- Leaving Jeff's man cave collection.

Let's make our way to the Martin County Historical Society Museum.

My longtime friend, Lenny Tween, is the museum director and has been collecting and showcasing local history for nearly 20 years.

And yes, there is a hog outside the museum, standing guard.

- Hey Doug.

Good to see you.

Welcome to the museum, - Lenny.

It's been a long - Time.

Been a few years.

Yeah.

- Lenny, I was in town today.

I ran into your friend Jeff.

Oh sure.

And I looked at his collection over there.

Pretty cool.

Yep.

He encouraged me to come over and see you.

I am doing a collections program with PBS and I know you have some really cool things here in the museum.

And if you have a few minutes, I would love to have you show me around.

- Absolutely.

Let's take a look, Doug.

There's a lot of things here.

We could never take it all in in one day, but I'd like to show you a couple of my favorites.

Back in 1994, Paul and Linda McCartney were in Fairmont.

Linda was a vegetarian, Paul was as well.

And she had a vegetarian food line that she wanted a company to produce for them.

And they chose Fairmont Foods here in Fairmont.

It only lasted about two years.

Oh, okay.

Martin County is the one of the biggest hog producing counties in the state.

Consequently, vegetarians, probably not too many of 'em around.

- Little conflict of interest, a - Little conflict there.

So yeah.

Yeah.

It's history.

It's not ancient history of course, but it's, it's history.

Dating back to about 19, 19 94.

Let's go downstairs.

There's some really neat things to look at down here.

And by the way, you're in luck because Rhonda's here, she's on our board and she has a kind of a family collection that I think you'll find really interesting.

- We are down in the basement of the Martin County Museum, Martin County Historical Society.

And there is a, a display of eggs that my uncle has collected over the years.

He started in 1914 when he was seven years old, and he wanted to start collecting them.

And his dad said, well, you can, but you only can take one egg out of a nest at a time and be very careful not to destroy anything or hurt the nest.

And so that was the beginning of his egg collecting.

So in order to collect the eggs, he had to know what bird he was following.

So he knew how to identify them.

He knew what they sounded like, and he could tell a bird by its flight pattern.

- Doug, I'd like you to take a look at this.

This is really a unique piece.

It's a 1912 Wagner motorcycle.

We acquired it in 1969.

The Wagner Motorcycle Company is an offshoot of the Wagner Bicycle Company outta St. Paul.

It's really a, a unique piece and people are really interested when they see it.

Okay.

We got some historic bicycles here too.

This one was ridden by a man named Sam Stark.

He'd rode it to Illinois from Martin County.

That'd be quite a drive.

It's got wooden rims.

One over here is a tandem again with wooden rims.

It was in the parade in Fairmont, the Diamond Jubilee parade.

And over here is what's called a moon shaker with the horn here.

And again, kind of a unique piece and I'm not sure it would be the most comfortable to ride very long.

Okay, Doug, I'd like to show show you the 1923 American La France firetruck.

It's the first motorized firetruck in Fairmont.

When they brought it out here, they sent a quote unquote expert who trained the local fireman for two weeks on how to operate it.

So it's actually been used in parades in the not too distant past.

What - Does it sound like?

- It sounds loud.

- I bet it is.

I bet it's so, can you imagine the first day that this responded to a fire in Fairmont?

What it did to all the neighbors came out to sea and watch and Oh yeah.

The neighbor dogs were barking and the kids were running after it.

I can just imagine this in its hating.

- This is another unique piece.

It's called the Iron Lung back in the forties and fifties.

People that had polio, many of them, if it attacked their lungs, they had to be in an iron lung in order to help them breathe.

- How long do you think they had to spend in here?

- You know, I think from what I've seen about two weeks usually was kind of the, the benchmark.

- Can you imagine two weeks in this tube?

Yeah.

No, that would've been frightening.

Do you think it worked?

- Yes.

From what I've read, it did work.

Well, Doug, we've seen a lot of things today, but we have a whole lot more.

So I'd like to invite you to come back when you have a little more time and we can tour the rest of the museum and see some of the things you missed, - Lenny.

I would love that.

Thank you my friend.

Sounds - Good.