SHRINE TO A ROAD SCHOLARTHE THING THAT BINKLEY BUILT ON I-10 IS ALLURING, ENDURING

Michelle Prince says she remembers the mummy being described as Native American in origin. Carol Rector, curator of the San Bernardino County Museum's Department of Anthropology, says that particular part of Southern California was inhabited by Native Americans as long as 12,000 years ago, but that they never practiced mummification. Archaeologists have found lots of old burial sites, she says, and bones and other artifacts are usually fairly well preserved because of the dry climate. "But I'm not aware of any mummies being found in that area," she says.

Syndicated newspaper columnist Stan Delaplane, who wrote about a visit to the Princes' stand near Barstow in a 1956 column, described The Thing as an "Indian lady." (According to Delaplane, the California Thing was touted on billboards as the "World's Most Horrible Spectacle.")

And Delaplane quoted Janet Prince on The Thing's origin. "Man came through here about six years ago," she told the roving reporter. "He had three of them he got somewhere. He was selling them for $50." The withered column, part of Janet Prince's memorabilia collection, also claims that the Princes once named their mystery object "Susie." Mike Bowlin has different memories of The Thing. He claims he saw it while traveling the trading-post circuit with his dad. "The first time I saw it, I was a young kid, 10 years old," he says. "It was up on the Navajo Reservation. It was in some old, famous trading post, kept in a special room. It was in a glass box. I remember my dad said, 'Come back here and look at this thing.'"

@rule:
@body:Contemporary road-weary travelers, their much-anticipated tour complete and now facing the prospect of more hours on the highway, leave The Thing tour area wearing alternating expressions of bemusement and blankness. It wasn't much, almost all of them say, but the price was about right.

"It didn't look real to me" is a representative quote, uttered in this case by Brenda Barton, half of a husband-and-wife trucking team out of Logan, Ohio, hauling a load from Los Angeles to Dallas. The couple had driven past The Thing countless times, and had even stopped before without taking the tour. On this trip, Brenda wanted a milkshake, and years of pent-up curiosity won out.

Brenda's husband, Dennis, adds that the 75-cent admission price was "reasonable," considering it included--in addition to a peek at The Thing--the collection of old cars, guns and carvings. "I always thought The Thing was going to be some big reptile," he says.

"Everybody has an opinion," says Mike Bowlin. "That's why we don't make any claims. What it is, we can't say for sure. We're not trying to misrepresent; we're just trying to say that opinions are always welcome. And we get a lot of em."
Dr. Walter Birkby, forensic anthropologist at the University of Arizona, has seen The Thing and has an opinion. "If I remember correctly, myself and some of my students were going someplace on a trip and stopped for coffee, and we said, 'What the hell, we've been driving past this all these years, let's take a look.' "Of course, you can't get in to get a good look at it. There's that heavy plate glass on the surface, so the only thing to do is go by its appearances."

Birkby says that parts of The Thing appear to be fashioned out of papier-mƒch‚. "The general consensus was that it's fake," he says.

@rule:
@body:Back on the highway, headed east toward El Paso, San Antonio, Houston, Baton Rouge, Tallahassee or Jacksonville, the cluster of Thing buildings has not yet disappeared from your rearview mirror when one last billboard comes into view. It's a final polite appeal to the strong-willed traveler who didn't fall for the lure of old-fashioned roadside advertising, a postscript to the story told by the preceding 100 miles of signs. "If you missed The Thing," the sign reads, "have a great trip anyway and come back.