Velvet Ropes

No roaming or running allowed— stay behind the rope.

The summer home of Buffalo Bill, Scout Ranch in North Platte, Nebraska, is a spacious and specious sort of experience. The home is tidy, and an attendant waits in the back room to take your money. The dining room is where we transacted business. The portraits on the wall gave a kind of warmth to the place. It was soon apparent that the warmth was illusory; the dining room was the only room freely accessible to intruders (tourists). Returning to the front hallway, the living room was protected by a velvet rope. So was the rest of the house. There was no roaming inside. The path was prescribed.

Upstairs past the sitting room, the pattern really developed. Much of the house was behind glass, an assortment of curios rather than lived objects. The bedrooms were tidy, and I transgressed the boundaries by gently removing the velvet rope from my path to photograph the dummy in the hall. The back stairs led out to the open, to the coke machine, restrooms that smelled like any typical campground, and eventually the barn.

Another attendant sat at the door. The downstairs was filled with artifacts and images, stretched down the 100 feet or so of walls like a giant cowboy Louvre. I especially liked the lasso made from Christmas lights. Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show was certainly a cheesy affair, but this monument was of a different sort: domesticity behind glass and velvet ropes. I’m not sure he would approve—I mean, where’s the action, the display of skill?

The restless adolescent buffalo were the only source of movement. A sign in the upstairs of the barn read “please restrain your children from running.”

June 5, 2006 1:24 PM