Green Mount Cemetery, Baltimore, November 15, 2014

Earlier this month I took a trip to the Green Mount Cemetery in Baltimore. I had long heard of this place via Roadside America and it’s the final resting place for a variety of famous people. The one downside is that I got caught up in a lot of traffic so by the time I arrived I only had 45 minutes left to tour the place before closing time.

Last Saturday I decided to try again. This time I packed a lunch and left earlier. I managed to stay longer this time. I parked my car near the chapel and walked around for a while, ate lunch in my car, walked around for a little while longer, drove my car to the mausoleum on the other side of the cemetery, parked there and walked around that area until it was close to closing time. I was able to be more leisurely when walking around because I had more time. The temperature was in the 40’s but it didn’t bother me too much because I was moving around so much. It was very sunny and the trees were showing off their finest fall foliage. It was a nice visit overall. I managed to take a lot of landscape pictures, some of which shows the city buildings in the far horizon.

A lot of graves at Green Mount Cemetery are very photogenic. That’s because, according to the official map I was given on my last visit, symbolic funerary art was very big during the Victorian Era (when this cemetery first opened its gates).

I revisited the grave of Arunah Shepherdson Abell, who founded The Baltimore Sun newspaper. This time I took a closer look at the elaborate headstone that’s encased under a protective capsule.

I found a notable grave that I missed on my last visit. This is the grave of the Eckhardt twins John and Robert.

John was better known as the sideshow performer Johnny Eck, who was born with a truncated torso (a condition known as Caudal regression syndrome or sacral agenesis) and he appeared in the cult classic film Freaks. His twin, Robert, was also displayed on the sideshow circuit alongside Johnny where Johnny was known as the “Half Boy” or “Half Man” while Robert was the “normal” twin.

(Above photo from phreeque.tripod.com/johnny_eck.html.)

The headstone’s peaceful image of woods and a covered bridge over a stream reminded me of one of the numerous painted screen that Johnny Eck painted once he retired from the sideshow circuit and returned to his native Baltimore, such as this one that I photographed at an exhibit of painted screens that was held at the Maryland Institute College of Art earlier this year.

I have to admit that this year I felt like I traveled in Johnny Eck’s footsteps when it came to his time in Baltimore. Back in March I went to the two related MICA exhibits on painted screens and Johnny Eck’s life. I tried submitting a story to Make magazine about Johnny Eck as a creative person but it got ignored so I uploaded it on Medium.com instead. Last month I briefly visited the outside of the home where Johnny and his twin, Robert, were born and where they spent most of their lives until their deaths. And now I have seen Johnny and Robert’s final resting place. It’s very fitting that the twins are buried together since they were pretty much together their entire lives.

The last time I was there I had a difficult time finding that grave. This time I carefully looked at the map and, after the first couple of futile attempts, I decided to just walk along the paved roads and walkways. I found the grave. As you can see in the next photo, the grave faces away from the road.

The front of the twins’ graves faced this family plot, which was the same family plot where I briefly saw a fox during my last visit. I was standing in front of Johnny Eck’s grave all that time and I didn’t realize it! D’OH!

After that first successful find, I kept on using the paved roads and walkways while frequently consulting my map to help guide me to another famous grave. Once again I hit pay dirt as I found the Booth family grave.

The Booths were a family of prominent stage actors in the 19th century. The family patriarch, Junius Brutus Booth, is given prominence on the large obelisk that marks the family plot.

Surrounding the obelisk are smaller headstones which mark exactly where each Booth family member is buried, such as the one in the next photo showing the final resting place of Junius Booth and his wife, Mary Ann.

There were a lot of Booth relatives buried around that obelisk underneath smaller headstones.

There is one member of the Booth family who is also buried in the family plot but, unlike the rest of the family buried there, he doesn’t have his own headstone but his name is listed on one side of the obelisk (circled in red—yes, I did this in Photoshop) as being among the children of Junius and Mary Ann.

John Wilkes Booth was a stage actor like his father and some of his siblings but he’s more famous for being the one who assassinated President Abraham Lincoln. The entire nation was shocked by that murder and it’s not only because a president was killed. John Wilkes Booth was a respected thespian and sort of a celebrity. In some ways you could say that John Wilkes Booth was the O.J. Simpson of the 19th century. After he was killed by U.S. troops while refusing to surrender, he was buried in the family plot but his family decided against giving him his own headstone because of the raw feelings many Americans had towards him at the time and they probably didn’t want to court any more trouble than what they were already going through.

