The Three Candles

The Seattle Wax Museum is gone now, I’m not sure

where it disappeared. Apartments have been built

over its site and those stacked rooms are probably

being haunted by wax visions of Abe Lincoln,

John F. Kennedy, the pioneer founders of Seattle,

Neil Armstrong, Lindbergh, Marilyn Monroe,

The Beatles and a cast of characters I’ve since

forgotten. I do remember there used to be

the Three Stooges, as real as they were on TV

but in three dimensions, roped off from us…

I wonder if they were auctioned off when

the wax museum went under? Maybe it

was a bargain, someone bought them for

only $120. The statues came with simple

temperature instructions: keep out of

direct sunlight and away from any heat

source. “Naturally!” the person who

bought them laughed, “They’re wax!

They’ll melt!” So he cloaked them over

in bedsheets and drove them away,

onto Interstate 5, going South.

When he got to Spirit Lake,

he found the airport and chartered

a helicopter. It let him off on the summit

of Mount Saint Helens. There, he arranged

the three infamous wax players in the ice

and set up his expensive camera equipment.

A panorama of breathtaking blue and

white, at the top of the world with 

Larry, Moe and Curly. It could have been

one of their films from long ago, as he bent

his finger to record the scene. But history

had other plans. The ground began to shake,

knocking everything down as the volcano

exploded with hot ash. It was probably 

the tremor or was it a some other force

that carried across the miles from there,

suddenly waking me from a dream. 

 

The previous post, 1975 Diary #3

ended with the Seattle Wax Museum.

Our school went there on a field trip 

once, the entire class horrified by 

the recreation of the city's founding 

Denny standing there bleeding 

holding an axe in the cold wet

surrounded by weeping settlers

and the sound of rain soundtrack. 

This story originally appeared in 

Pie in the Sky #10, featuring 

another great drawing and cover

by Aaron Gunderson. Later it was 

compiled in Home Recordings.