Museum of the Ordinary

© Thomas Wilson Shawcross 21 April 2005

MUSEUM OF THE ORDINARY
WHEN you come upon something at random, you must assume that it is typical of its class. The reason is simple: there's lots of ordinary stuff, and not much special stuff, and if you find something at random, the odds are that it's toward the middle of the bell curve rather than out at the sparsely-populated ends. The two-million-year-old skeleton is probably neither larger nor smaller than ordinary, and is therefore representative of people of the time. The stone axe is like most other stone axes. The cave drawing is in the style of the day. The broken shard of pottery is like all the other pottery, differing in only the most minor particulars.
Things get lost and broken, used up and worn out and thrown away. People die and are buried along with things that meant something to them in life, or that mean something to those who outlive them. Time passes, and these ordinary things and ordinary people sometimes come to light. The reason that a broken piece of flint is interesting is because it's ancient, and because it's just about all we have to go on when trying to figure out who our ancestors were and what they did. But, it's just ordinary stuff, only real old.
Someday your skeleton or pocketknife or a button off your shirt may grace a musty display case, and our remote descendants will wonder, "Who was he? What did he think about? How did he use these implements?" And they'll get some of it right and much of it wrong, but they'll have to assume that you were just an ordinary Joe, and that this was typical of what humans carried about with them, and that your life was an ordinary life. And they'll be right. (March 28, 1997)
3/17/99
© 1999 David Lance Goines

In every review of Original Thoughts or Great Ideas, a repetitive scenario emerges. A thinker or an inventor of the first-rate comes up with an original thought or a great idea and then some anonymous person is inspired to build upon their concept. Henry Ford invents the automobile* and “anonymous” invents the bucket seat. I am in the “anonymous” category of thinkers.

Actually, today’s story is a double carom shot, as it has been inspired by the writing of David Lance Goines and by an e-mail note sent to me by Joy Green. Their influence has inspired me to conceive of my latest moneymaking idea: The Museum of the Ordinary.

Joy Green sent me a note titled “Older than Dirt,” and here is an excerpt from it:

MEMORIES from a friend: My Dad is cleaning out my grandmother's house (she died in December) and he brought me an old Royal Crown Cola bottle. In the bottle top was a stopper with a bunch of holes in it. I knew immediately what it was, but my daughter had no idea. She thought they had tried to make it a saltshaker or something. I knew it as the bottle that sat on the end of the ironing board to "sprinkle" clothes with because we didn't have steamirons. How many do you remember? Head lights dimmer switches on the floor. Ignition switches on the dashboard. Heaters mounted on the inside of the firewall. Real ice boxes. Pant leg clips for bicycles without chain guards. Soldering irons you heat on a gas burner. Using hand signals for cars without turn signals.

Older Than Dirt Quiz: Count all the ones that you remember, not the ones you were told about. Ratings at the bottom. 1. Blackjack chewing gum 2. Wax Coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water 3. Candy cigarettes 4. Soda pop machines that dispensed glass bottles 5. Coffee shops or diners with tableside juke boxes 6. Home milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers 7. Party lines 8. Newsreels before the movie 9. P.F. Flyers 10. Butch wax 11. Telephone numbers with a word prefix (OLive-6933) 12. Peashooters 13. Howdy Doody 14. 45 RPM records 15. S&H Green Stamps 16. Hi-fi's 17. Metal ice trays with lever 18. Mimeograph paper 19. Blue flashbulbs 20. Packards 21. Roller skate keys 22. Cork popguns 23. Drive-ins 24. Studebakers 25. Wash tub wringers

If you remembered 0-5 = You're still youngIf you remembered 6-10 = You are getting olderIf you remembered 11-15 = Don't tell your age,If you remembered 16-25 = You're older than dirt!

I won’t tell you my score on this quiz, but I will admit that I hadn’t realized that auto manufacturers no longer put headlight dimmer buttons on the floorboards of cars, so you can draw your own conclusions.

A Museum of the Ordinary is precisely the place where we should be able to find things like floorboard dimmer switches, pie dough treats (see my story “The Lost Wax Process”), and ironing board sprinklers made from soda bottles. Unfortunately, most museums are chock-a-block with atypical, special stuff and are woefully lacking in the ordinary. “Ordinary” isn’t celebrated.

This lack of appreciation for the ordinary has had dire consequences for humanity. As I noted in my story “The Lost Secret of the Egyptian Pyramids”:

Some believe savvy Space Aliens built the pyramids in Egypt, as it seems incomprehensible that mere humans could have transported the massive stones used in their construction. Call me a skeptic, but I have always believed that humans moved the stones without interplanetary assistance, and that we have lost the secret of how it was done. Perversely, the nagging question I have about the pyramids is not how they were built, but how the “secret” of their construction was lost.

Presumably, the construction of a Pharaoh’s post-mortem-party-palace would have required the knowing participation of thousands of hapless slaves, not even counting all those many thousands more hapless slaves that would have stood nearby, leaning on their shovels and watching, in the time-honored posture for construction crews. Assuming that the work was not done under cover of night and was not shielded by massive board fencing, additional many thousands of ordinary citizens must have witnessed the construction secrets. So, if that many people once knew how it was done, how was the secret lost?

I think I have stumbled across the answer.

A Museum of the Ordinary would preserve for us all the seemingly inconsequential, ordinary objects and “know-how” that might otherwise become lost forever (such as the Popeil Pocket Pyramid® tool that the Egyptians probably used).

For example, I know that the holes in the bottle cap of the soda bottle ironing board sprinkler were made by using a hammer to repeatedly pierce the cap with a small nail. But, I doubt that my children could find that information today, even if they used Wikipedia as a reference source. After all, it’s not as if Popular Mechanics ran articles on how to make soda bottle sprinklers. A glance at one was sufficient to deduce the manufacturing process. So, this sort of thing tended to be undocumented, as are most “ordinary” things, such as the cork circles that used to be glued onto the bottoms of soda bottle caps, but that is another story.

I suspect that people would shell out big bucks to wander through my Museum of the Ordinary. Not to put down my fellow inventors, but this idea is way more practical than Steve Martin’s “electric dog polisher” (hey, Steverino, what are we Floridians going to do when we lose electric power after one of our bi-weekly hurricanes? Go out and buy generators just so we can keep our dogs polished? Get practical!)

And no offense to Gordon Dioxide, whose blog of 9 Feb 2005 described his idea for home-delivery of groceries: Every house should be linked up to the nearest supermarket by a system of solar-powered overhead cables. Once you have placed your order (via the internet) the goods are automatically hooked on to the cable and dispatched to your house.

Every house should be linked up to the nearest supermarket by a system of solar-powered overhead cables. Once you have placed your order (via the internet) the goods are automatically hooked on to the cable and dispatched to your house.
http://www.gordondioxide.com/blog.htm

Sorry, Gordon, but I agree with Dora that your idea is “pie in the sky.”

This afternoon, I shall be contacting the local banking establishments to seek funding for my Museum of the Ordinary. I suspect they will bankroll me on the spot once they have heard me out (a problem I have been having with my local lending officers, come to think of it, so maybe I will drive down to Broward County for this project). Stay tuned!

* Henry Ford may not have invented the automobile, but I think you get my point.