I was also successful in finding the grave of Elijah Jefferson Bond, who patented the Ouija board. One side of his headstone is a typical modern headstone that looks a bit bland…

…until you view the other side.

I took advantage of that discovery to use the Mikuture app for the one and only time during my visit. Here’s Hatsume Miku next to Bond’s grave.

Bond’s grave is the one famous person’s grave that’s not on the official cemetery map but you can generally find it by using the information posted on Roadside America’s site. It’s located in the P section near the intersection of two paved pathways, as shown in the next photo.

It’s also located near the giant mausoleum building on the left (as shown in the next photo).

It’s also located north of another famous person’s grave. She was nicknamed Betsy but she was known as Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte and she had quite a story.

She was the daughter of a wealthy Baltimore merchant who married Jerome Bonaparte. One relative objected to that marriage—Jerome’s older brother, French Emperor Napoleon I. Napoleon ordered his brother to return to France so the marriage can be annulled. Jerome initially refused but then he and his pregnant wife sailed to France to attend Napoleon’s coronation. When they arrived, Betsy was not allowed to disembark under Napoleon’s order. Jerome got off the ship and tried to meet with Napoleon in order to reason with him. That was the last time Betsy ever saw Jerome. She ultimately sailed on to England where her son, Jerome Napoleon Bonaparte, was born.

After the birth she and her son returned to Baltimore without the older Jerome and the marriage ended. Napoleon subsequently arranged for his brother to be married to Princess Catharina of Württemberg while Betsy spent the rest of her life in Baltimore.

Last week I came upon the grave of Enoch Pratt, the wealthy businessman and philanthropist who funded what is now known as the Sheppard Pratt Health System. This week I found the grave of the other founder, Moses Sheppard, who was a wealthy Quaker businessman and a philanthropist. Moses Sheppard became concerned about the plight of the mentally ill when he was a commissioner of the prison and he saw the inhumane treatment of those who were called “lunatics” in his day. He eventually came up with the idea of creating a humane system of treating the mentally ill.

I stayed quite a while at the cemetery until it was close to the 4 p.m. closing time. I kept on looking around to see if I would be just as lucky in finding wildlife like I was the last time when I briefly saw that fox. I saw a large group of crows that were flying around but I see crows all the time so it wasn’t that big of a deal to me.

I highly recommend the place if you’re looking for something to visit. Here are a few suggestions if you go to Green Mount Cemetery:

• Wear comfortable shoes. This place is not made for high heels.
• I strongly recommend bringing a cane or a hiking stick if you are unsteady on your feet because the ground is uneven between the frequent burials and large tree roots.
• Get the free map from the office when you arrive.
• When I was looking for certain graves, I found that I had better luck if I stuck to the paved roads and walkways than if I walked directly through the burial grounds. I also used the chapel and the mausoleum as landmarks while I was looking for the graves I wanted to find.
• When finding a grave, look on both sides of the headstone because some of them face away from the paved road or path.
• Keep in mind that the map can be confusing at times because there are lines on it that have you thinking that they denote paved walkways. Some lines do denote paved walkways while others are just there to denote a grid. That’s why I recommend using certain places (like the chapel and the mausoleum) as landmarks.
• You should give yourself at least one hour (two or more hours would be better) to visit the place.

That’s it for visiting Green Mount Cemetery.

Johnny Eck’s Home, Baltimore, October 13, 2014

I recently decided to go to Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School event in Baltimore for the first time since August (I’ll write more on that later). On the way to The Wind Up Space, I decided to make a detour to check out the former home of a famous sideshow performer and artist named Johnny Eck.

I first heard of the guy when I read this book as a teenager written by Frederick Drimmer called Very Special People and I thought it was cool that he came from Baltimore. (I kept the paperback for many years until I finally got rid of it last year when I decided to do a massive downsizing of my home after my husband walked out on me and filed for divorce.) I also saw the movie Freaks several times (where he had a minor role) and I even own the DVD.

Back in March I attended a special exhibit on painted screens at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, which included the screens that Eck painted after he retired from the sideshow circuit as well as a separate exhibit on Eck’s life and the art that he created (which also included a miniature circus, photography, and drawings). That exhibit inspired me to try writing an article for Make magazine focusing on why, if he was still alive today, Eck would be perfect for the Maker movement only to get no response after three tries. I ultimately ended up uploading that story on Medium.com.

