SEASHORE MUSEUM – PRIVATE
If I lived on the edge of one of the great oceans or seas, I would like try to do exactly as a friend of mine has done - start and maintain a private Seashore Museum.
You are the sole owner, the Curator of the artifacts shown as well as heading up every job - including that of “Acquisitions Department.”That would be “the fun job”and other duties would be “work” if you are to run a well-managed, documented place with a worthy collection.
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Among the initial items collected will probably be seashells and kindred natural findings. You can fill shelves and cabinets quickly with just those. There will be selections of seaweeds - edible and non-edible. Don't overlook the photographic wing of the establishment, either. Take good pictures of, jelly fish designs from boat side floating so delicately on the still water.. A display of those alone can change walls and ceilings into star like showplaces. You will need a good tape recorder,too. As you v view your treasures. A premium can be the sounds of the surf of gulls and other shore birds and the swish of an offshore breeze through dried growths; the crack and roll of lightning and thunder when the storms arrive - which they will, to once gain, be held as hostage in the form of photographs and tapes.
Other items you will acquire, in time, will include: one half of a coconut palm seed shell from somewhere, assorted bottles - large, medium, and small and often softly tinted with some color. Bottles with messages contained therein are rare are a bit “common” or “corny” - mostly aqua-legend in nature. You can collect driftwood, of course, for decorations and arty additions to foyers and furnishings.
You will come across a host of items which will incite the disapproval of the Acquisitions committee re: junk. That will include pieces of roofing materials, sections of fishing vessels and equipment, channel markers for marking driveways borders, curbs and flower bed corners am plastic wrappers of many shapes and kinds. You will also have on display a few light bulbs which floated in from some festivity afar.
You will find it impossible trying to explain the history of some items ...a chunk of scrap iron, for instance, but one can assume it may have been attached to float-able wood at one time which has long-since since rotted. There will be be some land-based items, too, such as a selection of arrow heads possibly used in attempts to kill fish or shore birds. Here will be shards of crockery, cooking utensils of various kinds other debris from scores of clam bakes, picnics and other such beach festivities.
You can have miles of museum strung together if you even half-way work at it.
Put it all together and it spells “Junque.”
A.,L.M. October 6, 2003 [c502wds]
