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I feel bad for the tiny little town of Pine Ridge Arkansas, which essentially exists solely because of "Lum and Abner." The only attraction there is the Lum and Abner Museum, and when decreasingly few people have any idea who they were, there isn't much else there to attract traffic.
About this time last year the Roger Miller Museum in Miller’s hometown of Erick, Oklahoma closed permanently.
I took the news hard. I’m a big fan of Miller’s, but it seems there are fewer and fewer in that fraternity. Miller has been gone since 1992, so 26 years now. I was still a kid when he had his greatest fame, in the early- to mid-1960s, and I'm now of an age when those a generation ahead of me are mostly gone, as are many if not yet most of my own.
Still, there was a well-received tribute album released a few moths ago, featuring big names in CW doing covers of Miller's tunes. Some of those performers are themselves too young to have known of Miller when he was alive.
Historic Route 66, the "Mother Road," runs right through Erick, and right past the former home of the Roger Miller Museum. Perhaps the museum operators never consulted the Boys from Marketing, because it seems they failed to reach the largest segments of their potential audience.
But then, maybe Route 66 ain't big kicks anymore, either. I suspect the overwhelming majority of people making their way from Chicago to L.A. these days do so via commercial airliner.
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