Heavy Lifting!

0800-1700

Monday proved to be an interesting and dirty day. Chris, the Curator of Exhibits needed a hand moving some things. And by some things, I mean very dated 3-400 pound pieces of rusty cast iron steam engine pieces out of a gravel floor barn. On the MMM campus, there is a large garage that houses ships that are not on exhibit or were donated and need various levels of restoration before they would ever be used for even sitting in during a rainstorm on land. These engine pieces will be used for the upcoming “Heavy Metal” exhibit and needed to come out. I’ll be honest, I felt a bit like those who built the Egyptian pyramids. We used the very dated technique of prying these pieces up, sliding boards under them, then making a path out of the barn, laying a wooden road out of the barn, and placing a series of rollers under them, slowly guiding them out. Whether this method or aliens built the pyramids, it worked for us but took a considerable amount of the day. At one point, a maintenance worker tried to assist us by pulling it out with a winch on a 4-wheeler. This thing was a beast and outweighed the 4 wheeler easily.

For those of you that visit museums regularly and see the “done-up” exhibits, just know that more than likely a curator and some lowly intern probably had to dig those things out from museum storage! This is the side of museum work I did not see at Plimoth Plantation and rarely encountered at the National Archives. Seeing the visitor’s enjoyment through the current exhibits make this sort of work worthwhile, however. This is just a small piece of the pie for the upcoming exhibit but will surely pay off as well.

My brother and I did some exploring, so I will post a weekend re-cap tomorrow.