads.

This sign on the front door was clearly instructions for me as I strolled through the entrance with my still-so-new Nikon D80 strung over my shoulder. I'd brought my camera for this very reason, and I wasn't about to let the day go by without some hard-core documentation.

 

Just inside the front door is the gift shop, half of which was once the service station, as was clear by a circa 1993 photo of the "museum" hanging on the wall. A giant crawfish dangles from the ceiling, and gag gifts, postcards and generally strange items fill the shelves. 

Everywhere you look in the gift shop, intriguing things reside. From the bottle caps that cover the walls to these floating soda cans hovering above a motherboard-clad ceiling, there's eye candy everywhere. We wandered through the shop for a few minutes and soon decided the museum was calling, so we paid the ever-so-reasonable entrance fee of $3 each and opened the door to the day's alternate reality.

After following the signs, we found ourselves in a long, narrow room lined with numerous mini-town dioramas adorned with vintage interactive buttons that, when pressed, would set figures into motion — dancing at Ruby's, reading in the "library" or many other mechanical reactions to delight the child in us.

Amy and Ashley took no time finding the classic arcade games, and the duo were soon hunting martians together — Ash says she won the competition. 

While the sisters fired away at alien spacecraft, I took on the pinball machine across the room. I didn't do so well, but it brought back a lot of memories from childhood vacations to places like Lake George, N.Y.

About halfway through the museum, Amy pointed out one of the smallest items on display that probably provided the most lasting impression on the two of us. It could have easily been overlooked, but the message it gave made us feel lucky not to have missed it. 

I figure if you can take that advice to heart, every vacation has the opportunity to really rock, even if that "vacation" is a day-trip to a strange museum in the swamp.

Of the many signs in the gift shop, one stuck out at me: See our newest exhibit: the 32 foot alligator! Thirty-two feet, I thought. That's pretty damn big, but this is Louisiana, and if there's anything I've learned about the state, it's that anything is possible here. I'd forgotten about that sign when we came to the exhibit. Look inside and this is what you'll see:

Yep, it's a 32-foot alligator, or, more precisely, an alligator with 32 feet. Is it alive? Nope, but YOU are; hence, you can see it alive. Just another great item among the collections at the Abita Mystery House.

Just when we thought the 32-footer was strange enough, we came across Buford the amazing Bassigator. Is it a fish? Is it a reptile? Scientific Marvel! 1 of a Kind! With the snout of a gator and the tail of a fish, the bassigator is one strange creature.

And from the side, where you can see the tail a little more clearly:

Next stop, an actual UFO crash site, where one unsuspecting family, while spending an average day in their Airstream trailer, was suddenly visited by some pretty strange neighbors. 

Ash was the first to check it out, and once we realized it was safe, Amy and I decided it was alright to pose in front of the scene as well.

After a stop at the House of Shards, where I took a self-portrait on the patio of compassion (so relaxing!) we made our way back to the gift shop.

We talked with Mr. Preble some more and discovered that he's not only in the business of folk art, he's also in the music business. He told us about Bobby Lounge, a local piano player who, as Mr. Preble puts it, is a mix between Little Richard and Randy Newman. He's only played in public 13 times, an "idiot savant" of sorts, and he's recorded a couple albums at a studio on museum property. It sounded interesting to us, and our new friend must have been able to tell. The next thing I knew I had a Bobby Lounge CD in-hand and anxiously awaited hearing my gift on Amy's car stereo. We spent quite a bit more time in the gift shop, playing with various toys and flipping through some great books about roadside attractions much like the one in which we were standing. It made us want to see more, to take a trip somewhere just to see something else that's this unique, this much fun. That'll be the next trip, perhaps. For now, we had had our odd adventure. 

We started out expecting to see how beer was made, but we left knowing that there are plenty of animal bodies on which you can attach an alligator head. We also realized that a museum doesn't really have to make sense. Sometimes, a museum for the sake of being a museum is as much fun as any "meaningful" trip could be, although some may argue how meaningful a tour of a brewery is. We'll no doubt return to the UCM Museum — A November birthday party is already in the works — so come on down and check it out. Oh, and when you're done, swing on over to the Abita Brew Pub, where we finished our evening celebrating my birthday with a fantastic meal of steak (me), salad (Ash) and pan-seared red fish (Amy). As we left, full and happy, I got one last shot, of the spot where our adventure began and ended — the bread of a truly unique sandwich of a day.

For a slideshow of all the day's photos, click here.