The Museum of Invisible Things was located in Spencer, Iowa.

The author, contemplating opening a waxworks.

There's a little bit of carny in all of us -- a smidgen of delight at absurdities on display. That is why I read with much interest a recent article in the New York Times that included this inspiring paragraph:

“The troll museum is probably the silliest idea I had in my life,” she said. “But people responded to it, so I have to keep it going. If more people carried out their silly ideas, then the world would be a more interesting place.”

Yes indeed -- making the world a better and safer place may be the primary goal for most people, but I have always subscribed to the belief that making things interesting first and foremost will inevitably lead to utopia -- where parking meters pay ME and Bismarck herring run in shoals past my front door, free for the netting. 

And that's why I became the proprietor of the Museum of Invisible Things in the town of Spencer, Iowa, back in the year of grace 2007.

I came to Spencer at the behest of radio station KICD, which was in need of a news director -- the previous one having departed for the bright lights and State Fair butter cows of Des Moines. I had passed through Spencer the previous year, fronting for the Culpepper & Merriweather Circus, and left my business card with the radio station manager. He was a fellow Brownie -- a graduate of the Brown Institute of Broadcasting in Minneapolis, which I had also attended. Brownies, like Harvard men, stick together.  He offered me the position at a crisis moment in my circus career -- disgusted that my circus salary was several weeks in arrears, I had vowed to spurn the big top in favor of the saner music and weaker wine of regular employment. 

With my ballyhoo instincts at full throttle, it wasn't long before I had whipped the news department at KICD into a well-oiled machine that ground out local news bulletins like sausage; a few news patties for the morning program at 7, more substantial baloney at noon, and plenty of prerecorded leftovers for the evening news roundup at 6. This left me with time on my hands, which I used to open a museum.

During my years of travel with various circuses I'd run across some fascinating museums in Iowa -- such as the Hobo Museum in Britt; the Squirrel Cage Jail Museum in Council Bluffs; and the Vesterheim Norwegian Museum in Decorah. These are spots to warm the cockles of any nomadic heart. In Spencer, unfortunately, there was only the Clay County Historical Museum -- which featured a large array of the latest calico sun bonnets (circa 1870), corncob candelabra, and a dispiriting display case chock-a-block with cast iron bedpans. Dissecting pudding would generate more interest. 

 So I opened the Museum of Invisible Things in my spacious apartment, above the HyVee grocery store on Grand Avenue. I got the idea from an old Candid Camera segment -- where a large bowl full of water and nothing else was put on public display with a sign reading "Invisible Goldfish." Dozens of people were subsequently filmed squinting into the bowl in a vain attempt to locate the non-existent fishies. 

I had a placard made up which the HyVee produce manager let me tape to the wall next to the staircase leading to my apartment:

TORKILDSON'S MUSEUM OF INVISIBLE THINGS.

Upstairs on the Second Floor.

Open Friday, Saturday, and Sundays only. 5 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Admission free to children, pet owners, and latitudinarians.

Admission for all others:  $1.00.

I featured the goldfish, of course. I also had an invisible original Picasso, entitled 'Family of Saltines.' There was an invisible diamond tiara from the Romanoffs; an imperceptible shrunken head stolen from the Sea Dayaks of Borneo; the impalpable stuffed carcass of Schrodinger's cat; and a baseball autographed by Babe Ruth (you could see the baseball, but not the autograph -- the Babe had jokingly used invisible ink.)

  I put up a used crib, with a sign reading: PLEASE DO NOT FEED THE INVISIBLE LEPRECHAUN MIMES.

There were other exhibitions as well, as the fancy struck me;  but after six months I had to admit that I wasn't exactly doing a land office business. Even though I had slyly promoted my museum during a few news broadcasts at KICD, my visitor's book showed a grand total of seven names for the past six months -- and two of those had been housewives under the mistaken impression that I was part of HyVee's produce department and could tell them how much red cabbage was per pound. When I left Spencer for greener pastures a year later there was no mourning in the streets for the loss of my treasury of invisible wonders.

Since then I have given brief and fleeting thought to opening a Linoleum Museum, or displaying a Diorama of Paint Drying -- but they all came to naught. With the current administration dispensing so much silliness already, why try to compete?   Today I am content with putting an egg in a jar of vinegar and then showing the results to my grand kids a month later. SEE THE AMAZING RUBBER EGG! 

There's one born every minute.