Not long after I moved to Las Vegas, I noticed the Statue of Liberty’s arm sticking up over a cinderblock wall as I drove up Sandhill Road. I commented on it later to the friendly librarian who gave me my first Las Vegas library card.

“Oh, you’re talking about Lonnie Hammargren’s house,” she said. “Every year for Nevada Day he has an open house and invites the public to wander around and look at all his stuff. You should go.”

Nevada Day? Again, the librarian was happy to explain. October 31 is the anniversary of Nevada’s statehood, the day back in 1864 that Abraham Lincoln could finally tap the wealth of the Comstock Lode and Nevada’s other mineral riches to finance the Civil War. Although a new state law has moved the holiday’s observance to the last Friday of October, for generations of Nevada children, Halloween has always been a day off from school.

While most of the Wild West parades and festivities take place in Carson City and Reno, Las Vegas does its share of celebrating, too. For the last 13 years, Lonnie Hammargren’s open house has been one of the city’s best-beloved Nevada Day events. A retired neurosurgeon who has also served as Nevada’s lieutenant governor, Hammargren is a world-class junk collector. Bits and pieces of Las Vegas history have found their way into his home by the truckload, along with medical oddities, scientific gizmos, political and sports memorabilia, musical instruments, natural wonders, and oodles and oodles of junkety, junk, junk, junk.

I did go to a yard sale at Lonnie’s house a couple years back, but access was limited to the backyard. So, when I read in the Las Vegas Review-Journal that Dr. Hammargren was once again welcoming his fellow Nevadans to ogle his massive accumulation of stuff, I promised myself that this 13th time would be the charm. I headed over to the corner of Sandhill and Flamingo around 2 o’clock on Sunday, Nov. 1. I was still two blocks away when I realized the cars lining the street belonged to fellow partygoers. Adding my car to the curbside lineup, I joined the throng heading for the “Castillo del Sol.”

The “castillo” is actually two 40-year-old suburban ranch-style houses that have been grafted together by means of a white stucco, Aztec-inspired façade. The resulting edifice stands out in its understated neighborhood the way the space shuttle would if you parked it in your driveway. I joined the line waiting to make a required $5 donation to a home for pregnant teens, and as I moved forward, I saw – yes – the space shuttle parked in the driveway. And the crouching fiberglass Indian next to the front door. And a larger-than-life-sized gold statue of a nude man. Hammargren is obviously not a man who worries about what his neighbors think.

Video montage of Lonnie Hammargren’s Open House:

Once inside, I had the choice of following a surging crowd up a stairway or following another crush straight ahead. I heard someone say that maps were available, but come on: You need a map to get around two ordinary-sized houses? How tough could it be? I joined the peristaltic swarm inching up a steep, carpeted stairway.

“Don’t forget to look up,” a woman at the top of the stairs said. She was wearing a badge that said “Volunteer.” But even though the stained-glass dome overhead was well worth appreciating, I still made a point of looking down regularly. If Hammargren’s house is a chamber of wonders, it is also a face plant waiting to happen. Scuffed up carpets, unexpected humps, toe-catching doorjambs, narrow stair treads—all of them were much more perilous because of the distracting junk beckoning at every turn. Parents held on to kids with white-knuckled grips. I held onto hand rails until I grabbed one that bent toward me like a piece of paper. You’re on your own, I told myself. Trust nothing. Hope against hope that the jerry-rigged third floor is strong enough to hold up 300 people.

Except for the flimsy handrail, everything seemed pretty solid. It’s been holding up an annual mob for 13 years, I told myself. Relaxing a bit, I did my best to catalog the vast and eclectic array that met my gaze at every turn. It was like trying to watch scenery from a high-speed train – too much, too fast. It was Stonehenge, snapping turtle, Liberace’s piano, planetarium projector, armor, shrunken head, dinosaur fetus, sequined bra, Popeye, huge pink butterfly, geode, Caesars Palace sign, Mickey Mouse glove, antler chandelier, telescope, 5,000 political buttons, the Statue of Liberty, a bear wearing boxing gloves, slot machine, shark fin, Elvis impersonator, roller coaster, fiberglass Abe Lincoln, Vegas sign, cosmonaut, life-sized smiling Lonnie Hammargren cutout, restaurant menu, elephant tusks, old truck, space shuttle, Oscar Goodman’s life mask, space shuttle, space shuttle … yeah, you thought maybe one was enough? And then there was the cracked plexiglass bridge you had to walk across – three stories above the concrete path below. Fear returned, but I braved it so as not to miss checking out another space shuttle and a headless cow.

And all the while and in the background – louder and louder as I neared the stage in the backyard – live singers bringing the Rat Pack back to life. The crowd was singing along. “Everybody loves somebody sometime …”

All at once, I had to get out. Lonnie Hammargren is wonderfully generous to open his home to the public, and I am grateful for a memorable Nevada Day experience. But somewhere between the end of Dean Martin and the beginning of “That’s Amore,” somewhere past the fountain decorated to look like a sewer, Abe Lincoln displayed in a fake aquarium, and the feeling I was trapped in a Vegas-themed madhouse – it was, to put it mildly, time to go.

Now I understood why a map was a good idea. Like a YouTube video on auto-replay, there was no end. Six more spaces shuttles and a dozen headless cows later, I finally staggered out a door I could swear wasn’t there when I arrived. As I drove away, noticing once again the Statue of Liberty’s arm that had first alerted me to Hammargren’s lair, I felt I’d had a peek into someone else’s mind. Nice place to visit, I’ve decided. Really glad I don’t have to live there.