Can Openers, Bottle Openers and Corkscrews, Oh My!
How Growing Up in a Museum Made Me Appreciate My Family Even More
Note: Sharing this story today as my father passed away nine years ago. It's hard to believe that so much time has passed and how much I would like to talk to him and share what we have been up to and how much we miss him. Originally written in March 2023.
It’s an 88-degree day in June 2021, and I am sitting in the back of a rental van stuffed with boxes and tubs. The storage locker that my mother rented nearly four years ago is now empty.
Tears stream down my face. My father, Joe, died in May 2015. Like many widows, my mother couldn’t bear to get rid of their “stuff,” so into storage it went. On this day, I am helping my husband, Jeff, and one of our four sons, Edward, pack the remaining items before heading to North Carolina. In just a few days, the collections that took my parents decades to accumulate will be in the hands of an avid collector who will help us sell what at one time was one of the largest, and maybe the largest, collections of can openers and corkscrews in the world. Too bad the Guinness Book of World Records didn’t have a category for that!
When you think of your childhood home, maybe you picture your yard, a fence, particular trees, or the color of your front door. I think of contents. Our cream-colored brick 1950s ranch home in Elgin, Illinois, was not your ordinary ranch; my wonder years were spent in an actual museum. In the mid-1980s, my parents registered our home and a portion of its contents as the “Young Opener Museum.”
Here is another post I wrote about the house
It started with an invention by my father’s father. Imagine if a can opener unrolled the lid of a can instead of cutting it. In 1961, Claude A. Young patented a device for opening cans: “A principal object of my invention is to provide a can opener which completely eliminates the formation of those metal fragments that may fall into the can during opening of the can,” he wrote. This first can opener was just the beginning.
In the late 1970s, the basement that would become the Young Opener Museum was your typical suburban recreation area. Picture a cozy area for playing games by the downstairs fireplace, decorated by my mother, and a wood shop area for my dad, with plenty of other available space to spread out. I fondly remember the red and black square floor tiles as the perfect surface to practice my roller skating. Listening to Chicago’s WLS radio station play "Heart of Glass" by Blondie or any of Rod Stewart’s greatest hits fueled my ‘70s indoor roller rink dreams.
By the early 1980s, other things started taking up space in the basement. My parents' collecting was about to hit fever pitch, and the open floor space made way for display cases and cabinets. The walls began to tell a story of their own. My Uncle Steve, a lawyer for a Chicago law firm, helped my parents incorporate their museum. “From your dad’s standpoint, part of the focus on the can opener side of the museum was to have a vehicle to provide the background for what was the development of just opening food cans and with your grandfather's product being the pinnacle of that development all the way through,” said Steve.
In my early teens, I became aware that this wasn’t typical, but I realized that I loved history. If I ever had idle time with my dad, he’d assign me to do a mini research project to present by dinner time. I still remember writing a paper about former president Calvin Coolidge on a random Saturday. I could play with all the high-tech devices we had at home, like our very own copy machine, his dictation recorders and my IBM PCjr to write and illustrate my stories.
On weekends when many of my friends were at the mall, I was at a flea market in all parts of the Midwest. Many of these glorified estate sales were outdoors in all kinds of weather, often taking place at county fairgrounds. You never know what “good ones,” as my dad called them, might be hiding in plain sight in the livestock shed. When I was about 10 years old, my parents nicknamed me “Hawkeye” as my size and attention to detail made it easier to spot the pieces that might be displayed on the floor or base of the display tables. What was my reward for finding their treasures? I got to bring friends with me later, and we had the run of the fairgrounds to pick up the latest Huey Lewis cassette or maybe go crazy and get a Slurpee before we drove home. I liked spending time with my parents and their yarn-spinning, antique-collecting friends. How many tweens knew that Winchester not only made rifles but also furniture? To this day, I can hear one of the antique dealers say, “You obviously don’t know your Winchester!”
By the time I was off to college, my parents had even more time to dedicate to their collecting. Traveling with groups like Just for Openers and the International Correspondence of Corkscrew Addicts to share their enthusiasm as well as fuel their acquisitions while maintaining friendships that spanned decades. John Stanley is a current member of Just for Openers collecting group that began in 1979. He and his wife Pat visited the Young Opener Museum over five times. “Joe and Jackie collected in the ‘golden times’ of opener, corkscrew and kitchen collectibles. Stuff could be found, and they really enjoyed the hunt,” said Stanley.
The late 1990s and early 2000s brought a new crop of museum goers, Joe and Jackie’s grandsons. Our four sons eventually took my place at the flea markets, followed by a tasty treat at the local Culver’s. Edward and Geo, the youngest of the grandsons, had the good fortune to spend a copious amount of time with their grandparents, affectionately called Gram and Papa. “Some of my fondest memories between Papa and I were when he’d grab a USPS flat rate shipping box full of items he had procured. With each new item he’d share an elaborate backstory and illustrate the surprisingly interesting history behind old pieces of kitchenware,” Geo says.
“When I think of Papa, hundreds of stories fill my head. During visits on the weekends, Papa always had a new-old story, a root beer float, and quite possibly a chore for a spry kid like us to help out with. It was a very practical way of saying, ‘I love you kiddo, and I’m glad you’re here’. His dry sense of humor shaped my own, and passion for history rubbed off too,” says Edward.
I never saw it coming, but the experiences of my sons were like my own. What a legacy. A true story of sharing history, making it fun, and connecting with your elders. Knowing that these stories are not lost and will continue to live on makes me forever grateful for growing up in our museum.