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Southern Oregon Journal: Poking around the past Sunday Oct 9, 2016 at 12:01 AM By Peggy Dover for the Mail Tribune Years ago, Dad and I scoured local auctions and antique stores. We were curious about former lifestyles and the countless odd gadgets that showed the way people lived back then. Dad would often find objects, such as cream separators, that he knew from childhood. We marveled over handmade craftsmanship and chuckled at seemingly crude implements compared with modern standards. Sometimes we bought things like 1930s English teapots, old Bakelite radios and antique oak furniture. I heard one gloomy Gus at an auction refer to antiques as “dead people’s stuff” (likely a competing bidder). I suppose it’s technically true — they left without managing to haul anything with them. But even when buying wasn’t our aim, visiting the past together was fun and somehow, comforting. There’s no shortage of artisan craftspeople here in Southern Oregon, so finding handmade furniture or jewelry is not difficult. But my focus here is toward reverencing our local history — of exploring the past and allowing wisdom to teach what we’ve done right and change trajectories when decisions proved wrong, or even fatal. I refer to valuing and properly caring for objects and documents that we have in our care. Letters, journals and other ephemera of bygone days are irrefutable evidence of how and why we lived and died. Now that I’ve lived through a share of it, I appreciate history more than when I tried to memorize dates in Mr. Stephen’s classroom. Connecting dates to dusty events gave me no reference or reason to care. But stories about individuals who strutted their stuff before us help resurrect historic events and the people who survived them. Sometimes they serve as role models. All my life I’ve been a museum nerd. Even as a teen, my pal, Betsy, and I would make time to peruse the local museum of whichever burg we happened to be visiting. I’ve enjoyed world-renowned museums in Vancouver, B.C., Rome, Florence, New York, etc. The size of the place doesn’t matter. Visiting a town’s historical museum gives greater insight than a visitor center in many ways. I recently located a museum in Bandon that has many well presented displays with a pictorial history of early cranberry production, including early implements, a riverboat history on the Coquille, and information about fires that ravaged most of their original buildings. Bandon residents could have thrown up their hands and said their history burned too, but it hadn’t. They were able to cobble together collections from early settlers and long-time residents. They preserved their town’s dignity by preserving the story of its lives. A museum allows time for you to know the people at the heart of the place. Every person and city has an origin, a story of beginnings. My little town of Eagle Point has a museum on North Shasta, which houses an impressive collection of local artifacts, donations from descendants of our early settlers, and a knowledgeable and faithful volunteer staff to answer questions. In November, museums and historical societies in Jackson County will be asking people to vote for creation of a heritage district similar to the recently created library and Extension Service districts. Maybe everyone should visit their local museum to decide how to vote on the measure The future is nebulous and often scary, while the past stands still for us to poke around and explore inside its storehouse. My sincere thanks to the many hardworking volunteers who care enough about Rogue Valley history to keep the stories alive and well. — Peggy Dover is a freelance writer living in Eagle Point. Reach her at [email protected].