The Museum
Sometime around 1972, I opened a short-lived museum. More than 50 years later, I have reopened it.
It was back in 1972, I think, when I decided to open a museum in my bedroom. Why did I open a museum? All I can tell you is that was just the kind of seven-year-old I was.
I do not remember precisely what was in the museum, but I can imagine that there were rocks. Seashells. Maybe a fossil or two. Possibly a few baseball cards and maybe some stamps. And perhaps a watercolor painting that I’d done.
Whatever the contents were, I arranged them with whatever degree of artfulness I had on some flat surface in my upstairs bedroom. And I opened my museum for business.
As it happened, my grandparents had made the 4.5-hour journey (apparently 3 hours when Grandpap Wilhelm was driving) from Mt. Savage, Maryland to our house for Christmas. Home movies show Grandpap, pipe in mouth, happily playing a ring toss game.
It might have been around this time that I casually mentioned that I had opened a museum and did anybody want to come up to my room to visit it? Grandpap agreed that he would, though I do not recall what his level of enthusiasm for the visit was. In any case, Grandpap Wilhelm climbed the stairs to check out my museum.
While I do remember this, my memories are sketchy. Maybe it was ‘71 and not ‘72. Maybe the museum visit was during another trip that my grandparents made to Aston. But placing the museum visit at Christmas 1972 makes the most sense.
No matter when it happened, this event is one of the few solid memories that I have of my Grandpap Wilhelm, who died less than two years after Christmas ‘72, when he was just 57 years old.
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During the preparations for our recent move, I was advised to strip away as much sentimentality as possible and to ruthlessly purge my worldly possessions. I agreed that was good advice and the truth is that I own much less stuff than I did six months ago, even if I didn’t go as far as my advice-giver would have gone.
Despite my possession purge, I still found that there is the core set of weird stuff, gathered throughout my life, that I had no plans to part with, even if most of it is no longer of any practical use to me. Theoretically, I could have deaccessioned these things. Practically, it just wasn’t going to happen. Not yet.
Therefore, I have reopened the museum. This is a completely different set of things, but the concept is the same. It’s my museum. I think Grandpap Wilhelm would like it.
Future entries here will highlight various objects in the museum.
Rich..I am doing the same thing as I prepare to move back to Houston. My theory (which some do not understand) if they mean something to you…keep until you no longer want to look at them and recall that memory.