Bill has always been a collector.
Years ago he began sorting through bags of pennies looking for the old dates and
hoping to find that really rare one. He'd stash the five or ten keepers out of the fifty dollar bag, and when
finished,
exchange it for another bag at the bank. His coin collection grew from
this beginning.
A drizzly Sunday afternoon would
be turned
into a Petoskey stone hunt,
filling five gallon buckets while searching the gravel pits. They would
soon be cut and polished, and turned into rings and jewelry, or displayed on the
mantel. This evolved into searching the shores of Lake Superior for
agates, and then to the copper mines of Michigan's upper peninsula. One
can even notice a sparkle in Bill's eye when talking about panning for gold.
Could that be next?
Whenever he found something that interested him, he would hang on to it, and then look to see if he could find more. Sometimes the collection grew, other times it remained one of a kind.
The shotgun shell collection just more or less appeared without getting any special attention. Garage sales, and gun shows, and pretty soon there were enough shells to go the length of the room. Old wooden fishing lures fill one corner of the room. From the memories of those that he and his Dad fished with, to those that he's saved and collected, they might well be the beginning of his desire to carve fish decoys.
Old fishing reels fill homemade crates, and jagged chunks of pure copper too.
One corner holds a Don Fenton fishing net. Uncle Don's nets are beautifully finished multi-wooded designs. A tobacco leaf hangs next to it, and an old wicker creel. If you look close, you'll see a huge Petoskey stone surrounded by agates just below it. Three Marble hatchets hang on the wall. They're from the Marble Knife company of Gladstone, Michigan, which brings us to the knife collection.
The Knives
A Christmas present, one collectors knife, gotten after a long month on the Tennessee tree lot. And the collection grew.
All sizes and shapes and colors. One would never carry a knife such as these, but they make an amazing collection. Many are from Michigan's Marble company, and other from such names as Winchester. A few are even homemade, though you'd never know.
A very interesting room indeed. Everyone finds something here fascinating.
At least everyone so far...
