"Tucson Tales" Part 3: If I ran the museum...

“Tucson Tales” part 3: If I ran the museum...

Well, my brief and curious stint as a strip club DJ had mercifully come to an end. Thing is, I still didn't have a job, nor any money, so She-Ra was a bit frustrated with me, and I had only been in Tucson for like a month. First she sees me detoxing then she's witness to my job gettin' woes. Not the best way to start of a lifetime partnership with the girl that was meant to be and only for you.

But, luckily, She-Ra had many connections here in the T-town and early one morning she took me to a place where she said I was guaranteed a job.

It was actually a place that she had worked in before. Well, it was a new location, seeing as there were problems with the last building they were in. I guess the rent was too high or...

“No, I'm going to warn you right now,” said She-Ra as we approached the place she was taking me. “The owners are idiots. The last location we had, remember the big building with the whole Jurassic fresco on the side?”

“Oh yeah,” I said.

“Yeah. They ran it into the ground. Didn't pay bills, or rent and the owner of the building was pissed that we did that mural on his building.”

“Wait,” I interjected. “The owners of the museum weren't even owners of the building?”

She-Ra just shook her head. “Nope.”

“Oh man,” I uttered. “They are idiots. Do...do you think this is a good idea?”

Her head shake turned to a nod. “Yes,” she said. “Even though they are morons, the museum is one of the coolest things going on in Tucson.”

Here's the back story:

A few years ago, after receiving her third degree from U of A, She-Ra was desperate for work. After a few start and stops with her art degree and career, she stumbled upon a curious sign on the side of the road, in the industrial area of Main street. It read “Fossils for sale.” Always having a love for all things dinosaurs, she pulled over and took a look.

Inside of a very large and seemingly empty space, were a few tables set up with fossils and rocks and all sorts of excavated items. Apparently the man that ran it, a tall blonde guy with thick tinted glasses named Sam, was a real estate agent that was a part time digger and science fanatic. He began renting the large building to sell some of the artifacts and fossils he had accrued through the years. They struck up a conversation and immediately She-Ra had an idea.

Essentially she hired herself to Sam and what was soon to be called the T-Rex Museum. Taking a few long tables filled with rocks, bones and dirt, she transformed the space into a full blown children's science museum. She hired all sorts of local artists and science nerds to help her, and the museum, out. Before you knew it, there was a full swinging pendulum, life size dinosaur replicas, a movie theater, fossil digs in an outdoor activity center, dino-games, a summer camp and so on and so forth. She even got in the paper for her efforts and the T-Rex museum was now a full on and viable part of the neighborhood and city and a fun educational mecca to be reckoned with.

It was all fine and dandy for a while, that is until the owners began to get greedy.

At first, when they turned the museum upside down and transformed it into one of the coolest things for families, or anyone else, to do in Tucson, Sam and his wife insisted that they were not in it for profit. Yeah, apparently when the profits actually started to roll in, Sam would show up with a tricked out Hum-V, or a Jeep painted up just like the ones in “Jurassic Park” (but said T-Rex Museum on the side) and spent thousands of dollars to have the side of the building (which they did not own, remember?) to look like a scene from the late cretaceous or jurassic. Which was actually She-Ra's idea and plan but, well....she didn't know Sam wasn't the building's owner too. Oh well.



Then, the bill collectors would arrive at their door. They would call daily to which She-Ra always had to say “I'm sorry, but Sam isn't in today”, even though he was hiding in his office upstairs. Then he started selling his expensive vehicles, paychecks would start to bounce and, before you knew it, they were in massive debt. That's when She-Ra, even though it broke her heart (and still does today), had to throw in the towel and quit.

After getting back on their feet and opening in a new, yet very scaled down, location, the T-Rex Museum reopened and she thought I would be a perfect fit to work and manage the place. Because, she warned me, Sam and his family certainly couldn't.

“So, you've been warned,” She-Ra said as we pulled up in front of the new T-Rex museum, which was in a sort of warehouse next to a brake shop on Drachman street. “But this is right up your alley as far as playing with kids and working for idiots.”

