Museum offers respite from holiday hubbub

OWLS HEAD – If you ever wanted to kick the kids out of the house once the Christmas presents were unwrapped, the Owls Head Transportation Museum has found a place to put them.

Parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins spent some time together Sunday afternoon creating all sorts of planes and things in an activities program geared toward families and the holidays.

The day at the museum was a gift for some.

When asked what brought 6-year-old Terrence Charles “T.C.” Conway and his dad, Charlie, to the museum instead of playing at home Sunday with his Christmas toys, the Thomaston boy said, “My mother wanted us to. She wants a break from us.”

T.C. and some 30 other youngsters made plastic-foam airplanes cut from what looked like food-packaging trays.

Patterns for wings and other airplane parts were traced from templates and pieced together. Making the planes fly took just the right amount of clay added to the body and nose of the model.

With a running start, T.C. darted across the room and tossed the plane into the air. The yellow plane took a nose dive and off came the clay.

The activities events included making airplanes, boomerangs, unicycles from compact discs, coloring and cutting out paper Messerschmitts and gluing them together to make them three-dimensional.

The Messerschmitt is a three-wheeled automobile made in the 1950s in Germany. The passenger sat behind the driver and the vehicle opened like a cockpit, said Ethan Yankura, the museum’s education director.

Other activities involved making paper helicopters and playing with an airport made from wood that had a fire station, parking garage and repair shop.

Some children sat down to watch the movie known as “Aeronautical Oddities,” an old film that showed attempts at making aircraft. “Some of them flew, some of them didn’t,” Yankura said.

Many of the adults learned about the event in area newspapers, they said, and decided to bring their children or grandchildren to the activities day.

“It’s great having these activities,” Sharon Lombardo of Owls Head said, bragging that she has her two grandchildren visiting “the whole week – December 23 to January 3.” Devon and Fox Whitman, 12 and 9, respectively, are visiting her from Middle Grove, N.Y.

There were also grandparents from away visiting grandchildren who live here.

Bob Currie of Hollywood, Md., joined his son, Rob Currie of Camden, and 41/2-year-old grandson “R.C.” Currie in making airplanes.

The museum trip was truly a family affair for another Maryland grandparent, Cynthia Lawrence of Baltimore, who joined her daughter, Hannah Demmons of Rackliff Island, and grandchildren Ellie Demmons, 8, and Cyrus Demmons, 6, for the activities. Lawrence’s son, Job Lawrence of Stanford, Calif., his wife, Dana Wang, and their children Jona, 6, and Maya, 5, were also there.

“The boys love things that fly,” she said.

The Hardgrove family of Orlando, Fla., didn’t come to Maine to visit relatives for the Christmas holiday.

“We’re here to see the snow,” Ellen Hardgrove said, while helping her 5-year-old daughter, Leah, get a handmade unicycle to work.

The Hardgroves come to Maine twice a year – once in summer and usually Christmas week. They rent the same house each year in Spruce Head.

From their previous vacations, they know the transportation museum well.

“Summertime, if it’s rainy, we come to the museum,” Mark Hardgrove said.

Hardgrove, 46, is a private transportation consultant who works mostly with mass transit. “So, this is perfect for me,” he said. In fact, Hardgrove said he is “infatuated with Maine” and wants to live here year-round.

“This is one of the nicer museums we’ve been to,” he said. “My son [Sam, 9] loves firetrucks and trains and cars. My daughter loves anything the older brother loves.”

The museum is open every day of the year, with the exception of Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s Day and for its volunteer banquet day, which this year will be April 10.