I found out through Eck’s Wikipedia page the address of the home where he spent his entire life and I toyed around with actually driving by that place until I finally got around to doing it. I had originally planned on visiting his home then driving to nearby Green Mount Cemetery, where he is buried, and finally move on to The Wind Up Space for Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School. Rainy weather caused me to nix the cemetery visit so I decided to just make a brief visit to his home before heading to The Wind Up Space.

Johnny Eck’s home is located at 622 North Milton Avenue on the east side of Baltimore in the McElderry Park neighborhood. Here is what the city block is like.

The red brick rowhouse was originally purchased in 1906 by Eck’s parents, who then moved in with their 8-year-old daughter Caroline. (Back then there were no heavy steel doors covering the first floor door and windows like today.) That same year the mother gave birth to a second daughter who later died at the age of two. Shortly after that child’s death, the mother gave birth to a son who was stillborn. The family would go through one more pregnancy.

On August 27, 1911 Johnny Eck and his twin brother, Robert, were born in the front bedroom on the second floor. While Robert was born normal and healthy, it was said that one of the midwives present at the twins’ birth had this reaction when Johnny was born: “Oh my lord, he’s a broken doll!” Johnny was born with sacral agenesis or Caudal regression syndrome, which resulted in a truncated torso and underdeveloped legs that were unusable.

Despite that major birth defect, Johnny managed to thrive in that home. He taught himself to walk with his hands while he and his twin brother both showed an interest in art at an early age. His family tried to provide Johnny with an upbringing that was as normal as possible. A chance meeting with a magician at the age of 12 forever changed Johnny’s life as the magician not only strongly encouraged him to become a sideshow performer but he also became the twins’ first manager. From that time until sideshows lost their appeal with the increasing popularity of television (starting in the 1950’s), Johnny and Robert were on the road most of the time. Johnny was frequently displayed in the sideshows as a “Half Man” while Robert was displayed alongside him as the “normal” twin.

(Above photo from phreeque.tripod.com/johnny_eck.html.)

Johnny even had a brief Hollywood movie career, with Freaks being the high point. Here’s one of his scenes from that movie.

Soon after he finished making that movie, he learned that his parents were on the verge of losing their home to foreclosure due to the Great Depression. To help raise enough money so his family can keep their home, Johnny accepted a gig at the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair where he performed for the Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Odditorium while being billed as “The Most Remarkable Man Alive.”

Once Johnny and Robert retired from the sideshow circuit, they returned to their childhood home where they spent the rest of their lives. It was during this time that Johnny learned the art of painted screens and he made extra money painting and selling them. Here’s one of his screens that I photographed during the MICA exhibit back in March.

Both Johnny and Robert could frequently be seen sitting on the same marble steps as in the photo below, where they would entertain the neighborhood children.

Johnny Eck with his dog Major sitting on the front steps in 1985.

(Above photo from the Flickr page of Bat County Books, LLC.)

In the 1980’s the brothers began to receive visits from fans who have just discovered Freaks on home video even though Johnny wasn’t entirely comfortable with some of them, telling a friend “You’d be surprised to see these ‘avid’ fans. I say they are crazy.”

When the twins were born, McElderry Park was a working class neighborhood consisting mostly of first and second generation European immigrants where most of the residents worked in the nearby factories. As time went on, the neighborhood—like the rest of the city—underwent a major change due to white flight to the suburbs starting in the 1950’s, the closing of the factories starting in the late 1970’s, the closing of nearby public housing starting in the 1980’s which flooded the neighborhood with Section 8 tenants, and the arrival of crack cocaine starting in the 1980’s. The neighborhood became increasingly poor and majority African American with high unemployment and all the social problems that came with it. This can be easily seen in the next three photos that I took during my time there. Across the street from the home is this laundromat that still has a “Grand Opening” banner while the fine print underneath made it clear that it has been opened since March.

The photos show a neighborhood that have seen better days.

In fact, while I was driving to and from Johnny Eck’s home, I saw plenty of boarded-up homes located nearby, such as the ones a few blocks away on North Milton Avenue, which can be seen using Google Street View.

Even the door and window on the lower level of Johnny Eck’s home have been sealed with thick steel doors due to the neighborhood’s high crime rates and the excessive drug trade.

