museum of the south end
Not many people realize it, but the old schoolhouse now serves as the Museum of the South End. Sure, it’s a little oxymoronic, a museum for a place that barely exists now much less Back When, but like most places big and small, we wanted to preserve the Past even though apparently we still live it. For awhile the Tourism Board thought it would serve as a sort of Visitor Center, but when even the locals never visited, that idea was shelved faster than grandpa’s shaving artifacts.
They put a big old growth log section out in the front yard which now is pretty much rotted, the pins showing where Columbus landed or Jesus was born are rusted and the labels gone. The old manure spreader is half hidden in the unmowed grass and kids passing by have used it for decades as a Dumpster. Every now and then Emily Watkins, the old schoolma’arm’s granddaughter, hauls out the OPEN sign by the highway and spends a day sweeping and dusting and clearing out the cobwebs. Occasionally a visitor wanders in and Mrs. Watkins stops her chores and has them sign and date the guest book by the front door, which, after all these years, is open to page four. Then she points out the various exhibits, mostly rusty logging tools, crosscut saws, peaveys, giant sawblades from the Mabana Mill, foxtailed fphotos of men on stumps or picnics at the Grange, the struff every museum from Alaska to California has on display.
There’s a little canning jar for donations as empty as the backroom which Emily uses as her ‘office’. The restroom is the outhouse leaning into a cedar out back, too perilous for use except in an emergency. The toilet paper has to be kept in an old coffee can to keep the squirrels from using it for nest building.
Occasionally Emily finds a scythe or a sewing machine left on the front porch by someone cleaning out an attic with a scrawled note: “Aunt Mary’s cherry pitter” or “Grampy Murray’s homemade cigar box banjo.” She makes a card for each and every one and files it into a recipe box which itself has a card: “Betty Cox’s Mother’s Recipe Box — donated June 7, 1978”. Who Betty Cox is or if her heirs still live here is unknown.
When she leaves, Emily always puts the CLOSED sign on the window of the front door. It’s been there now more than a year. Someone should probably check on Emily…..
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