The William Parker Lyon Pony Express Museum in Arcadia, Calif.

Since I have not yet seen it referred to, I must mention the source
of my introduction and subsequent development of love for all things
old and mechanical.  This was the museum in Arcadia, California, across
the street from the Santa Anita race track, known as W. Parker Lyon's
Pony Express Museum.

Lyon was the wealthy son of the founder of Lyon's Van and Storage.
He founded his museum at his home in nearby San Marino some time in the
early 1920s, but by the late 'twenties he had outgrown the space and
moved to the larger space in Arcadia.

Lyon collected everything imaginable that was connected to the Old
West -- some of it very fine and ultimately very valuable and some of
it "pure hokum".  He created a themed museum that looked like an old
western cowboy town, with collections of related artifacts in each
false front like the General Store, Saloon, Carriage Barn and Livery
Stable, Fire Hall and Railroad Station complete with narrow gage
locomotive and cars from the Eureka and Palisade Railroad in Nevada.

Inside the museum were many nickelodeons and self-playing devices
including a couple of very interesting selector cylinder record playing
machines.

I lived very near the museum during the late 1940s and early '50s and
I would ask my mother to drop me off on Saturday mornings and come back
for me when the museum closed in the late afternoon.  There were never
many visitors to the museum (10 or 12 would be a crowd) so I was all
alone to revel in a make-believe world of the Old West.

I would use up all the nickels I had saved during the week and I
especially liked the "National" because you could watch the selector
mechanism operate and admire the ingenious action.  After I used up my
nickels I would wait and hope that one of the visitors would part with
a nickel and sometimes I'd boldly suggest that a machine was really
fantastic and well worth listening to.  Hats off to W. Parker Lyon,
early collector.

It was a sad day to see the museum close, sometime in the late 1950s,
I think.  I believe the entire collection was sold first to Corriganville
and then later to Harrah's in Reno.  It was subsequently sold off and
disbursed far and wide, with several pieces ending up at the Gene Autry
museum in Griffith Park, Los Angeles, including one of the
coin-operated cylinder record playing "Multiphones".

It was many years later when I found out that nickelodeons were not
really around in the Old West days of the late 19th Century but more
realistically belonged to the Roaring Twenties.

Boy, was I disappointed; my whole concept of the Old West was ruined.

Thanks, MMD, for a great forum!

Cecil Dover