Making Millburn Memories Memorable

At the museum two weeks ago I sifted through material that we usually bring to the Classic Car Show every year.  The car show will be on Sunday, May 15, 2011 and the historical society was invited again to set up a table at the always-fun event.

I keep a box of automobile-related local material to bring to the show: license plates found under the floor boards in an early accessory structure in Short Hills (apparently for insulation), local drivers' licenses, sales brochures for incredible, luxurious, antique automobiles that were found in a local house--and how I would love to own and drive any of those cars today--and much more. I used to bring a large story board with photos and information about Millburn's own Henry Ford, Cadwallader ("Carl") Washburn Kelsey, but the display was pretty amateurish and became increasingly decrepit with each passing year. It was time for a new large display.

I hesitated over the photos of Kelsey, whose memorable promotions earned him considerable acclaim and brisk sales of the Maxwell cars he was trying to promote. My favorite was his inspiration to ask the very young Alice Ramsey to consider being the first woman to drive across the US in 1909—in a Maxwell automobile, of course--after he saw her win an automobile race around Long Island.

Alice and three female friends took the challenge and completed the 3,800-mile drive from New York to San Francisco in 59 days, faster than any man had made the trip. As a result of the publicity the trip generated, sales of Maxwell autos more than doubled. 

Over the years at the Classic Car Show, however, I noticed that the table's visitors were less interested in Cadwallader and Alice then they were in the later material about 1950s and 1960s cars. These were cars with which they associated most intensely, from having owned, driven, or admired them in their youth. Now I wondered if I should retire Cadwallader and Alice and instead create a poster of the Jowitt Motors, Inc. business that used to be at the very end of Millburn Avenue, across from Scotty's Steak House on Morris Avenue, and where the gas station is now (see photo here). In addition, we have in the collection a few promotional postcards from Jowitt's, such as that sleek Polara 2-door hardtop (see photo).

I remember reading somewhere in one of my museum studies' assignments that people connect most memorably with history when they can associate it with something in their lifetime accumulation of experiences, so Jowitt's it was--and not fifteen minutes after I put the Jowitt Motors photo on the museum table, a visitor saw it and asked for a copy. Clearly those old muscle cars tug at some hearts and memories.

I am left to wonder, then, what makes Patch readers connect most fervently to Millburn history. Is your interest in photos from your years in Millburn, or do you enjoy seeing items and photos from Millburn's earliest years, when roads were unpaved and cattle roamed South Mountain pastures?