Bad postcard of the week:

From: The Grand Rapids Press

Cave tunes in Luray, Virginia

Just your typical cavern scene.

  Music to go spelunking by?

Among my recent discoveries was one of those fold-out postcard books of “The Beautiful Caverns of Luray and the Car and Carriage Caravan.”

Luray Caverns is a tourist spot in Virginia, and I was sucked in by its classic bad postcard cover.

There are things I expect to see in a cave. Damp pointy rocks. Guides frequently reminding us not to touch the damp pointy rocks. Bats. Batman. The Bat Computer. The Bat Poles. Robin.

Things I do not expect to see in a cave: Organs.

Naturally I was intrigued by the cover photo of our red-clad organist laying down some funky chords, surrounded by two awe-struck admirers and an assortment of damp, pointy rocks. Which, I must add, I did touch when I last visited a cave. Tell no one.

Truth be told, Jane was lousy at "hide and seek."

Flipping through the fold-out postcards, half were devoted to the cave, but I saw none of the organ, or any other instrument, for that matter.

Instead, there were photos of damp, pointy rocks of various sizes and girls posing next to them.

The rest depicted cars and carriages, none of which were the Batmobile, so I quickly lost interest.

So I did some research. This is actually a famous “Stalacpipe” organ created by Leland W. Sprinkle, who hooked up mallets to various stalactites to create specific notes. The contraption was hooked up to a traditional organ, like you see in the photo.

According to cave legend – and you knew there would be one – Sprinkle got the idea after his son Robert hit his head on a damp pointy rock, producing a tone that inspired the device. You also have to wonder if Sprinkle spent the next few years bouncing stuff off Robert’s noggin. The kid probably walked around wearing a football helmet.