Nathan Wendt

A week before Christmas this year Nathan and I made a trip to see my father who lives in Hardin, Kentucky. It was just a three-day-weekend sort of trip, but Hardin is about a six hour drive from our home in Middletown Ohio, so like most people are doing these days, we worked that visit and our stop at the Patton Museum in with a necessary trip that had us going south that same weekend.

Leaving home around 7:00 a.m., we headed south to the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport (CVG) in order to get my wife on a plane bound for Corpus Christi, Tx. Her plane was leaving at 10:00 a.m. and due to some pretty nasty rain and the Friday rush hour traffic the 40 mile trip took close to 90 minutes. Thankfully, the weather cleared up shortly after we left CVG and the remainder of the trip was made in windy but otherwise respectable weather. One interesting thing to note was that when we left the house that morning the temperature was 38 degrees. Within 4 hours the temperature had reached 68 degrees. It was truly like driving to another climate.

The trip to Hardin, Ky. from Middletown Oh. takes us right down I65 and past an exit for the Patton Museum located near Ft. Knox. From the airport to the museum was about three and a half hour drive so we arrived in town during the lunch hour. More traffic. The Patton Museum was little changed since our last visit two years earlier. There were, I think, about two new tanks on display and the gift shop appeared a lot larger than I remembered. The trip through the museum took about an hour with Nate being especially fascinated with a few battlefield dioramas they had on display. After some coaxing, he also enjoyed the Abrahams M1 exhibit where you can actually get in a tank simulator. (Non-operational but still fascinating)

My personal favorite was a WWII German King Tiger whose left hand side had been opened up and its armor replaced with plexiglass. The size of the King Tiger was in itself amazing but to see inside was to get a real glimpse at what life in a tank must have been like. I could only wonder what sort of world this might have been had the Germans had been able to produce these amazing machines in greater numbers.

Also, I enjoyed seeing Patton’s Colt .45 Model 1873 Single Action Revolver which is on display at the museum. It was interesting to read about Patton in the 1912 Summer Olympics in Stockholm where he was in the first-ever modern pentathlon. The display at the museum also touched on his Olympic Pistol shooting controversy.

As we were not pressed for time, and it was just the two of us, I gave the ok to actually do the whole thing again. With just the two of us I figured, why not. What I should have figured on though was the amount of time he would want to spend in the gift shop.

The gift shop was actually three rooms full of books, posters, clothing, collectibles, and die-cast army toys. Not that I have anything against die-cast army toys, and this was the largest collection I had ever seen in one place in my life, but over half of these toys, 1/32 scale tanks and military vehicles, were selling for $60 each. Unfortunately, I had to explain to Nate that these toys were out of our budget. Although he understood this, each toy still had to be looked at, and each one questioned to make sure he was not mistaken in his belief that we were not going to spend that much money.

Lucky for me there was a good number of the 1/32 scale toys from a manufacturer that were “only” selling for $30 something each. (Still about $10 over-priced) So after about 40 minutes of shopping we left with a nice German 88mm flack gun and crew.

By 3:00 p.m. were on the road again and shortly after nightfall we arrived at my dad’s house in Hardin. Overall the trip was very nice and it was great to see dad before Christmas. I expect we will be back when the threat of bad weather has passed and with any luck we will again be making a stop at the Patton Museum.