When Johnny and Robert lived there, they were forced to directly face the reality of their changing neighborhood when two thieves broke into their home in 1987. One of the thieves mocked and sat on the 76-year-old Johnny Eck while the other thief took the twins’ belongings. After that incident the twins went into total seclusion where they stopped sitting outside on their marble steps, stopped receiving visitors, and communicated only with their closest family members. Johnny Eck would go on to say “If I want to see freaks, all I have to do is look out the window.”

In 1991 79-year-old Johnny decided to take a nap on the couch in the living room, where he suffered a heart attack in his sleep. Robert continued to live in the same home by himself until his death in 1995 at 83.

Since then it seems like the house has been uninhabited. Looking at The Johnny Eck Museum website, which was founded by Jeffrey Pratt Gordon, there is an implication that this museum now owns the home (although I could be wrong about this). Yet the house remains heavily shuttered. I don’t know if there are any plans to eventually turn this home into a museum that would be opened to the public.

Opening a tourist museum in that neighborhood would be a major challenge given the current nature of the neighborhood. I’m not being facetious about this either. I can remember years ago when I made my one and only visit to the now-defunct American Dime Museum, which was devoted to carnival sideshows and other oddities. It was a really awesome museum and I enjoyed it. The downside is that it was located near a marginal neighborhood and I still remember when I made a harrowing two or three block walk from the nearest light rail stop in order to reach the museum then I had to make the same harrowing walk back to the same station. About a year or two after my only visit the museum closed for good.

But I have an idea of what to do about Johnny Eck’s former home that would not only help the residents in the neighborhood but would also honor the life of Johnny Eck. Both Johnny and Robert were artists and Johnny even had a second career as a painted screen artist. In recent years there has been a trend towards putting up STEM technology centers, Makerspaces, Fab Labs, or just general places where people gather and start making things. There is a whole Maker Culture movement currently underway in the United States where people are making and inventing things.

Wouldn’t it be cool to convert Johnny Eck’s former home into a Makerspace? People would gather and make things. People would teach their skills (whether it’s Linux or knitting sweaters) to anyone who’s willing to learn. Having such a Makerspace would honor Johnny Eck’s memory as an artist and maker and provide a place for people to gather that’s an alternative to dealing drugs or shooting each other.

And there is a precedent for opening a Makerspace in a less-than-safe area. Fab Lab DC opened in the northeastern part of Washington, DC that was once notorious for being a crime-ridden area. That opening was part of a total makeover that have resulted in the creation of new businesses and the building of new housing while lowering crime at the same time. In fact, the neighborhood has now been given the moniker NoMa. I still have fond memories of the time when I went to the 2012 Summit of Awesome that was held at Fab Lab DC and I took a short tour of the place and it impressed me very much. Surely something similar can be done with the former Eck residence in Baltimore.

If I had extra money, I would buy that house myself and convert it into a Makerspace. Unfortunately my finances are too tight to consider such a lavish idea. So I decided to write such an idea here in the hopes that someone with very deep pockets would read this and think “WOW! That’s a GREAT idea! I’ll get some people to work on buying and transferring the deed to make this Makerspace a reality.” It would be so cool to have someone with the wealth of a Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg to see this and put this idea into motion.

It may sound idealistic but I’d rather see some idealistic rich people work on this than to see this house continue to be boarded up with heavy steel for years.

I’ve Posted My First Story on Medium.com

I’ve first learned about Medium.com when one of my friends decided to try her hand at writing for that website by posting a story about how her hometown of Gardner, Massachusetts have sent its prized Norman Rockwell painting to the auction block in order to raise money for the local public education system.

Basically Medium.com is a place where people can write stories but don’t want to commit to writing a blog on a regular basis.

After a few months of toying around with writing something for Medium.com, I finally took the plunge. The effort to publish my first story is a story in of itself. Six months ago I attended two related exhibits in Baltimore. One was on painted screens, which is a peculiar art form that Baltimore is known for, and the other was about the painted screens’ most noted practitioner, Johnny Eck.

Soon after that visit, I found out that one of my friends, Phil Shapiro, is currently a writer for Make magazine. He wrote an article for Make on why he felt that Pete Seeger, who had recently passed away, should be considered a Maker. As I read that article, I began to realize that Johnny Eck could also fall under the Maker category due to his incredible amount of art and general tinkering that he made in his lifetime (such as carving a miniature circus from wood at 14). Phil encouraged me to try submitting something to that publication.

