“Oh, definitely,” I said, smiling up at him. “I’ll be around.”
Once Blake had left, I looked at Nina and said, “I’m not sure what your dad told you, but if you decide you don’t want to go with me to the Waltham Museum, I will understand.”
“He told me that I had no choice and that if you told me I did, I was supposed to go anyway,” she said in a bored tone that I recognized as pure defensiveness. She sighed, “I guess I don’t really have a choice.”
“Of course you do,” I said. “But I think it’ll be kind of interesting, so there’s that.”
“Fine, I’ll go get ready,” she sighed again.
I tidied up the kitchen while I waited for Nina to get ready. Although I’d cooked breakfast for Blake and Nina on the morning after Christmas, I hadn’t really examined the room in any meaningful way. Now I looked at it with fresh eyes and saw a kitchen that was warm and inviting. Blake had painted the walls a warm shade of red, and there were plants situated on floating shelves around the windows, giving the room a colorful touch. He’d obviously spent time thinking about how to make this house feel like a home, and it showed.
When Nina was finally ready, we headed out to the car and drove over to the Waltham Museum, where Burt Maddox was waiting to show us around. Burt and I had become friends when I’d first taken the job at Waltham High School, and now he called me when there was a new exhibit, or when they added something to one of the collections.
Today’s visit was the result of an overhaul of the manufacturing displays. The museum had been working on upgrading the tours and modernizing and restoring some of the displays. Burt had called me the week before to let me know that the exhibits would be open for viewing this week, and I was excited to see the work the museum curators and restoration experts had done.
“Burt! How are you?” I called, as Nina and I entered the museum lobby.
“Well, well, well, if you aren’t a sight for sore eyes, Emily!” Burt laughed as he came out from behind the front desk. He was well into his 70s, but he didn’t look much older than 60. His gray hair was slicked back away from his clean-shaven face and, as usual, he wore a button-down dress shirt with a sweater vest and a matching tie.
“You’re looking snappy, Burt,” I said, as I appraised his outfit.
“Got a new vest from the grandkids for Christmas, and a matching tie from my new girlfriend,” he grinned.
“How is Holly?” I asked. Burt’s wife had died young and left him to raise their two children alone. He did so, and then once they were out of the house, he’d gone out and started dating. Holly had come along around the time Burt had decided to give up, and they’d been together for almost 20 years. Neither one had wanted to get married, so they decided to live in sin and scandalized the old-timers they hung out with. Holly had been diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease the year before, and they were struggling to adjust to the constantly shifting landscape that it had created.
“She’s doing as well as can be expected, but her memory is slipping away a little more every day,” he said, without a trace of sadness. “We enjoy the good days and endure the not so good ones. It’s all you can ask for! Now, who is this young lady you’ve brought with you?”
“Burt Maddox, I’d like you to meet Nina Gaston,” I said, as I stepped back. “Nina, this is Burt.”
“Nina Gaston, it’s a pleasure to meet you,” Burt said, holding out his hand. “I think I know your father, Blake.”
“Yes, that’s my father,” Nina nodded, as she took his hand. “It’s very nice to meet you, Mr. Maddox.”
“Oh, please call me Burt, dear,” he said, laughing softly. “Mr. Maddox was my father, and he was one ornery son of a gun!”
Nina and I laughed as Burt turned and motioned for us to follow him. We walked down the wood-paneled corridor toward a large door at the end of the hall. Burt’s shiny black dress shoes clicked on the polished wood floor in a rhythm that was disciplined and precise, and I smiled as I thought about how he’d described his time in the Army and how it had been a cornerstone of his philosophy of life.
“Now, I’m going to show you something no one else has seen yet,” he said with a conspiratorial grin, before pushing open the heavy oak doors to reveal a room that was filled with light and air. I inhaled sharply as I looked around and realized that this was the new manufacturing wing of the museum.
“Oh, Burt, it’s absolutely amazing!” I whispered, as I turned around, taking the whole room in. “You’ve outdone yourselves.”
“They really put a lot of work into it,” he nodded, as he stepped over to a display case full of watches. “They shined it all up and built new cases for these things.”
“What did it look like before?” Nina asked, as she surveyed the room.
“It was dark and dingy, and it was hard to see what was in the collection,” Burt said, as he reached down and pulled open a drawer in the display case. He shuffled a few papers around and then pulled out what looked like photographs and held them out for Nina to see. “This is what it looked like a few years ago.”
“Wow, that looks really old and run-down!” she exclaimed, as she shuffled through the pictures. “This is definitely an improvement.”
A bell rang somewhere in the distance, and Burt excused himself to go answer it. I walked over to the start of the exhibit and began slowly examining the pictures and artifacts that represented the very beginning of the manufacturing industry in Waltham. Nina set the pictures down and joined me, but kept a safe distance as she scanned the pieces.
“Why do people keep all of this stuff?” she asked. “I mean, have you ever seen the show “Hoarders?” It’s like museums are the organized version of all that crap!”
“You’ve got a point,” I laughed, as I thought about how a historian would respond to her observation. “However, it’s not like museums just take everything that’s offered. They curate the collections so that only the most relevant pieces are on display. They try to tell a story with the items.”
“Huh, a story?” she said, looking around.
“Yes, for example, if you look at the section over here on Frances Cabot Lowell, you can see the letters he wrote to his family while traveling in England,” I pointed out the case that contained the letters and waited as Nina skimmed them.