Our Hometown Museum
When we first moved to Hicksville in the early ‘90s, I remembered feeling a sense of pride over the fact that the town in which we lived had its very own museum.
Mind you, I have passed the sign on the road that announces “The Hicksville Gregory Museum” at least a thousand times. I’d never had the time to visit, for I was working full time; my days off were spent running errands, doing housework, or spending time catching up on mail. Once I became a parent, I had very little spare time to do much of anything, let alone visit a museum. Truth be told, I didn’t even know where it was located.
As a young child, my daughter expressed a great interest in nature, specifically in rocks and minerals. During a family vacation to Disney that boasted a “treasure chest filled with gems and stones”, we purchased a small velvet pouch, which she eagerly filled. After we returned home, we got her a few books on stones and minerals, in order to help her to identify what she had picked out. Although nothing in that little black bag could be found within the pages of the books she owned, she was undeterred. We purchased a few minerals for her, including a small amethyst crystal that originated in New Zealand. We were forever telling her not to use my husband’s “good hammer” to smash rocks that she had dug up in the yard for the sake of identification. I can recall also telling her, on numerous occasions, that nature “belonged outside”, and that her smashed stones and dirty clumps were best served in the flower beds.
My husband had been reading The Pennysaver one night, and noticed that the museum had an ongoing exhibit of rocks and minerals. At his suggestion, we packed ourselves into the car and took a drive for a visit.
The museum, which is found on Heitz Place in the old 1895 Heitz Place Courthouse, looked rather deserted. Because my daughter was still in grade school, I had wondered whether or not a field trip might have been arranged. Since she said that no such trip was in the works, we proceeded through the doors to find that the place was empty, save for the curator, who was sitting quietly behind the glass counter.
The gentleman, a soft-spoken burly man with a rich, chestnut beard, gave us a wonderful tour of the exhibit. The museum itself is not large; there was not much room to move about in, especially for a class of antsy third graders, although for the three of us, there was more than ample room. My daughter’s eyes burned brightly as she identified some of the specimens upon the wall.
We were set to leave, when the curator inquired as to whether we had ever seen the remainder of the museum. I informed him that this was, in fact, our first visit. He beamed with pride as he showed us several of the other interesting rooms, including the one room prison and the butterfly collection. We were sufficiently impressed and vowed to return again at a later date.
I had no idea at the time, but the curator was actually one of the people that I had graduated high school with!
It’s been quite some time since that first visit to the museum, but the memory still lingers fresh, as though it only happened yesterday. As I drive past the old courthouse during the evening, a light flickers in the bell tower. And again, I’m filled with the same hometown pride that I had, when we first moved here.
