Inside America’s Strangest Museum: 8,000 Small Appliances in a Missouri Town

This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people. To search for The American Stories podcast, go to the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. There’s an old saying that one man’s garbage is another’s treasure. For Richard Larimore of Diamond, Missouri, that saying rings especially true.

What started as a favor for a brother-in-law morphed into something much, much bigger: the world’s largest small electric appliance museum. Here’s Richard with his story.

Well, it was—I thought in my mind back then—it was the last frontier. My brother-in-law in California was collecting old black fans. You’ve seen those black, ugly fans. Well, he called me up one day and said, ‘Richard,’ he said, ‘you know you’re out there in Missouri. Why—’

‘—don’t you start looking for these fans for me?’ I said, ‘Okay.’ So, we like to travel because I don’t drink or drive or smoke any of that kind of stuff. So, we started looking, and I got interested in the fans. I had about one hundred of them. But then again, you see one black fan, you’ve seen them all, and they were getting harder and harder to find. And when

they were—they were double once you started out paying. So I called my brother-in-law, and I asked him. I said, ‘Dennis,’ I said, ‘when you’re traveling and you can’t find your fan, what do you collect?’ ‘Electric toasters?’ I said, ‘What? Electric toasters?’ And I didn’t realize he was trying to corner the market.

On the newer-version toaster: you pulled down, and it toasted; it pops up. He thought he could buy them all up and make lots of money. Well, he found out he couldn’t. But I started looking. I didn’t know what he was collecting, but I saw a toaster, and seeing it, I bought one. And then I really made a mistake: I bought a book on toasters. They

make porcelain toasters. ‘Holy cat,’ I thought, ‘I’ve got to find one of those!’ And we drove the wheels off the car looking for a porcelain toaster. Now I’ve got a big collection of them, but that’s kind of how I got started on the toasters. And then, ‘Holy cow, look at this!’ Well, here’s a coffee pot. It’s the same brand, and it

looks, has the same markings as the toaster. So I bought that. I thought that’d be nice to just display them together. And then pretty soon my brain went crazy: if it was small and electric and I didn’t have it, I had to have it. So I started buying it all. And that was a

big mistake. If I had to do it all over, it costs so much. People don’t realize what it costs to run a museum like this. If I paid you a dollar apiece to clean those toasters, it would cost me—I’ve got about eight thousand—so that’d be eight thousand dollars. And you can’t hire—nobody wants

to work anymore. You can’t hire ’em. I’ve cleaned those, I’ll bet you, three times. I’ve completely cleaned everything in there. But anyway, that’s basically how I got started. But I started in my basement. You couldn’t walk down there; you’d have to watch it. ‘Don’t

step on this one, move around here.’ And then, have you heard of Gathering of the Artists I have in Neosho? Well, Lowell Davis, Bob Tommy, and a bunch of them got together, and every year they would have a show, and they would show their paintings and so forth,

and they would sell it. One day I went there to see their artwork and talk to them, and I said, ‘Hey,’ I said, ‘what are you guys doing Friday night?’ Because I knew they were in town from Texas and all over the country. And Martha Spurlock, super, super good artist. I said, ‘Martha,’ I said, ‘what are you guys doing’

‘—Friday night?’ She says, ‘Well, I don’t know—as far as I know, nothing.’ I said, ‘How would you like to come out to the house and see my collection of electric appliances? We can have coffee and whatever my wife wants to bake or cook.’ She said, ‘Okay.’ So, sure enough, that night they all came up to

the house, and they came in, and we talked a little bit. I said, ‘Come on down to the basement. I’ll show you my appliances.’ Anyway, we went down, we looked at it, and I could see they were interested pretty good to begin with, but you can tell when people get tired. And they said, ‘Well…’ So I says, ‘Hey, come on, let’s go upstairs. I think Janis has probably

got coffee and a cake or something ready for us. Okay,’ and all the other people went upstairs. And I just made one step on the stairway, and Doug grabbed me. I s-said, ‘Richard, I’ve got something to say to you.’

I said, I was trying to think, ‘What?’ I said, ‘What, Doug?’ So I stepped back, and he got to talking. And if I—I shouldn’t say what he said, but you’ll get the drift of it. Or, can I say what he said? He—he said, ‘You know when you invited us out to see this collection,’ he said, ‘I’

‘—told everybody, “What a bunch of BS! What a waste of a good evening, coming out to see this crap!”‘ I said, ‘Oh!’ But he says, ‘Man,’ he says, ‘am I impressed!’ He says, ‘I can’t believe this collection you’ve got down here!’ He said, ‘This is fair! Oh, you’ve got the prettiest appliances I’ve seen in a long time.’

