The 'Third Planet' exhibit has been open at the Milwaukee Public Museum since 1983. I would have been nine at the time. I don't remember exactly when my first visit to the Museum was but it was somewhere around that time. I don't have any clear memories of that location in the building without the 'Third Planet' there. I remember the 'Rise of Civilization' that was directly next to it until it was removed for the current 'Rain Forest' exhibit but I do not recall the predecessor to this exhibit. Chances are very likely that I never saw it. As I force myself to think about it, I believe I remember seeing the entrance boarded up with a 'coming soon' sign on it. For the sake of argument, we'll say that I've seen the 'Third Planet' pretty much since I've been going to the Museum, that we've 'grown up' together.
One of my favorite parts of the exhibit has always been the dinosaur models. Kids in general seem to gravitate towards dinosaurs and I was no different in that regard. Of course, that went hand-in-hand with my Godzilla fascination, but I'm trying to stay a bit focused so we'll just move on. As time has gone on, I've explored more of the details of the exhibit, some of the smaller things that inhabit the space but, as a kid, we looked at the rocks, hustled through the cave, glanced at the 'underwater' diorama, and bolted to the dinosaurs. The first of these is 'Steggy'.
It's a model of a Stegosaurus. They ate plants so he was 'safe' in that regard (in other words, he wouldn't eat us). Our model has always had a friendly, dog-like style to it so it felt only right to give him a 'safe' nickname. The T-Rex is mean, the Triceratops is dead (not that any of them are alive, but in the 'story' of the exhibit the Triceratops is dead) so there was no point in naming them, the assorted smaller dinosaurs were no fun, so 'Steggy' was the mascot, the friendly guy.
This summer, the Milwaukee Public Museum celebrated their 125th anniversary. As part of the celebration a number of 'Did You Know?' placards were placed about the various exhibits. The card for Steggy was very interesting to me. For the sake of our discussion, I shall reproduce the Museum's text: 'Stegosaurus at the World's Fair. This Stegosaurus was reconstructed by the Milwaukee Public Museum after it came from the 1964-65 New York World's Fair.'
'Steggy' had a life before the Museum? Cool! I knew very little about the 1964-65 World's Fair but I did know some things about it. I knew about the Disney connection due to my new fascination with the Disney Theme Parks. Walt decided that he needed to be part of this World's Fair for a number of reasons, the most important being that it would give him a chance to see if his Theme Park style would work on the East Coast. In the end, the Company provided four different exhibits for different vendors, pushing their technology to new levels of excellence. The highlight of these was perhaps the Mr. Lincoln exhibit for the state of Illinois. An audio-animatronic Lincoln rose from a chair and delivered a speech. It was the first of the human animatronics and it was based on a real person. It, like all the World's Fair exhibits, returned to Disneyland or the Parks in the future. Lincoln became part of the Hall of Presidents. The Carousel of Progress from the Fair is been updated over the years but is still essentially the same show as it plays at Walt Disney World. 'its a small world' is everywhere, including your brain now as the song is inescapable, like it or not. The fourth exhibit was the 'Magic Skyway' and looked back at Prehistoric times in a largely light hearted fashion. I believe some of it is still on display as part of the Disneyland Railroad.
Wait a minute, there were dinosaurs in the 'Magic Skyway'. Could our Steggy be a Disney product? There was an episode of the Disneyland television show that acted as a preview of the Disney exhibits for the Fair and the clips I had available to me only showed the tail end of a Stegosaurus but that tail end did look like it could be ours. I managed to find a copy of the episode and, no, the Stegosaurus were not alike. Disney's was animatronic. It moved. Translating that moving dinosaur into our immobile one wasn't impossible but it seemed unlikely. Still, what were the odds that there were two dinosaur related exhibits at that World's Fair?
As it turns out, really good.
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