All grandparents know you must start if you want to finish. It’s a fact of life…Community Exchange Day, pickleball courts, playground, and now inventorying everything in the Pioneer Museum all fit the start to finish model.

Our community participated in Community Exchange Day for several years. When it started, no one knew how it was all going to work. I distinctly remember the Monday after the first exchange day a little girl was twirling around in the elementary hall wearing a darling double-breasted, knee-length light blue coat. As she moved down the hall swinging and swaying, I told her I really liked her coat and she replied, “My mom and I went ‘shopping’ at the church on Saturday. Blue is my favorite color.” Bingo…the work was worth it.

Then, the school district decided to obliterate our “tennis-courts-turned-pickleball-courts” off the school block. Seems they needed a new elementary building. Boy, were the pickleballers scrambling. Again, we started and now we have some beautiful courts at the park thanks to a lot of people.

Well, young parents saw those pickleball courts and wondered why in the world we were allowing our kids to play on the old rundown playground when we had such nice courts for the old folks. I remember Taylor Weeks picking my brain about how to go about getting a new playground. She and a whole committee started. I’m amazed at all they have done and the state-of-the-art playground that will be ready this week. Congratulations and thank you to the Playground Committee and donors. Somehow, things just work out, once you start. The same could be said for the splash-pad.

Now, we have another challenge. Our Pioneer Museum has a ton of really old and really cool stuff, however it has been sort of a hunt-and-find operation. Often, we don’t know what to hunt for because we aren’t sure of what we have or where it is. It has been a goal to start the inventorying process for years. There are records kept by former museum directors, Fay Cottle and Margaret Thomas (bless them), but how to match records and items and digitize and organize so we know where everything is and can plan displays based on inventory has been a mountain too enormous to undertake. Board chair, Jean Thomas, has been stewing about a “system” we could afford for a long time. 

Enter Brent Bowen, Mr. I-Can’t-Sleep-So-I-Just-As-Well-Be-Scanning-Something-Person. Over the last year he has spent countless hours scanning and uploading and talking with people who work in other museums about their “systems.” He has dug out “finds” from the bowels of our building and quietly and consistently worked to get to know what we have. The museum board now has a plan, a “system” and inventorying will begin this month. 

You must start to finish, and because it is a Good Life, the right people and ideas seem to show up at the right time. Thank you, Brent Bowen, Jean Thomas, Fay Cottle and Margaret Thomas for patiently being the right people at the right time. You make life better.