Alabama Drive-thru museum

We use the Atlas Obscura web site to find off the wall things to visit and have had very good luck.  When in Eufala, AL we used it to find the Drive-Thru Museum of Wonder.  The museum started in the 1970’s as Butch’s taxidermy shop and artifact room, the Museum of Wonder is now filled with art, artifacts and antiques, and some very strange items. Drive-thru attractions make for an easy visit and this museum has brought this effortless approach to the world of outsider art.  Butch Anthony, the museum’s curator has collected curiosities since he was a kid, but didn't become an artist until his early thirties. It happened this way: a friend of his, John Henry Toney, had been plowing Butch's garden when he found a gnarled turnip with what appeared to be a human face. John Henry drew a picture of it, and he and Butch placed it in a local junk shop with a joke price tag of $50. They were shocked when someone bought it.
Butch, developed his talents and less than ten years after the turnip, Butch had become such an art celebrity that he was asked to design Alabama's ornament for the White House Christmas tree.  Butch’s popularity began to impact his ability to work on his art.  As it turned out, a new four-lane road had just been built a few minutes away from Butch's studio workshop. Butch bought the property and hauled over some 40-foot-long shipping containers, cut holes in them for windows, and filled them with his quirky wonders and art, creating the world's first drive-thru museum.
Butch added an Airstream trailer to the shipping containers to display even more wonders, and hitched it to his art-car Cadillac whenever he wanted to take his Museum on the road. The containers and trailer are lit from inside at night, which actually makes it easier to see some of the exhibits. The Museum of Wonder is a 24-hour drive-thru. Even if you're passing by at 3 AM you can visit, when it's just you, Butch's collection, and a lot of country darkness.

 
The wonders displayed in the drive-thru fall into two categories: Butch's art and the weird stuff that always seems to find a way into Butch's hands. He calls his art Intertwangleism, and it includes everything from freak taxidermy to sculptures made of metal and bones.  Butch, like any good museum curator, rotates his collection, visiting the drive-thru, he said, once a month to move things around and swap in new displays. Visitors hoping to discern some artistic pattern in his exhibit placement will be disappointed. However, the constant shuffling means that favorite items, such as the turnip, may not be on display when you visit, but also gives travelers an incentive to come back for another look.  Butch cut a slit into the last shipping container where visitors can deposit the Museum's recommended one-dollar donations, as well as any notes they care to leave. He keeps them all.

 
After the drive-thru museum take a quick ride to Eufala and visit the tree that owns itself. Once, a huge oak grew squarely near the center of the city at 512 Cotton Avenue and had the distinct privilege of owning itself. It was a favorite place for local children to play and was a landmark for the city so a local historian persuaded the city council to deed the tree to itself and through these acts it happened. It was given its freedom by the governor in 1936. The city, through its mayor, recorded a deed in 1935 which reads in part: “I. E. H. Graves, as Mayor of the City of Eufaula, do hereby grant, bargain, sell and convey unto the ‘Post Oak Tree,” not as an individual, partnership nor corporation, but as a creation and gift of the Almighty, standing in our midst—to itself—to have and to hold itself, its branches, limbs, trunk and roots so long as it shall live.” The tree is also known as the Walker Oak.