Weekly Briefing from the North Texas Apocalypse Bunker, 1/3/25

New Socks and Underwear edition

Happy New Year and Happy Elvis’ Birthday to all of you from the faculty and staff of the North Texas Apocalypse Bunker. We have been hard at work outlining the event calendar for the upcoming year and we’re quite excited about what’s coming up. Sadly, the Pickleball League has been canceled due to a lack of interest and a number of snarky comments in the Community Suggestion Box. About these comments, I will only state that no one called the Air Hockey Tournament a “non-sport” and there was a cash prize involved, so I’m not sure what everyone is so bent out of shape about in the first place. We will continue to massage the athletics program until everyone has a leisure activity with a cardiovascular component. Please do not keep suggesting “breakdance team.” That ship has long since sailed.

Field Report: Ohio and Kentucky New Years’ Eve/Day

Longtime residents of the bunker may recall a couple of years hence when we traveled through the wilds of Arkansas and Missouri in the hopes of reaching Ohio and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. That trip ended before we could get there, but we found ourselves in Iowa and other places of note. I got to see three Presidential libraries: Clinton, Hoover, and Wilson, and a pig that’s in the Guinness World Records for most tricks done in a minute. So it wasn’t a bust, at all.

The NTAB Away Team: Bunker Ops’ Nuclear Family and the Administrator at The Eagle Cafe in Louisville, KY. Incredible food.

This time, we decided not to stop at every ball of twine along the way, but to take the opportunity to spend a few days in the great state of Ohio. We did not account for the holiday schedule of New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, with random closings and early closings, and that forced us to switch up the order in which we saw things. Long story short, we had to cut Cleveland short, and we didn’t make it over to Columbus.

They took this picture for me. I’m rubbing off on them.

BUT! We still managed to get to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, as well as three different Presidential Libraries: Rutherford B. Hays, Warren G. Harding, and William McKinley. These museums aren’t technically under the aegis of NARA, but they are still top notch and frankly jaw-dropping.

The thing that thrummed my innermost strings was getting to see Ralphie’s house from A Christmas Story. That neighborhood has been transformed by the house itself, redone and rebuilt, the next door property that is a rentable Air B&B (it’s called “The Bumpus House”), the house across the street, which holds the museum’s relics (costumes and props and other ephemera from the movie), and the house next to THAT which is an enormous Gift Shop. Seriously. If it’s one of your top five favorite Christmas movies of all time, you owe it to yourself to make the pilgrimage. I got a little emotional being in the same place where the movie was filmed.

I don’t think I said anything that wasn’t a quote from A Christmas Story the entire time I was here.

There were other myriad joys, as well: a couple of bourbon distillery tours, the Ark Experience (oh boy, was it!) and a bevy of interesting eateries, sites, and the satisfaction of driving far enough away from our home state to actually feel like we were some place different; in this particular case, a place with weather, elevation, and trees.

Enjoy these mere samplings of the trip, along with pithy commentary, as needed.

This teaser image was a trade insert. I have coveted this ephemera for years.

Not surprisingly, the world’s largest bat, outside the Louisville Slugger plant.

This is a tribute to Michelangelo’s David, and a most unfortunate street lamppost position if one is stopped at a particular traffic light.

Welcome…to Jurassic Ark. This site seems committed to explaining why 85 different species of dinosaurs really were on Noah’s ark, so you see, the 6K timeline holds up to scientific scrutiny…

When I think of the ark, the first thing that leaps to mind is “ziplines.”

We got Snow, in Ohio, on New Year’s Day. Nice!

Harry Collins, the official corporate magician of the Frito Lay company. Nice work if you can get it!

A wall of fan art at the Christmas Story house.

There are more photos of the trip, located at the blog site, The North Texas Apocalypse Bunker. If you liked these, there are more of them over there.

We will resume our regular coverage next week. In the meantime, feel free to share with me what you are planning on doing for Elvis’ Birthday.

Mark Finn is one of the most opinionated and influential experts on Robert E. Howard in the state of Texas. He’s an author out of largesse rather than as a vocation and writes stories because he can’t play the guitar. He loves gorillas, values a well-placed conversational movie quote, and treasures the picaresque in literature. Annoyed with people’s misunderstanding of popular culture, he took it upon himself to buy a movie theater so he could lord it over every obnoxious film student on the Internet. He likes to say, “If three people tell you you’re drunk, go lie down.”