SMITHSONIAN CROSSROADS EXHIBIT DISASSEMBLED

October 27, 2018

Seventeen devoted community members dismantled the Smithsonian Crossroads exhibit on Monday morning, October 22, from 9 am until 12:30 pm. Deemed to be a four-hour, four-man deconstruction project by the Smithsonian’s thirty-one-page instruction booklet, the group discovered otherwise. Resident Maureen Magee remarked that the “four-man, four-hour” description must have meant “four buff guys just out of the gym, surely not us.”

Thanks to, and under the direction of, the Cedar Key Historical Society’s past president Ken Young and Bunny Hand, the operation moved along efficiently. Both Joe Hand and Young were involved with the exhibition’s set up, which proved helpful. Even more helpful, both Bunny and Joe made it their business to deconstruct a small part of the exhibit on Saturday to assure themselves that they understood the process.

Steadily the amiable group worked through the morning.  Hundreds of pieces, large and small, were unlocked, disconnected, un notched, separated, disconnected. Then, the hundreds of pieces, huge ones and small ones, were toted down the stairs and elevator to the front of the library on tables and arrayed with identification numbers visible. The fifteen huge packing crates were opened and the process of placing the specific piece into the specific crate int its specifically marked place ensued.   The 4,400 pounds of fifteen crates were then transported to the first floor of the Nature Coast Biological Station to await pick up by the West Nassau Historical Society in Callahan, Florida, who will next host the exhibit.

Pizza and tea completed the weary workers’ labors, thanks to Vice-Mayor Sue Colson.

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