The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities

(1908.32, items a-g) Filbert Seyfarth’s assortment of “vampire-killing” poisons. These anti-undead concoctions were understandably unpopular—considering that, given a vampire’s traditional diet, the poisons must first be consumed by a potential victim (presumably, of the suicidally game-for-anything variety).

(1912.11) Earl Lenning’s Skoocooms Mesmerizing Ray (patent no. D224,997), a trigger-operated light-projecting contraption intended to befuddle a creature now better known as “Sasquatch.” The existence of this device leads some researchers to suspect that a Native American practical joker enjoyed a hearty laugh at Mr. Lenning’s expense.

(1953.99) Addison Howell’s “Clockroach,” a one-man, quasi-lobster-shaped vehicle allegedly designed and driven by an aloof, peculiar craftsman who was rumored to be the devil himself.

We at the Stackpole Museum of Prototypical Industry would like to welcome you to this exhibit and invite you to ask questions. However, we ask that you not touch the Clockroach—nor allow children to climb upon it and make the choo-choo noise, as this is both contextually inappropriate and bound to result in tetanus shots for all concerned.

Clockroach: The Legend

(Oral tradition transcribed by UW graduate student Gregory Blum from an interview with Petra Oberg [1902–1996], daughter of Isac and Emma Johnson—two of Humptulips’ original settlers.)

Addison Howell didn’t so much arrive in Humptulips as appear there sometime around 1875. He had money, which set him apart from everybody else—because everybody else was working for the logging company, and mostly they didn’t have a pot to piss in, as my daddy put it.¹

Mr. Howell built himself a house, way outside of town, a big three-story place set back in the hills—and you couldn’t see it until you were right on top of it, what with all the trees.

He had a wife with him at one point, but she died up there. Folks said he’d murdered her with an ax, but there was never any proof of that and we didn’t have any law at the time nohow, not a sheriff or anything, much less a jail. We had a mayor, though—a fellow named Herp Jones—and I think if Herp could’ve rounded up enough warm bodies, he would’ve seen to a lynch mob.² But everyone he might’ve asked was either working or drinking, so I guess that didn’t happen.

The town gave Mrs. Howell a Christian burial in a little plot back behind the only church we had, and her guilty-as-sin husband paid a pretty penny to have a crypt built up around her. It was a real big deal, because nobody else in town had ever gotten a crypt, and only about half the folks who ever died even got a tomb stone.³ Then Mr. Howell went back to his house in the trees, and, for the most part, nobody hardly ever saw him again.

Addison Howell on his Clockroach

A few years later, as I heard it, Addison Howell was out and about doing whatever it is a wicked man does on a Sunday, and he came across a homesteader’s camp just off the old logging road. There was a wagon with a broken axle, and two dead men lying beside a campfire. It looked like they’d been tore up by wolves, or maybe mountain lions, or somesuch creature. But inside the wagon he heard a little girl crying. He looked inside and she screamed, and she bit him—because like attracts like, I suppose, and the girl had a bad streak in her, too. That’s why he took her home with him.

She was maybe eight or nine when he brought her inside, and legend has it she was mute. Or maybe she didn’t feel like talking, I couldn’t say. . . . ⁴ . . . Anyway, he raised her as his own, and they lived together in the house in the hills, and nobody ever visited them because everybody knew they were doing evil things up there.⁵

But people started telling stories about hearing strange noises out there at night, like someone was whacking on metal with a hammer, or sawing through steel. Word got around that he was building a machine that looked like a big bug, or a lobster, or something. It had a big stack on top and it was steam-powered, or coal-powered, or anyway it was supposed to move around when he was sitting inside it.

I don’t know who was fool-headed enough to get close enough to listen, but somebody did, and somebody talked.

And later on, the mayor and some friends of his, all of them with guns and itchy trigger fingers, went up to that house and demanded to know what was going on up there. For all they knew, he was summoning Satan,⁶ or beating up that girl,⁷ or raising whatever kind of hell I just don’t know.