‘But he says, ‘I’ve got another problem.’ And I said, ‘Oh, now what, Doug?’ He says, ‘You know what’s wrong with this?’ I said, ‘What?’ He said, ‘As nice a collection as you’ve got, it’s a crime that only very few people can see it. You need to have it where everybody’

‘—can see it. Because he said, “Man, I’ve never seen any of this!”‘ He said, ‘I’ve been all over the United States,’ and he says, ‘this is absolutely fantastic!’ So when we walked upstairs, you know, I got thinking, you know, he’s right, because I only show people—that is, my friends and so forth—who have seen it. So I thought, ‘Well, how could I do this so more people could see it?’ Well,

I had the Western Store, and I thought I could add on to the Western Store, and I can have a museum.

And you’re listening to one unique American voice: Richard Larimore’s voice, his story. The world’s largest small electrical appliance museum is his achievement. More of his story here on Our American Stories.

Lee Habib here, the host of Our American Stories. Every day on this show, we’re bringing inspiring stories from across this great country—stories from our big cities and small towns. But we truly can’t do the show without you. If you love what you hear, go to OurAmericanStories.com and click the donate button. Give a little, give a lot.

Go to OurAmericanStories.com and give. And we return to Our American Stories and Richard Larimore, the founder and curator of the world’s largest small electric appliance museum

in Diamond, Missouri. When we last left off, Richard was telling us about how what started in his basement morphed into a full-fledged museum. Let’s continue with the story. Here again is Richard Larimore.

Everything I’ve got back there, ninety-nine percent—I might have one or two things—are all U.S. products. Back then, we had manufacturers. We don’t have them anymore. And another funny thing—and we probably didn’t think of this—they never had computers, they never had smart cell phones.

Everything came from their head: ‘How am I going to do this? I need to make a toaster, and I can’t make it like the ones. That’s sorry; they’re so. So I’ve got to change it!’ Because they had about a dollar a patent fee or something, so they’d change it. These inventors kept coming out with new products because the

people never had those before. So, boom, that’s brand new! ‘I’ve got to have that!’ They might not have ever used it, but it’s different. There are percher toasters. You just put it in; it sets on the top, and it cooks. You’ve got floppers that flop the toast over; you’ve got swingers that swing around. And the manufacturers—I think this

is my own personal feeling: if that toaster could do more than one thing, then you could have two different types of people. They might need this; they could buy it for that; or they could have a toaster. So, I would love to talk to some of those inventors. And some of the stuff they invented was so stupid

and dumb, but I’m glad they did because I love talking about stupid and dumb stuff. Well, somewhere, I’ve got a toaster that is also a heater. Can you—have you? Yeah, your heaters get all the dirt and the crud. Can you imagine having a toaster? Like I say, it’s dumb,

but I’m glad they did. It gives me… I love to talk about the stuff that’s so different. I’ve got one back there—one of the—I’ve got a lot. I’ve probably got forty or more one-of-a-kind toasters, coffee pots. I’ve got a waffle iron. They had the old drive-in movies. Well, they turned into a flea

market on weekends, and I went there, and I saw this waffle iron, and I thought, ‘Boy, that sucker is brand new! I don’t want to buy that. I want old stuff.’ Well, I kept thinking about it, and I thought, ‘You know, that was in mint condition. I’ve got to buy it.’ So I bought it, and it came in this original box,

which was nothing. It was just a plain cardboard box. Brought it home, and had a guy come through the museum once. He said, ‘Oh,’ he says, ‘I see you’ve got a rare waffle iron!’ I said, ‘I have?’ He says, ‘How—that one right there?’ He says, ‘You’ve got to be joking!’ ‘No,’ he says, ‘that’s a rare one.’ I said, ‘How come?’ Then

he told me the story. It was made out of pot aluminum, and when you plugged it in and it heated up, if you forgot to turn it off, it would completely melt, fall apart, or it would start a fire. So they quit manufacturing it. You’re not going to plug it

in if it’s going to start a fire, or forget about it. And that’s another thing with the old appliances: when they made them, if they had the same kind of laws back then as they have today, we wouldn’t have any of that. Because if your little boy burned his hand on a toaster—’Oh, that’s unsafe!’—well, you can’t make

