history, part 2

I volunteered at the museum today

    We actually had 6 visitors, four of whom came from California.
    The Californians stopped in because the woman's father used to be superintendent of utilities years ago.  The other two were from Sycamore and were looking for information on farm implements.
    They spent a little over an hour going through the museum and looking at the neat things.
    Neat things.....like the meteorite in the back room.   It weighs a couple of hundred pounds and was actually recovered in the Rochelle area.
    Of course, the Partin Palmer automobile is pretty cool.  It was built in Rochelle in 1915....and is one of only a handful of Partin Palmers still in existence.
    When Hugh Hefner was looking for a printer for his new men's magazine, he ended up doing business with a Rochelle company.  That's right, Playboy was originally printed right here.  That probably led to some trouble in River City...wait, wrong show.  If I remember, the first four issues were printed here, and we have one of the Linotype machines that was used.
    Maybe I like museums because they are similar to me....nothing gets tossed.  It may be stored, or saved, or loaned out, but it gets kept.
    Maybe some day my basement and garage could qualify as a museum.  The kids could charge a buck or two for people to tour and learn what life was like in my world.
     Visitors would come away with a confused, maybe bemused, impression of a guy who can 't seem to toss anything, even his favorite t shirt with the huge spots on the front.  The shirt is at least 8 years old....but I like it.
     I treated it with spot getter outer stuff....hopefully that works.
     Otherwise, I have to buy a mannequin and stage it in the basement museum, possibly using the Atari pong game while listening to a stereo record.
     Just don't tell Jackie.  She would not hesitate to toss it.   Or all of it.
     But she doesn't like museums that much either.