Photographing the Sock Monkey Museum: Obama Need Not Apply
So it was bound to happen. With the amount of driving I do around this country, sooner or later I was bound to pass through the town that invented the Sock Monkey. After all, it must have been invented somewhere, right? There must be a museum telling you the complete details of its history and offering hundreds of examples in all shapes and sizes, somewhere out there in the great American landscape. Right?
Enter Rockford, Illinois.
Good old Rockford. Home of the Rockford Peaches, the women’s baseball team featured prominently in the film A League of Their Own. And, as it turns out, the home of the Sock Monkey, and of Midway Village, which hosts a museum including elements of both tidbits of local history.
But the emphasis is very much on the Sock Monkeys.
Photographing small-town American museums can be endless fun. They tend to put you through the rigors of museum photography that not even some of the larger institutions enforce. Nine times out of ten, a small-town museum will nix flash photography, for example, and also the use of tripods – even if you are the only visitor. And all too often, a security guard or two will suspiciously check in on you from time to time, to make sure you are not up to any shenanigans.
As it turned out, the Midway Village folks were very polite, cheerful and laid back, and I had the run of the museum pretty much to myself. Observing strictly their rules, I dug out my fastest lens, the same low-light option I used in New Orleans to capture the street singers at night. And still it struggled with the very atmospheric use of light at the museum, which has dozens of sock monkeys hanging from the ceiling, intertwined with fake vines, often blocking direct light to the exhibits below and creating odd shadows on the walls.
But what to say about the museum content itself?
I don’t think it would be fair of me to recap here the twists and turns, skullduggery and sin, that is the history of the sock monkey. This would be rather stealing the museum’s thunder, I believe, and they tell the story far better than I could, anyway.
Still, it is nice to see that someone out there is keeping track of all this.
The company that made the sock monkey famous continues to operate today, and if you don’t mind a few doses of questionable grammar and just plain weirdness, you can visit them here (if not in person), and really get to know the ins-and-outs of this whole ’sock monkey’ affair. I am placing an order this week, because frankly their online catalog has better stuff than the gift shop there did (sock frog, anyone?)
The museum contained many other wonderful surprises as I navigated its rooms. An airplane, an old Ford, a penny farthing bicycle…oh, and there was the gigantic, fiberglass artistic sock monkey, done in the style of the Chicago cows (or whoever originated the trend), and likewise a larger sock monkey statue outside the museum:
That said, I was a bit surprised to see no mention of the 2008 Obama sock monkey flap, when another company came out with an Obama-based sock monkey, prompting many to call the whole affair racist. (I may have missed this part of the exhibit somehow, or it may not have been mentioned because these Sock Monkey people have nothing to do with those Sock Monkey people).
Still, it is the most recent current event I can think of that taps into the sock monkey universe. Articles ran in major newspapers, people debated the issue hotly on the television, and the Internet naturally had its own share of posts on the subject. I have absolutely no intention of diving into this subject myself – but feel free to do so via the comments box, below 
.
In the mean time, a few more shots of Sock Monkeys to round out the day. Long live the small-town museum.
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To answer a question or two I have already gotten from friends who read my post:
1. No, I do not know if the Biden Sock Monkey was offered at the same time as the Obama one, or later on.
2. If you cannot find anything on the Obama Sock Monkey flap, you are not looking very hard. Go to http://www.google.com and type in “Obama sock monkey”. You will find plenty of links to various news organizations and web sites discussing the issue, with a lot of thought-provoking points.
OK, to answer one more question, yes, the large fiberglass guitar-playing monkey has been decorated with Cheap Trick newspaper clippings, logos, etc. The band hails from Rockford, and if you search hard enough, you can find a picture of Rick Neilsen with this statue.
So fun! Thanks. My two favorite non-art museums, so far, are the Canoe Museum in Peterborough, Ontario and the Aviation Museum in Tucson. As someone who lives for travel and motion, it was very cool to see a voyageur canoe and a Blackbird jet.
Thanks for reading. I haven’t checked out either of those but I think both belong on my list.
what a hoot. i also think that in rockford is a huge clock museum, on the north side of the highway. i think i might have bad dreams after visiting this place…
Thanks Jessie. I missed the clock museum entirely. Guess that gives me something to shoot for, for next time.
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Mike, a wonderful treatment of a difficult topic. I am happily ignorant of the Obama/Biden Sock puppet controversy. From now on,as I tug my socks on each morning, I will call the right one Obama and the wrong one Biden.
Thanks! I am glad I was able to help you politicize your formerly benign morning sock process!
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