that anymore. So back then, they educated their kids: ‘Don’t touch that, kids! Hot! God, Ooh, you’re right, Dad!’ And you only did that once. Tell me, what this is… I was just about to say, ‘Don’t say what you think it is.’ If I would have gotten a dollar

for every time somebody said ‘a hair dryer,’ I’d be rich. That’s what everybody. And now let me tell you the story. There’s another one of those stories. I bought this in Eureka Springs, and I saw it on the shelf, and I walked up, and a guy behind the counter, sir, said, ‘What?’ I says, ‘You know, I’m not the smartest man in the country, but I don’t think I’m

dumb either. “How does that hair dryer with the holes in the side work?”‘ He starts laughing. He says, ‘We’ve got no hair dryer with holes in the side.’ ‘Oh, damn! Dumb kind of guy running the place, rolling them! Don’t even realize he’s got one like that!’ And then he looked up and saw that. He starts laughing, and he reached in his drawer, and I’ve got the patent

somewhere, and he pulled that out, and I read it: ‘I, R. Narrow, have invented this man’s face steamer to take the place of the hot towels that they would drape around their head before they would shave them.’ Very, very rare. And what really scares me right now—God forbid that

if anything ever happened, had a tornado, and that tornado just missed this place. You know, if a tornado took that out, you can’t replace that. What I’ve got back there, I’m proud to say that, but it scares the you-know-what out of me that a tornado would take it away. You can’t find that stuff anymore. I’m still looking for

things I don’t have, but there’s not too many out there. We drove—oh, I’ve been driving all of it. I love looking; I’m a hunter. I go in there, ‘Oh, I don’t have this! Look at that!’ I spent thousands of dollars on eBay, and I had a good friend of mine. He was a multimillionaire. In fact, we

used to know his name. He had forty patents—I’m not sure whether it’s medical or whatever. But he was a smart, foreign guy. And the only way I could outbid him on eBay, if I wanted to bid on that—and I thought, ‘Okay, that’s worth a hundred dollars’—I

had to bid a hundred and fifty or two hundred dollars in order to get it, because I knew he was bidding on it. I met him one day before he passed away, and I said, ‘You know, you rotten sucker!’ He looks at me, and I says, ‘You cost me lots of money!’ And he just—’Yeah, I know it.’ It was a game with him. But I

wanted for my museum, and he had a museum—it wasn’t any good. I shouldn’t say it wasn’t. He really small, and it was never open; you had to get an appointment there. He might have had a hundred different items in there. And I love what I’m doing. I spent half of my life collecting that stuff back there.

Younger people nowadays, if it’s not a cell phone, they’re not interested. But I’m surprised at some of the young people that come in here. ‘That’s a toaster? How does that work? That’s a… want a coffee? Well, that’s cool!’ Yeah. Some of the young people asked better questions. And I figured just the old people like myself… not the young ones.

I had three boys come in here, and they were—

Up, seventeen, eighteen, and I thought, ‘Oh, this is going to be fun,’ ’cause I can usually spot people that might be interested, and I like showing people that.

And they asked so many questions, and the one young guy says, ‘Boy,’ he says, ‘I can’t believe how pretty some of this stuff is!’ And I looked at him. I says, ‘I figured, what did I call him? Sir? I said, just stop and think. Everybody loves something that’s pretty.’ I says,

‘When you’re looking for a girlfriend, are you going out trying to find an ugly one? No, you’re looking for a pretty girlfriend!’ And they really got a bang out of that. And it’s—they give me the best donations of anybody who’s ever come through there. I could not believe it, because they were so excited about what

was going on. They had tons of questions. But when I—I told him that, he thought… I said, ‘Okay, your girlfriend—nushi ugly? No,’ I said, ‘there you go. You like pretty stuff. That’s why this museum is different. Everything back there has its own pretty, understood?’

And a special thanks to Katrina Hein, Jim Watkins, and Monty Montgomery for all the fine work putting that story together. What a delight! Richard Larimore: the world’s largest small electrical appliance museum in Diamond, Missouri. ‘If it was small and electric, I had to have it,’ he said. ‘We drove the wheels off a car searching for a

porcelain toaster.’ ‘I love what I’m doing,’ and so many Americans have these hobbies. Richard Larimore’s hobby: the world’s largest small electrical appliance museum. The story of that museum here in Our American Stories.