Grandpa Jerry’s Clown Museum

Only a few souls per year are lucky enough to accidentally stumble across Grandpa Jerry’s Clown Museum (the best way to find it) but the rest of us have to painstakingly pan for this type of roadside pay dirt. For me, discovering the oddity of a home-brewed-clown-museum-in-a-shed, isolated and floating in a sea of green and brown, is like finding a long lost friend. It speaks to me, perhaps because I have so often felt out of place in this world and therefore I see in it the external manifestation of my own unique oddity of existence, adrift on the sea of life. I instantly feel at home and welcomed in these peculiar places, these islands of misfit toys.

A needle in a haystack is Grandpa Jerry’s Clown Museum. The little balloon marker in the below photo marks it’s location in the metropolis of Arriba Colorado.

Do you see the museum in the below picture? It’s right there, behind the dumpster. How could could you miss it? It’s so obvious.

Below is the view across the street from the clown museum.

Let’s get a little closer.

However, this welcome center for outcasts comes at a terrible price as not all of the clowns in the museum are happy to be there. Some are very sad. My heart breaks for this little guy. Most pathetic fellow I ever met. I wanted so badly to set him free. Just take him off that hook and set him free out in the green fields of wheat. We talked about it, but he’s right, with the colors he’s wearing he sticks out like a sore thumb. He escaped once… was promptly caught, beaten and returned to his hook on the wall. Ever since, this dutiful little door greeter puts on a fake smile for all who enter. “That’s show business” he told me, in a melancholy tone, trying to shrug his shoulders against the dead weight of his hanging body, resulting in no more than a feeble swaying of his legs, like heavy wind chimes in a light breeze. Oh heck! I can barely stand to look at him. It’s too sad! Who will set Charlie free?

And some have been here WAY too long against their will and have completely lost their minds. This would be me had I remained in an office cubical. There is no reasoning with this chap! He bites and eats human flesh. I hate to say it, but if ever a man needed to be put out of his misery…

Other’s don’t have enough sense to know or care where they are. They’re just as happy hangin’ on the hook as they are clownin’ around under the big top.