Roswell Antiques Mall

While we were downtown checking out the alien/UFO gift shops, we discovered the Roswell Antiques Mall.  What a great find!  It's a store, but has the feel of a museum.

Every business in Roswell has to have a little of the alien theme!  I enjoyed seeing these gourds painted to look like aliens in the antiques mall window!  

This is one aisle in the antiques mall.  As you walk down the aisles, there are separate boothes with displays.

I love the displays that are set-up similar to a room in an antique home! 

Remember these?  I loved these gumball machine and coin banks!

I remember having one of these!  I was so bad at Chinese checkers that I still have a negative response to seeing the game!  I may have to get a board and see if I've gotten any better at it! 

I remember a dresser and mirror like this being in my life for a short while.  I think it still looks pretty cool! 

I had a ruffled polyester blouse like this in white, I think.  Didn't I feel dressed-up wearing ruffles and this new silky fabric!  I'm sure I had a hounds tooth skirt, too!  I think that's what that check pattern is called!

Anybody remember typing reports on one of these?  I remember getting into a typing groove, zoning out, and running off the bottom of the page on many occasions!  There wasn't anything to do about it besides to start over and be more vigilant!  Kids today don't know how good they have it!

All these aprons make me feel a little more nurtured!

Check out the fresh citrus fruit juicers!  Didn't they create an excitement and anticipation for having a glass of real orange juice!  

Remember the matching nic-nac salt and pepper shakers?  They were so exciting, interesting, and fun!  Seems like everyone had a small collection of them!

I found these pipes and holder to have an interesting feeling of home and hearth.   

I remember all these types of Easter eggs!  They were all so fascinating!

I included this piece just because I like it!  Recently Roy and I have been encountering pictures of days gone by with pets in them.  It always strikes me as odd that everything in the picture is foreign, because of the time period, but then there is a pet that looks just as they do today!  This picture doesn't convey it as profoundly as some we've seen.  I think I'm going to start a small collection!  Wasn't the Roswell Antiques Mall a nice walk down memory lane!  Be sure and visit it while in Roswell! 

Robert Hutchings Goddard

There is a large gallery in the Roswell Museum and Art Center devoted to Robert H. Goddard.  Before the first mass produced car in 1901, and the advent of the radio in 1920; Robert Goddard was experimenting with rocketry, with the idea of sending one to the moon!  His open minded creative genius is astounding!   

Robert Goddard lived from 1882-1945!  Take particular note of the early time period in which he lived and the lack of technology that would have existed at that time!  Although his work in the field was revolutionary, Goddard received little public support for his research.  The press sometimes ridiculed his theories of spaceflight.  In fact, his thinking was so advanced that he even had to guard how much he shared with the scientific community, so as to stay within their perceived norm of rational thinking!  Years after his death at the dawn of the Space Age (1957), he came to be recognized as one of the founding fathers of modern rocketry!            

The First Rockets:  The first fuel rockets were built by Robert Goddard in the Fall of 1925.  They were filled with Texaco gasoline and liquefied oxygen.  One rocket sputtered to an altitude of 41 feet.       

Flight Testing in Roswell:  Between 1920 and 1942

Dr. Goddard performed 56 flight tests in Roswell.  Each test brought refinements and new designs.  Of the 32 flights produced, the best altitude was close to a mile and a half.

Magnetic Levitation:  Dr. Goddard imagined that the 200 mile trip between New York and Boston could be made in 10 minutes!  His idea: a vehicle gliding without friction, levitated by magnets in an evacuated tunnel.  Prototype Maglev systems have recently been developed in Germany and Japan!

The Rocket Turboprop:  Dr. Goddard's turboprop was an attempt to make practical use of rockets at low speeds.  The idea of operating propellers with high speed jets has been successfully employed in both turboprop and turbofan engines.

Solar Energy:  Solar Energy was a natural interest for Dr. Goddard, as it is the only source of energy in outer space.

Rockets for Airplanes:  During WW2, Dr. Goddard developed rockets to boost Navy aircraft during take off.  Ultimately, this work led to a rocket motor for the Bell X-2 aircraft which set speed and altitude records in 1956.

