Abilene Reproter NewsWhy here?
“We get asked that a lot,” Amy McCready said. “’Why in Cross Plains?’”
McCready is the assistant museum manager for Woody’s Classic Cars and Baseball Museum. It’s the latest addition to a town already known around the world as the birthplace of Conan the Barbarian, the most famous creation of 1930s pulp-writer Robert E. Howard.
In fact, town folk here might be tempted to rename this stretch of Texas 36 as their Miracle Mile. It would just fit, the town is exactly a mile wide along that road, its widest point according to Google Maps.
Woody’s is located along State Highway 36 West in this town of about 1,000 people, and is open Thursdays-Saturdays, with private appointments available on other days of the week.
Patti Wood dedicated the museum to the memory of Danny Lee “Woody” Wood. The couple owned a ranch between Cross Plains and Rising Star and were married for 34 years until Woody’s death in 2016 after an illness, said museum supervisor Mindy Johnson.
“Woody liked cars, and he surprised Patti with a Thunderbird on an anniversary,” recalled Johnson, who is also Patti’s niece. That first car, a '56 pearly-white hardtop T-Bird, is on display at the museum.
“That kind of started it, they got hooked on buying cars and collecting them,” she said. Whenever a car was delivered to the ranch, Woody and his bride naturally took it out for a spin around the property. Over the course of time, the couple amassed quite a collection, and 27 vehicles are on display at the museum.
“(Patti) does have more cars, but some of them are projects,” Johnson said. “They're not really complete yet, but she does plan on getting different things finished and refurbished, switching them out and giving people something new to look at.”
Be that as it may, what’s on display is already impressive enough. McCready said the most common expression for first-timers walking through the door is, “Wow!”
“They're amazed, their jaws are on the floor,” McCready said. “We had a guy that said we needed to give away drool bibs.”
The museum is hard to miss coming from Abilene, which is 45 miles to the northwest. Its size on the left side of the highway is the sort of thing reserved for a large store, which is what I’d thought it to be when I first noticed it being built in 2017.
There are two sets of large glass doors, each paying homage to Woody and Patti’s passion of classic cars and baseball. The handles of one set are crafted from chromed exhaust pipes, the others are made from custom baseball bats.
No matter the weather or time of day, in place of fluorescent lighting panels in the ceiling is instead a blue sky with a few puffy clouds glowing down.
“It's supposed to be an actual NASA image placed individually in those tiles,” McCready said.
I was hoping to see a version of the 1965 Ford Mustang Fastback that I owned back when I was in the Navy but if she has one, it’s still being worked on. Pale yellow with black louvers, Crager rims and a 302 V8 engine, I’d loved that car but didn’t love paying a mechanic to fix it for me.
Most of the cars are from what you would consider the “classic” era. Impalas, Corvettes, Cadillacs, with a few modern additions such as the 50th anniversary Ford Mustang from 2014. Depending on your age, you either rode, owned or lusted after several of these in the more formative years of your life.
For some of us, that was last week.
“Right now, the cars have their batteries taken out for safety reasons, but we drove every one of these cars in here,” McCready said. “Woody and his wife enjoyed driving many of these cars through back roads, to car shows and just around town.”
The front of the museum is set up like a drive-in, complete with a large screen playing clips from old movies. At the back, everyone is pulled up to what looks like an old diner, complete with a free jukebox, booths and little racing car seats for the kiddos.
“It’s not a functional diner,” McCready said. “But for field trips and things like that. We encourage them to bring a sack lunches and they can eat back there.”
Stationed around, or sometimes within, the vehicles are chromed mannequins in a variety of lifelike poses wearing clothing from the era.
Beside a champagne 1959 Impala stands a figure sporting a John Travolta Grease wig and a black leather jacket with “The Fonz” printed on the back. Henry Winkler’s signature, he was the actor who played the character in the 1970s sitcom “Happy Days” which was set in the ‘50s, can be seen beneath it.
Randy and Cindy Sparks dropped by the museum on their way from Abilene.
“I think it's awesome, it's absolutely beautiful in here. These old cars, it's just too cool,” Randy said. “The ‘59 Chevy; my brother used to own one.”
I confided to him my memory of my old Mustang and how I’d later felt regret letting go of that car.
“Well, when we were young, we don't think of things such as that and we get a little older we start reminiscing about the cars,” he said. “How wonderful, well built and fast they were.”
He smiled, waving an expansive arm at the collection of Detroit muscle displayed around him.
“All of this reminds me of the drive-in theaters. I used to work at them in Abilene, the Tower Twin Drive-In on South 1st,” Randy said. “We used to love to drag race and spend 50 cents for a gallon of gas, go to the drive-in theater and show them off.”
That’s the real superpower of this museum, the memories it elicits. Woody’s T-bird gift to Patti was just like the one owned by my best friend’s mom in high school. Her husband bought it for her, too. All of this in a museum you’d expect to see in Dallas, Fort Worth or maybe even Abilene, but certainly not Cross Plains.
“It's a blast, it reminds me of the good days,” Randy declared.
Bear in mind that all of this is only on the first floor.
Taking the stairs on either side of the room leads you to the second level and Woody’s shrine to the American pastime, baseball.
“They were big baseball fans.” McCready said. In particular, they had a strong love for the Texas Rangers.
“We don't hate on the Astros, we love the Astros and we cheer them,” she said. “Unless they're playing our Rangers.”
Several clear glass panels display the couple’s massive baseball card collection. On one end is a spinning Plexiglas pennant trophy with hollow tubes designed for children to sign baseballs and drop them inside.
“It’ll be sort of like a time capsule,” McCready said. “So, you can come back years from now and find your name in there.”
The museum has welcomed the Rangers stars Nolan Ryan and Ivan “Pudge” Rodgriguez, setting up a pair of mannequins mimicking the pitcher and catcher in action.
In case you were wondering, you can’t buy mannequins winding up for the pitch, nor do they come in chrome. All the figures in the museum were the work of Scott Yeoman and Joel McCready, the mechanics whom Woody befriended before the museum ever came to be.
“Yeah, we called him the plastic surgeon because he would literally you cut the plastic and bend it to shape from photographs,” Johnson said of Yeoman. He and McCready, Amy’s husband, then chromed the figures.
Elsewhere in the baseball section is an homage to the Rangers own Mr. 3000, Adrian Beltre. On July 30, 2017 Beltre became the 31st player in Major League history to make 3,000 hits, and the first Dominican-born player to do so.
Probably the most touching displays around the 22,000-square-foot museum aren’t the cars, or the cards or even the custom benches made by McCready’s husband Joel.
It’s the murals depicting Woody and Patti’s family and friends – as well as the couple themselves – in scenes reminiscent of a picnic, or celebration.
“It was basically people who are near and dear to her,” Johnson said. “The muralists actually came to a function and we just thought they were just taking pictures.
“They ended up being on the wall!” She laughed at the memory.
The artists were Matt and Lee Casbeer of Kerrville and Johnson City. One of the more sentimental displays depicts Patti and Woody in the front seat of his silver pickup.
“Patti did try to be very tricky about letting us know whether we're going to be in it or not,” Johnson said. “I thought it was cool, where do you see yourself on the wall forever? Well, Cross Plains Texas.
“My kids love it, their friends come in there and say, ‘Hey, that's you!’”
What: Woody’s Classic Cars and Baseball Museum
Where: 500 SW Fifth St., State Highway 36 West, Cross Plains
Hours: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, or private appointments available on other days.
Admission: There is no charge
Information: Call 254-725-4042 or go to www.WoodysMuseum.com
Extra: Proceeds from the gift shop go toward local charities.