Whipped Cream Difficulties

MattG over at Better and Better (which I shamefully have not added to my blogroll previously) has a nifty post up about his field trip to the Hornady plant.

In addition to making me want to schedule a road trip (and, hey, I can stop on the way at the SAC Museum! Don’t tell me the SAC Museum isn’t on the way; if I’m going to Nebraska, it’s on the way.) Matt’s post reminds me of something we’ve lost along the way.

Back when I was a child and we took family vacations by car, one of the things we’d do is stop at the obscure (and not so obscure) little museums along the way, and take the corporate tours at manufacturing plants as well. The corporate tour that stands out most vividly in my mind was the one of the Daisy factory in Rogers, Arkansas. I can’t tell if Daisy even offers those tours any longer, or if they’ve been replaced by the Daisy museum; but as good as the Daisy museum might be, the factory tour was at least one of the things that made me a lifelong gunnie.

One of my favorite things in Boston was the observation deck at the John Hancock building. I remember thinking it was one of the best thought out spaces I’d seen in a long time. There was a huge diorama of the battle of Bunker Hill. The observation deck overlooked the approach path to Logan, so they had a section set up where you could listen to ATC traffic. They had telescopes. They had little kiosks where you could print directions to other Boston landmarks (this was in the pre-Mapquest/Google Maps days). The operative word there is “had”. They closed the observation deck after September 11th, ostensibly for “security reasons”.

Goodyear used to have the “World of Rubber” museum. They let that fall into disrepair, and closed it down last year.

I never got to take the Kellogg’s factory tour, but they apparently stopped doing that due to “corporate espionage” concerns (“Oh my God! Someone might steal the trade secret for Fruit Loops!” Here’s a hint; the trade secret is “sugar”!), and replaced it with a badly thought out “attraction” called “Cereal City USA” that closed in 2007.

I understand some of the reasons these things are going away. Cheap air travel means that families fly more, instead of driving, so you’re unlikely to make the “World of Rubber” a destination unless you’re flying into Akron. As manufacturing moves offshore, and we stop building s–t in this country, it becomes more difficult to schedule a factory tour in China. I know that security and liability are concerns, too.

But what are the long term benefits? How many kids toured GM when they were little, and grew up to buy Corvettes? How many gunnies came out of Daisy or Smith and Wesson factory tours? (Yes, you can tour the Smith and Wesson factory, but you should really call ahead to get information first.) And how many kids took factory tours when they were young and came out inspired to build stuff?

Are these cutbacks short-sighted? Are we killing off the inventors of tomorrow? And is the demise of the factory tour one of the reasons for growing anti-corporate sentiment? Can you really think GM is evil if you toured the Corvette plant as a little kid? (Note: sadly, this author has never toured the Corvette plant. At least, not as of yet.)

It seems that as we lose these things, we’re also losing a part of our national soul, and that makes me sad. I don’t know what to do about it, except to suggest that we support companies like Hornady that keep their doors open and the lights on for the passing public.