Legends in Lincoln
The Speedway Motors Museum of American Speed in Lincoln is an unexpected find with dozens and dozens of restored racing cars of all types, from racing Model Ts to contemporary Indy open-wheel cars, displayed on three floors and 150,000 square feet of immaculately clean space.
“There is a story about every car in here,” said docent Jim Snyder.
The massive collection, which began when founder Bill Smith got a Buck Rogers toy ray gun in 1934 when he was 5 years old, also includes numerous engines, performance parts, and accessories; toy memorabilia; Soap Box Derby cars; peddle cars dating to the early 1900s; and more than 600 lunch boxes that line the walls of a stairwell.
The late Smith’s four sons continue the collecting and the family-owned Speedway Motors.
The vehicles at the Nebraska Tractor Test Laboratory at the University of Nebraska across town go at a distinctly different pace. All models of tractors must be tested for things such as horsepower, fuel economy, hydraulics and noise before they can be sold in Nebraska.
“We are the only state with such a law. We are the only test facility in the United States,” said Lance Todd, manager of the Larson Tractor Museum, which is affiliated with the laboratory.
The museum displays several antique tractors, from the first one tested at the site in 1920 up to one tested in 1963.
After touring the museum, groups are taken to a building where indoor tests are run on mammoth tractors. “You can go through the museum to see the history, then come down here and see what is happening,” said Todd. “You see the new tractors, and it brings it all together.”
If some members of groups are not interested in tractors, they can go across the street to the International Quilt Study Center and Museum.
Also associated with the University of Nebraska, the 9-year-old museum has more than 5,000 quilts covering four centuries and 50 countries in its collection. About 200 of the quilts are displayed on a rotating basis in the museum’s modernistic building, which features a curving, three-story glass exterior wall.
Johnny’s Town
“Heeere’s Johnny”; Ed McMahon’s signature introduction to “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson” rings out in the Elkhorn Valley Museum in Norfolk, Nebraska, Carson’s hometown. It is followed by one of Carson’s monologues that plays on a stage with a lifelike mannequin of the late Carson and a television camera from his long-running late-night television show that made him a cultural icon.
Carson helped to select the items in the museum’s gallery, which includes the six Emmys he won and a coffee mug from his desk. A two-hour highlight reel of his shows that runs on a television was specially made for the museum.
“Johnny Carson was very, very kind to our community,” said Kim Kwapnioski, director of the Norfolk Area Visitor Bureau.
Carson’s name adorns several of the local institutions to which he contributed, among them a regional cancer center, a theater and an arts center. A mural of realistic scenes from Carson’s life was recently completed on the side of a downtown building.