So we walked in, spoke with Sam and he immediately hired me and I was to start training in two days. I was actually pretty stoked. The new, albeit smaller, museum was really cool. The front desk is actually part of the gift shop, which featured all sorts of dinosaur toys, games, books, videos along with science play kits, backyard dig sets and the like. You enter the museum by passing through a universe room which merges into a hallway featuring the stages of early life on Earth. When you turn right, you are met with a long stretch of habitats featuring snakes, spiders, bugs of all shapes and makes, amphibians and so on. After that, you are in the museum.

There were endless tables set up with fossils and artifacts. Magnifying glasses set up so you can see the ammonites up close, huge reliefs of mosasaurs and plesiosaurs, and even a tusk from a mammoth. There were maps and graphs to show you the evolution of life and locations of where most fossils were found and digs took place along the walls among pictures of what the fossils you were looking at looked like millions of years ago when they walked or swam or even flew around. There was a sluice set up where kids could pan for gems and bones. An art area for drawing and making crafts. Handy books set up to further your education and even a movie theater where they showed short films about dinosaurs. Plus there were all sorts of relics from when She-Ra ran the museum. Full scale raptors in a large Jurassic diorama, murals and paintings that she did, workstations and so on. I was really proud of her when I finally got to see all the things she did to make the museum an actually hands on and handsome museum.

It was pretty darn cool and I was excited to get started there.

Training went pretty smooth as I also had She-Ra at home to help me and loads of books and websites to get me familiar with earth science and dinosaurs. I would also be supervising the part time help, which were science nerds still in high school (who Sam paid like 6 bucks an hour) and a cute non-nerd girl named Michelle who didn't really care about all of the dino and science stuff, but was great with the kids and ran the summer school program. I could also wear pretty much whatever I wanted but I opted to buy some brown archeologist-looking shirts to help with the illusion.

The first six or seven months I worked at the T-Rex museum were some of the best times ever. It was during the summer and outside of helping Michelle with the summer school day camp we had set up in the big play room, I did tours for families, large groups, day care centers, outreach programs and the like. It was really fun to do fossil digs in the back, which were several rows of boxes (that She-Ra built) filled with sand and before the kids arrived, I'd fill them all with toy dinosaurs, crocodile teeth, bones and colored rocks. It was pretty low budget but when the kids would uncover an “artifact”, they went nuts. Same went for the fossil sluice, which was a water trench (that She-Ra built) filled with sand and the kids had to literally pan for fossils as water (which you could turn off an on of course) streamed down from a angled chute. It was so much fun.

I literally was getting paid to play all day. This is was the best job ever! It was even made better by a little boy, who was part of an “at risk” youth program, who hugged me after a fun day of learning and playing telling me it was the best time he had ever had. I still get misty when I think of that kid.


(this isn't the kid, but the only shot I could find of the sluice we had)

Things were going great. That is until the, well..I guess you could say the “expected” started to happen.

Around late fall Michelle stopped showing up to work. Sure she was in school, but she wasn't coming in on her weekend shifts. When I asked Sam about her, he just told me that she quit because of all the school work she had. But when Michelle came in to pick up her final paycheck, she told me Sam took her off the schedule because they didn't “need her” anymore.

“What the heck does that mean?” I asked Michelle.

“I don't know,” she said. “But my last few checks have bounced so I bet they just don't have enough money to keep me.”

Oh no, I thought. If they can't afford to keep her, then how could they afford to keep me? I made a few bucks more an hour because I was, essentially, supervisor when Sam wasn't around, which was quite often seeing as he was also a real estate guy. It was either that or he was napping in his office when he was at the museum.

Luckily for me I took heed to She-Ra's early warning and would always drive out to the museum's bank, cash the check then go to my bank and make a deposit. It was kind of a drag every other week, but I didn't want some random paycheck to go bouncing on me.

