He Created The Largest Museum In The World For...Small Electrical Appliances

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Subscribe now to Variety Confidential, wherever you get your podcasts. We're 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 the 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 and any of that kind of stuff. So we started looking and I got interested in the fans. I had about a 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 what you started out paying. So I called Dennis, 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 pull down and it toasts and 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 seen a toaster, I seen an old one, I bought it.

And then I really made a mistake. I bought a book on toasters. They make porcelain toasters?

Holy cow. I've got to find one of those. We drove the wheels off of 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. Here's a coffee pot.

It's the same brand and it looks, got the same markings as the toaster. So I bought that. I thought that would be nice to 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 in a big mistake. If I had to do it all over again, 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 got about 8,000.

So that would be $8,000. And you can't hire, nobody wants to work anymore. They can't hire them. I've cleaned those. I bet you I've, three times I've completely cleaned everything in there. But anyway, that's basically how I got started. But I started 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?

They have in Neosho? Well, Lowell Davis and 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? I said, we can have coffee and whatever my wife wants to bake or cook.

She said, okay. So sure enough, that night, they all come out to the house, and they came in, and we talked a little bit. I said, come on down to the basement, and 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 say, well. So I says, hey, come on, let's go upstairs.

I think Janice has probably got coffee and a cake or something ready for us. I said, okay. And all the other people went upstairs, and I just made one step on the stairway, and Doug grabbed me. I said, Richard, I've got something to say to you. I said, I was trying to think. I said, what, Doug?

So I stepped back. We got to talking, and if I shouldn't say what he said, but you'll get the drift of it, or can I say what he said? 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 to come out and 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 fantastic.

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 a 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's my friends and so forth seeing it.

So I thought, 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 could have a museum. And you're listening to one unique American voice, Richard Larrimore'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 this show without you. If you love what you hear, go to ouramericantories.com and click the donate button.

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At Navy Federal Credit Union, our members are the mission, insured by NCUA. Music 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. Here's Richard Larimore.

Music Everything I've got back there, 99%, I might have one or two things. It's all U.S. products. Back then, we had manufacturers. We don't have them anymore. And another funny thing, and you probably didn't think of this, they never had computers. They never had smart cell phones. Everything come 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 are already there, 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 never used it, but it's different. Music There's percher toasters. You just put it in. It sits 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 can have two different type of people. They might need this. They could buy it for that, or they could have a toaster. 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, 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. I've got a lot, I've probably got 40 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 it into a flea market on weekends, and I went there, and I seen 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 plain cardboard box. I brought it home and had a guy come through the museum once, and he says, oh, I see you've got a rare waffle iron. I said, I have? He says, yeah, that one right there. I says, you've got to be joking. No, he says, that's a rare one. I said, how come?

And 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 fire or forget about it, and that's another thing with the old appliances. When they made, if they had the same kind of laws back then as they had today, we wouldn't have none of that, because if your little boy burnt 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, because it's hot. Yeah, oh, 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 got a dollar for every time somebody said a hairdryer, I'd be rich. That's what everybody, and now let me tell you a story.

There's another one of those stories. I bought this in Eurek Springs, and I seen it on the shelf, and I walked up, and the guy behind the counter, and I said, sir. He 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 hairdryer with the holes in the side work? He starts laughing. He says, we got no hairdryer with holes in the side.

How damn dumb can a guy get running the place and don't even realize he's got one like that? And then he looked up and seen that. He starts laughing, and he reached in his drawer, and I've got the patent somewhere, and he pulled that.

He says, here, read it. I, our narrow, have invented this man's face steamer to take place of the hot towels that they would wrap 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 over. 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, I always didn't know him. He had 40 patents.

I'm not sure whether it was 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, I thought, OK, that's worth $100. I had to bid $150 or $200 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 sir. He looks at me and says, you cost me lots of money.

And he just, yeah, I know it. It was a game with him, but I wanted it for my museum. And he had a museum. It wasn't any good.

I shouldn't say it wasn't any good. It was really small, and it was never open. You had to get an appointment. He might have had a house. He might have had 100 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 that some of the young people that come in here, that's a toaster? How does that work? That's a what?

A coffee? Whoa, that's cool, yeah. Some of the young people ask better questions. And I figured just the old people like myself, the young ones, I had three boys coming here, and they were up 17, 18. And I thought, oh, this is going to be fun, because I can usually spot people that might be interested.

And I like showing people, and they ask 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 forget what 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 and trying to find an ugly one?

No, you're looking for a pretty girlfriend. And they really got a bang out of that. And they give me the best donations of anybody that's ever come through there. I could not believe it, because they were so excited about it. That's what's going on.

They had tons of questions. But when I told them that, I said, OK, your girlfriend, is she ugly? He said, no. I said, there you go. You like pretty stuff. That's why this museum is different.

Everything back there has its own prettiness to it. 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 Larrimore, 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 Larrimore's hobby, the world's largest small electrical appliance museum, the story of that museum, here on Our American Stories. Congratulations to the Walt Disney Studios technology team. First place award winner for innovation in employee enablement at the 2023 Unconventional Awards presented by T-Mobile for Business. Disney's Studio Lab and production technology teams are constantly searching for innovative ways to help studio creatives solve production challenges through dynamic collaboration. By discovering and leveraging T-Mobile's 5G solutions, the Walt Disney Studios technology teams streamline production and collaboration in real time, avoiding costly delays and enabling creativity.

T-Mobile for Business congratulates the teams for their innovation and unconventional thinking. Abusers in Hollywood are as old as the Hollywood sign itself. Underneath it lies a shroud of mystery. From Variety, Hollywood's number one entertainment news source and iHeart podcast, comes Variety Confidential. I'm your host, Tracy Patton, and in season one, we'll focus on the secret history of the casting couch. So join us as we navigate the tangled web of Hollywood's secret history of sex, money, and murder.

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