Homer Tate's macabre creations lure travelers to The Thing

[Ptah]

When Vada Tate was a little girl, Christmas had a special meaning —
shrunken heads under the tree.

She had only to look at the gift tags to know which cheerfully wrapped
present held the shriveled, prunelike handcrafted heads, lips stitched together
with thick black thread. When she spotted the package from Grandpa Homer,
the 5-year-old’s eyes lit up.

Since then, Tate has lost or given away many of her heads; the remaining
few dangle from a bedpost in her Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, home. But those few
are a constant reminder of a man whose works were designed to coax gasps
from the lips and dimes from the pocket.

Few have heard of Homer Tate, who from the 1940s to the 1960s crafted mummies,
man-animal hybrids and more, selling them to sideshows and carnivals.


http://www.azcentral.com/travel/articles/20130823homer-tate-the-thing-benson-arizona.html