Bad Habits - Angels among us - October 23 2002
Devil, get off my shoulder
I'm not much of a collector. I like to think I collect magnets, but I only have about 10, hardly a collection to show off.
There's a reason for this. I don't want to become that relative. You know, the one who takes care of the neighborhood's stray cats, and when she dies, medics find her soaked in urine while Morris and his 100 or so best friends are sitting over in the corner contentedly playing soccer with what's left of her eyes.
There's this fine line with collecting things. It gets bigger than you. You lose perspective. You show your nieces all 1,400 of your Hummel figurines and the story behind each one.
And that's why I'm in Beloit, Wis.: aversion therapy. Beloit is the home of The Angel Museum. Housed in a former Catholic church on the banks of the Rock River, it boasts the largest angel collection in the world. This is not bloated boasting; it's a fact confirmed by The Guinness Book of World Records. Look it up.
You got your seraphim, your cherubim, your deer angels with hunting rifle accessories. There are angels made of feathers. There are angels made of macaroni. There are white angels and, thanks to Oprah, there are black angels.
I was psyched to go make fun of the place, write a column and shoot all those winged fish as they flew around in the barrel.
Only there is no kitschy glory in Wisconsin. For kitsch to be fun there has to be a winking irony, and there is no irony in Wisconsin. It wasn't killed off by Sept. 11, either, for you can't kill something that has not been born. Outside of Milwaukee and Madison, Wisconsin seems to be the kind of place where you might see an older woman wearing a sweatshirt that has three puff-paint kittens on it coming at you that reads, "Cats! Cats! Cats!" That is considered clever in Wisconsin.
But I just can't be acid-tongued. The museum is run by three of the sweetest, nicest gray-haired ladies, who, I imagine, really like (and believe in) angels. We could tell they hadn't had any visitors in a while by the way they greeted us. At first, I think they thought we were lost and were going to ask them for directions, but when I pulled out my money, they realized we were indeed there for the angels, all 7,000 of them on display (there are about 13,000 total).
We got the facts: The angel collection belongs to a woman named Joyce Berg; the oldest angel is from the mid-1800s; the approximately 4-foot angel in the altar area was made by Joyce's hairdresser and its head is a wig stand, its body is chicken wire and three tomato stands, and its dress was made with no stitches — all draped fabric that's been glued into place. I'm not making this up.
The only negative thing I can bring myself to say is that Oprah's black angels are segregated off in their own special cases. I'm not worried about them, though, because there is a Rosa Parks angel among them and I'm sure she will set things right. Until then, I suggest the black angels team up with the several angels with guns. Why an angel needs a gun I just don't know. It just might prove, after all, that the NRA has God's blessing.
How does one amass a collection of 13,000 angels? Or 13,000 of anything for that matter? My friend Cary was telling me the other day how he still had his sticker collection from elementary school. He has books and books of all the stickers he saved. Whole pages were devoted to unicorns.
I imagine Mrs. Berg started like that, too. Only she wound up in Guinness.
"Do you get many visitors?" I asked the Heavenly Treasures Gift Shop worker who was ringing up my angel magnets.
"Oh, noooo," she said. "We used to when it first opened, but not anymore."
"Do you think it will stay open?"
She shook her head.
"We gave it five years when we opened, and it's coming up on that now."
I'd make some smartass comment about their guardian angel not doing his job, but I just can't bring myself to do it.