Then the high school nerds stopped showing up too. Which sucked because I kind of liked those guys. Especially one who was so laid back and so into smoking weed that all he did was crack jokes all day and make me laugh.

Then a curious thing happened. Sam introduced me to some random man. He was middle aged and kind of gruff looking, and told me that he was a volunteer. OK, I said. But he looked sort of, you know...not someone who would want to work in a science museum or should be around kids. But, looks can be deceiving. Maybe this dude is just a dino nerd and wants to get involved with the only kids based science museum in Southern Arizona. I wasn't one to judge.

After working with this guy, who's name was like Jeff or something, I learned that he was an ex-con and doing some work program, part of which is funded by the state. Essentially, the state of Arizona was paying Sam to train this guy and get him rehabilitated. I mean, Jeff was nice enough, and I always had him clean the lizard cages and keep the place tidy, but I would NOT let him do a tour or even play with the kids. There was just something about him that reeked: “He might like playing with the little kids a bit too much”. Ugh. But there was a little extra cash coming in so I guess I had a job for the time being.

But then the job just began to fall apart. There were days when I opened and NO ONE would show up. If Sam stopped by and saw that the register was devoid of any sales, he'd send me packin' for the day. My hours were slowly going down and down and I was looking for another source of income (that'll be the next blog or two). I was getting really frustrated because I really loved the place and my position. But, just like She-Ra had said before, the owners were total morons and were really smart at driving a great business into the ground.

Essentially, my last month or so working for the T-Rex museum involved me opening up, getting everything ready, feeding the bugs and lizards and taking care of the feral cat adoption program that Sam (for whatever weird reason, it did not fit into the theme of the place at all, but I guess it was a sweet notion) which was basically putting food in the various bowls and cleaning up cat poop. Three, maybe four, hours later I'd be sent home. So sad.

She-Ra and I were in Scottsdale for a weekend, visiting friends and her parents, and on our way back to Tucson I called up Sam at the museum to see what my schedule was for the week. When I asked him when I came in next (because at that point the schedule was almost null and void) this is what he said:

“Mark I'm gonna have to get back to you on that one. We are currently several thousand dollars in debt and just can't afford you right now. I'll call when we get back on our feet.”

That was it, I realized. I am officially out of a job. And probably the best job I have had in a long time. When I told She-Ra what Sam said she just looked at me and said, “Yeah. You need to find something else, fast. Because they will never get back on their feet.”

A few days later I went in and picked up my, what would officially be, my last paycheck. Sam looked pretty despondent and embarrassed when I did. He apologized and I told him to just call me if anything changes. I immediately drove out to their bank, cashed that little guy and came home and started job hunting. Again.

It was a total shame though and if that museum had been in the hands of responsible people, I'm sure both She-Ra and myself would still be gainfully employed there. But...it wasn't. And...we aren't. It just goes to show you that you actually have to have smarts and business savvy to follow through on a great idea. And those behind the T-Rex museum most certainly did not.

About a year later, as She-Ra and I are driving along Oracle Rd., we came across a curious sign on a strip mall marquee.

“Dinosaur Gift Shop” it read. Huh, we thought. So we pulled over to see what it was.

It didn't take long for us to recognize a lot of the old stuff from the T-Rex museum. The big T-Rex skull embedded in rock, lots of gems and stones and boxes of crocodile teeth and the original sign that She-Ra had actually made. It was all there, but in a much, much smaller and very hidden location.

And, yes, it was closed.

So, with a shrug and a “Whatever”, we got back in the car and continued on with our lives. Sam and his weird wife (who was some kind of emphatic mystic or whatnot that could read auras and tell you about your love life by tossing sticks and squirrel rectums on a pentangle made of unicorn boogers or something) sure did have a grand idea and employed both She-Ra and myself when other options were nil, but it was just sad to see what could have been a Tucson institution and a sure fire go to place in Southern Arizona just go ker-flush down yon pooper. I'll always have great memories of working there....but I sure did hate cleaning up all that cat crud.