Radio Tubes:  In 1915, Dr. Goddard patented one of the first radio frequency oscillating tubes.  These were successfully marketed under the name Gammatron.  The company that manufactured the tubes later merged with ITT.

Explosive Propulsion:  In 1919 Dr. Goddard suggested an unusual rocket propelled by a series of explosions in a cone-shaped reflector.  The idea resurfaced in the 1960s at NASA where a prototype was successfully launched!

This is a 1928 liquid fuel rocket. 

Creativity:  These objects are just a few of

Dr. Goddard's attempts at a reliable and efficient thrust chamber.  He explored a wide variety of designs and materials.

In 1914 his first two landmark patents were accepted and registered.  The first U.S. patent described a multi-stage rocket.  The second patent described a rocket fueled with gasoline and liquid nitrous oxide.  The two patents would eventually become important milestones in the history of rocketry!  Roy and I are not only impressed with this man's contributions to technology, but his ability to persist in his pursuit of a vision despite the lack of support by the public and scientific community.  That's a lesson we can all take to heart!

Roswell Museum and Art Center

Since our arrival in Roswell, we've been living life like a couple of tourists!  Every other day we try to get out to tour something.  We generally start with a drive around town to get an overview of where things are.  The next trip into town we check out the grocery stores and a few other places we generally shop.  After getting settled into the basics, we start checking out the museums.

The Roswell Museum and Art Center is a large museum so give yourself plenty of time!  Roy and I visited it twice to adequately see everything!  Admission is free! 

The depth of this culvert in front of the museum hints that the area may get some major flash flooding! 

This is a 2012 abstract work by Martie Zelt called, "Birds in a Birdbath".  I keep thinking that if I stare at it long enough that something will click and I'll understand it!  I hope I didn't ruin your appreciation of the piece and ability to understand what was being conveyed, when I photoshopped out a red strip hanging down from the center of the gray area to the bottom of the picture.  I thought it was a reflection of my sweatshirt cord in the glass!!!   

Here is another 2012 artwork by Martie Zelt called, "Waiting for Spring".  Okay, I can relate to the brown being mud and the coming of flowers.  Maybe that yellow Z is a duck!  I'm scoffing a bit at these art pieces, but yet, I can't say that I don't like them.  I'm more baffled and intrigued.    

These are actually large pictures.  Seeing them from a distance I thought they were ink sketches, but in actuality, they are cut black paper over white paper!  The intricacy is amazing!  These are done by Catalina Delgado-Trunk.

I love this wire mesh furniture.  It actually appears comfortable.  I had to use lots of restraint, as I really wanted to try them out!  The hawk is a sketch on paper. 

Interesting!  Kind of makes you want to push the pieces back into a stack, doesn't it? 

This is framed broken ceramics!  This work is by Eddie Dominguez and is in the category of Art and Craft mixed media.  Eddie apparently has a sense of humor about this art piece, as he took a permanent marker and changed the f in craft to a p and crossed out the t.  That changes the art classification to "Art and Crap."  I got a chuckle and had to agree with the new art category! 

This ceramic piece equally repels and fascinates me, although I'm not sure what I'm looking for!

 I have the same feelings for this one!  It's interesting that the individual pieces are like artistic dinnerware!

 Pretty baubles!

This was interesting!  It is a nightstand, with interesting trinkets in it.  The cool thing is that there is an interior shelf of glass, so that a nice overlap of items can be created.  Roy suggested 5 glass shelves creating more depth and overlap would be interesting! 

It makes me ponder the home decor of artists!  It might be great, if you love their work, and pretty intolerable, if you don't! 

This frame was created by merging progressively smaller frames together.  It looks better than my crooked picture portrays it.  The name of the work is "I Could Do That".  I have to admit that is the first thing I thought, but with the small picture and all the framing a whimsical name could be, "It's All In The Framing"! 

The prior works have all been mind stretching, but it's time to slowly come back to reality!  This 2012 painting by Kim Wiggins is called, The Cattle Kings of the Pecos:  Blazing the Trail of 1867.  

We aren't quite back to reality yet and it already seems a little boring, doesn't it?