1978 Anthropology Zoology
Year of Memory: 1960’s
My two sisters and I spent so much youthful time exploring the Natural History Museum. Our grandfather, who had long since passed before our births had designed the building. Oddly, I don’t remember our parents being there. Seems we walked less than a mile to get there from our home. There was a blessed freedom in the place. You could never see all the details in the displays. Never. So, we kept returning again and again.
There were rocks and gems. Bugs in amber. Colored lights illuminated one large quartz crystal. Seems I was hypnotized by the colors. There was a planetarium where in the darkness, stars captured my imagination.
There were bears outside at one time in a large cage. I remember their foul wild and captive odors.
The more pleasant fragrances could be found inside the museum building. My young nose loved the smell of Old history mixed with pure marble.
The staircase fit my little legs perfectly as I would grab on to the brass banister pulling myself past whatever smelly creature was alive in the cage. The bird displays…. I can still see them. Our dad told us that his mentor had prepared the tiny hummingbird skins. How was that humanly possible?
Of course, the best part of the visit was when we laid down our monies at the gift shop counter for a cool pencil filled with polished rocks. I can still hear the sound of those little rocks and see the bright colors.
The final event was to climb up on the pumas. I don’t remember the details of how we three young girls shared the pumas. Surely, we squabbled. We pretended to ride them, always convinced that they were put there for us by our Grandpa. How could he have known that we would arrive on the planet some ten years and more after his death? He must have imagined this.
#UMMuseumMemories