When I went to the Make website and found that there was a form that made it easy to contribute something, I decided to take Phil’s advice. So I re-wrote my earlier blog post on that Baltimore exhibit to make the case for Johnny Eck being considered a Maker and submitted it. Then I waited a few days. When I didn’t get a response from anyone, I did a search on Make‘s site and found no mention of either my name or my Johnny Eck article.

I thought there was some kind of a glitch so I submitted the same article again then waited another week. When I didn’t get a response, I did another search and found that my article was not posted online anywhere. I decided to make a third submission. Again I waited a week with no notice from anyone regarding my article.

When I ran into Phil again and told him about my unsuccessful efforts to submit my story, Phil told me that Make magazine has a total of 20 staffers and they get inundated with hundreds of submissions each week so there are quite a few contributions that fall through the cracks.

So I gave up on Make magazine, took out an account on Medium.com, and submitted my story there. I found the interface take some getting used to but I learned it quickly. I uploaded my article and it’s now live.

If anyone from Make magazine is reading this, all I can say is that it’s too bad you’ve chosen to ignore my article and now Medium.com is the one that people will go to read about the interesting life and career of a Maker named Johnny Eck.

You can now read my Johnny Eck story in its entirety right here.

Painted Screens and Johnny Eck Exhibits, Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, Maryland (March 10, 2014)

Last weekend I was totally busy with volunteer work and connecting with an old friend (whose “Oh, Metadata” video I’ve already wrote about in a previous post). I happened to have some free time on a Monday afternoon so I decided to head up to Baltimore to check out these two related exhibitions I wanted to see after I read about it in The Washington Post back in December. Between my long chest cold, snow, and the Polar Vortex, I wasn’t able to make it until this week. It’s a good thing I finally got there because both shows will close this Sunday, March 16.

It was the perfect trip for me because both exhibitions were held on the campus of the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) and the admission was free. I only had to worry about driving to the North Linthicum Light Rail Stop and paying the $3.20 for a round trip on the Baltimore Light Rail system. I got off at the Mount Royal station right near this art gallery called Unexpected Art that has a giant devil’s head peering from the inside. (Too bad this gallery was closed and locked when I was there because I would’ve loved to get a closer look at that giant devil’s head.)

It took me a while to find the building where the two exhibitions were held because I’m not familiar with the layout of MICA. Ironically my late grandmother on my father’s side of the family actually attended that school for a few years although I’m not even sure if she ever graduated from there. (She was then known as Grace Evans when she was a student.) Here’s the strange part. I didn’t know that my grandmother attended that school until a few years after her death. She never once mentioned to me that she attended that school while I was growing up, not even when I used to visit her and I would show off my latest drawings that I did during those visits. She didn’t seem very encouraging of my artistic talent at all. I only learned about my grandmother’s earlier life when my mother mentioned it a few months after my father died in 2000 because, after all those years, my mother finally came to the realization that I would benefit from taking some art classes and I could pursue art as a hobby and she encouraged me to do so. My grandmother and parents didn’t say a word to me about my grandmother’s art school days while both my grandmother and my father were still alive and, to this day, I don’t know why that was kept a secret from me.

I have to admit that the center of the campus impressed me enough to take a few photos with my smartphone.

After blundering around campus for a while and not finding the building, I finally took out my smartphone and looked up the webpage that had information about the two exhibitions and found that they were in the Fox Building. Ironically I walked past that building a few times while blundering around campus without realizing that it was the building I needed to go to. In any case, I finally found it and went inside.

The first exhibition I saw was devoted to painted screens, which is one of the many things that Baltimore is known for. The concept is this: one side of a screen is painted (usually of a nature scene or a city street) then installed in a window. If the screen is painted correctly, you should have a screen where you can see out on the non-painted side but the public viewing the painted side won’t be able to view inside the townhouse (which guarantees privacy to the screen owner). The artistry on these screens is incredible.

 

In addition, I learned that painted screens aren’t just for windows any more. There were painted screen skirts, painted screen bags, and even painted screen masks.

What was even cool about this exhibit was that, in the middle of the gallery, there was a replica of an interior of a Baltimore townhouse. Seeing that replica brought back childhood memories for me. When I was growing up, my grandmother (my mother’s widowed mother) lived with us. Whenever my parents would take me to visit my other grandmother and my grandfather (my father’s parents), they would arrange to have my maternal grandmother visit her first cousin named Catherine (which, according to a Google search, would make Catherine my first cousin twice removed). Catherine lived in one of those townhouses with a similar decor to what I saw at that exhibition (the only difference was that she never had painted screens—she had venetian blinds instead).

