THERE ARE MANY HIDDEN TREASURES in Minnesota, but I was flabbergasted to find such a prize in St. Louis Park. Like most treasure chests, The Pavek Museum of Broadcasting isn’t easy to spot. Hidden among the unimpressive offices of an industrial park, The Pavek Museum mistakenly follows suit as a plain brick building. Only until you are inside and surrounded by the unique collection of television and radio memorabilia will you realize that you’ve found the X that marks the spot.
Upon entering the museum, a television camera that could hold it’s own against a German U-boat towered over me and took up most of the space in the lobby. Stephan Raymer, managing director and one of the museum’s enthusiastic tour guides, asked what brought me to the museum on such a nice day. “Sheer boredom,” I answered. Raymer started the tour by showing clips from an episode of Axel and his Dog, a children’s television show that first aired on August 5, 1954. I walked a few more feet into a hallway where a collage of Howdy Doody memorabilia crowded around a thick, cream-colored television. The Howdy Doody Show fizzled onto the screen; Clarabell teaching children, and Buffalo Bob, math with canned foods in perfect black and white. The sketch faded and I was lead into another room, slightly bigger than the lobby. Once again greeted by caricatures of today’s appliances, I was able to see how advanced the refrigerator-sized record players of the thirties really were. And how wonderful would it be to have one in my own home, to look at and listen to everyday?
“Stand back,” Raymer said, as he plugged in a rotary spark-gap transmitter (telegraph machine) from 1912, not unlike the one used on the Titanic. “It’s pretty old and I don’t know how it’s going to act from time to time.” I stood back, watched him plug in a cord and hand-crank life into the giant machine and create sparks on the spider web-like antennae. My boredom had extinguished. This is the only object that I was told to stand back from, by the way. Mostly visited by children on school fieldtrips, The Pavek Museum teaches children about past technology and are also given the opportunity to make their own radio shows in the authentic 1950’s radio booths. Despite having such a rare exhibit, this is the most interesting hands-on museum I’ve been to.
There is a final giant room in the museum lined with old radios that represent the first 50 years of radio. You’ll have a chance to listen to them too, but not before winning points on the genuine quiz show television set. “Mickey, Mighty, Minnie, and Speedy Gonzales are all famous examples of…” Raymer acted as television host after I stepped up behind the quiz show podiums and viewed myself in the television monitor. I buzzed in on my buzzer, very similar to the thumb clickers on seen on Jeopardy, and answered nervously into the console microphone, “MICE!” I got twenty points for that. If the tour had been over then, I would have been completely satisfied. But I was then guided to a strange device in a corner of the museum. Upon turning on the device, my tour guide began waving his hands near the metal bars protruding from it. “It’s a Theremin,” he explained while trying to play a song. I found it was easier to make it whine like a police siren, but I felt like I was putting on a little magic show by not having to touch the instrument at all to make it work. The perfect museum object, now that I think about it.
Joseph Pavek, the man for which the museum was named, was Bing Crosby’s sound engineer, and so another rare piece the museum has is Bing Crosby’s first recorded music. Of course you are able to listen to it, on the original tape and the original machine it was recorded on. I never knew that radios from the thirties had remote controls, either. But here, of course, I was able to give one a try. The storage room of this place is not unlike the government warehouse scene at the end of Indiana Jones and the Lost Ark, which shows a never-ending room of anonymous crates. The storage room at the Pavek is likewise filled with old radios, television sets, and an old weather antenna made from the nosecone of a B-52 bomber that used to reside at the top of the Foshay Tower. The walls are covered with old signs, including rust damaged WCCO letters, and a barely used sign from TV Heaven 41. The Pavek holds a surprising amount of unique items and is a sure cure for boredom—unlike my television and radio at home.
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