By Christina Scanlon
From wooden-soled shoes to lunch pails, steam whistles to checker boards, a unique collection of slate industry-related items is on display at the Slate Valley Museum, in celebration of the museum’s 20th anniversary.
Public participation whittled the selection to 20 of their favorites, after the museum staff and Board of Directors originally displayed 40 of their picks.
“They had a purpose when they came,” said Molly Celani, board president, of attendants at First Friday at the Museums, a shared event with the Pember Library and Museum that offers free admission to both facilities.
“They agreed with our choices,” she said of the final 20 to make the cut. “Everything they picked matched ours.”
The final choices became, “20 Objects, 20 Years of Sharing Slate Valley Stories: The Industry, The People, and The Stone,” which opened June 5.
Krista Rupe, the museum’s executive director, said the anniversary tribute is a bit different than some exhibits.
“Instead of being a collection of something you’ve never seen, this lets you visualize what it was like to use these things,” she said.
The lunch pail looks nothing like today’s version of a food carrier.
It’s a lidded metal bucket with a handle, quite large for today’s standards.
“You would have probably carried two meals in it,” she said. “When you look at it, you can relate and think about what you would have carried in it.”
One item you might not have considered carrying but, according to Rupe, is told to have been a common occurrence.
“On their way home, they could fill up their bucket with beer for five cents,” she said of the many saloons that lined the streets of the workers.
Mining clogs, with wooden soles and horseshoe-like attachments are on display, as well, along with the rubber attachments that would cover the metal bottoms and the nails to pound them in.
The checker board in the show may fool you into thinking it was marble.
“They heated the slate up,” said Rupe of marbleizing the slate, a decorative practice at the turn of the century.
One piece came to the collection by way of tragedy.
The charred piece gives evidence to its former life as a roof tile on the Pentagon.
It was retrieved after the attacks on 9/11 and returned to the museum, while new slate was given in its place.
All 20 items will remain on display through November and can be viewed during regular business hours, Tuesday through Friday from 1 to 5 p.m. and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.