Basically on the day that my parents were to take me to visit my paternal grandparents in Ellicott City, they would drive from our home in Glen Burnie into Baltimore, drop my maternal grandmother off at the townhouse where Catherine lived with her son, Freddie. (He was a lifelong bachelor who was very reclusive. I don’t remember him ever being in a romantic relationship with anyone. He also didn’t work very much and lived off of welfare for most of his adult life. According to family lore, he was a very brilliant guy who was so brilliant that he was offered a full scholarship to Johns Hopkins University but he turned it down. I remember him as being a bit strange. The one time I kissed him on the cheek as a child he seemed to stiffen up. I don’t remember showing him any affection after that.)

We would only drop my grandmother off at Catherine’s home while staying long enough to make sure my grandmother got inside safely (the neighborhood where Catherine and Freddie lived was originally a working class immigrant neighborhood but, by the 1960’s and 1970’s, it had deteriorated to a poor crime-ridden neighborhood so Catherine and Freddie spent much of their time indoors) then drive to Ellicott City to visit my other grandparents. After the visit, we would go back to Baltimore, go inside Catherine’s home, and visit with Catherine (and sometimes Freddie if he was in a mood to socialize—sometimes he would hide in either the basement or in his bedroom during our visit) for a while before returning home in Glen Burnie with my grandmother. I remember the decor with the vintage furniture and decorations similar to these pictures. I think even the interior of Catherine’s house had the same pink color as the interior of the townhouse replica.

The replica featured a painted screen in a window of a fake wall. It’s meant to show how the painted screen enables the general public to just see the screen but not inside the townhouse while still providing a view to the person inside the townhouse.

The other photos show the inside of a townhouse that definitely reminded me of my cousin Catherine’s home all those years ago.

There was even a display of the famous marbled steps that still grace many townhouses in Baltimore. (If my memory is correct, I think my cousin Catherine had marble steps outside her home. Although I could be mistaken and her steps were really made out of concrete. I don’t remember exactly.) The sign said that many housewives used to spend time each week scrubbing those steps with a scrub brush, a bucket of water, and some Bon Ami cleanser in order to make sure that they are gleaming white.

Most of the artists who did the painted screens back in the 20th century are unknown because they didn’t sign their names. There was one painted screen artist who did and his name was Johnny Eck. Below are three of the screens that he painted.

Near the gallery where the painted screens were shown was another gallery that was devoted just to Johnny Eck, who was more well known as a sideshow performer (due to the fact that he was born with an underdeveloped lower torso—he learned to walk on his hands) and he also appeared in the famous classic cult film Freaks. Despite his deformity, he still managed to live an independent life without having to be sent to an institution or being forced to beg on the streets.

Unfortunately I don’t have any photos from the Johnny Eck exhibit because, unlike the painted screen exhibit, there was one of those no photography signs posted outside the entrance to the exhibit and there was even a guy stationed inside to make sure that people didn’t take pictures. The closest I can come to any photos from that exhibit is the photos I took of the brochure a few days after my visit.

Someone managed to shoot some video of the exhibit for a podcast and upload it on to YouTube but the camera tends to move around at a fast rate.

The exhibition had clothes and props that Johnny Eck used in his performing career as well as displays on his artistic side and Freaks-related film memorabilia. There were a few more screens that he painted as well as other type of art. He was into woodworking and I saw these puppets that he carved and painted himself. He was an avid photographer who took pictures of his fellow sideshow performers.

There was a room off to the side that had a sign warning that it was for mature audiences only. I entered that room and found out that Johnny Eck had a fantasy kinky side despite his deformed torso. He drew some really bizarre porn pictures that I really can’t describe other than it showed things like bird-shaped penises (or maybe they were dinosaur-shaped penises, I don’t remember). He also had an extensive collection of Tijuana Bibles, photos of naked women, and even hardcore porn pictures showing a man and a woman having sex in a variety of positions. For someone born with an underdeveloped lower torso who never married or was even known to have a girlfriend, he had a very active interest in sex.

After I finished with seeing both exhibitions, I took the light rail back to the North Linthicum station, picked up my car, and drove home where I ate a late dinner.

If you want to learn more about the art of painted screens, I highly recommend visiting The Painted Screen Society of Baltimore. If you want to learn more about the life and career of Johnny Eck, check out The Johnny Eck Museum.