Most students know Bill Zeigler better as Wild Bill, owner of Wild Bill’s Nostalgia Center on Route 3. Wild Bill’s has been an important institution in the local community for seven years now, but Zeigler has been a contributor of randomness to the community for over twenty-five years.
“We started out as a gift shop,” said Bill. And things grew from there. “When baseball cards came in, we sold baseball cards. When comics became big, we added comics.” And now he’s added buttons and bobblehead dolls, and vintage clothing, and giant stuffed animals and more.
For those students who are unfamiliar with Wild Bill’s, it’s a store filled with the kind of fascinating, random stuff you might find in your grandmother’s attic that is, if your grandmother was a flower child from the 60’s. There are over 70,000 posters, 8,000 pairs of suspenders, 700 Hawaiian shirts, a plethora of vintage toys and collectible buttons, bags, one giant plastic pig with a saddle on it, a library of cult classic movies, and, finally, an eight-foot long whale bone hung from the ceiling. These were just some of the things I observed.
“I’ve always liked collectibles,” Bill said. “And nostalgia.”
The place is filled with nostalgia items so that behind every display is another arrangement of items you either haven’t seen since childhood, or items you’ve just never seen at all, like, say, a collection of glass urine sample beakers from 1967.
“It’s like a ’60s museum,” said Bill, who runs the shop with the help of his son, Berk. “Sometimes parents will bring their kids in here and show them the things they used to have as a kid.”
The shop is unlike any other in the area, and the interesting finds aren’t limited to the store’s wares either. The entire exterior of the building is covered with paintings, wooden cut-outs, and other wild designs. On the front of the building is a large painting of Bill, in a patriotic red, white and blue top hat, giving a Nixon victory wave. The art is certainly an interesting sight on the otherwise uneventful drive up Route 3 into Cromwell.
“The artwork definitely evolved and it’s always changing,” Bill said. The original mural on the outside wall was painted by a local artist, who suggested its circus theme. Bill, whose grandfather was a clown with Barnum and Bailey, supported the circus theme, which has since grown and branched out to include Jim Morrison and other ’60s figures.
Some, however, didn’t appreciate what the art adds to the community. In 2003, he received a cease-and-desist order from the zoning commission to remove what they called “signage.”
“So we went to the Zoning Court of Appeals, and argued that it was art,” Bill said. The court unanimously voted to support Bill’s claim, and his art.
But Bill isn’t going to stop at this victory; he has big plans to expand his nostalgia center beyond the shop.
“We recently bought some classic carnival rides which we hope to restore and start running,” Bill said. They currently have a 1946 walk-through fun house and the last ride-through “pretzel ride” from Coney Island.
They also have plans to build a miniature golf course, which, of course, would be built with the same nostalgia as the rest of the complex. The clubhouse would include classic video games – Pacman, Pong, and the like – and would be decorated to take on a gingerbread-house feel.
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