Prompt to Write

Prompt 4             Slice of Life/Setting

Your character is on a road trip when they discover an unusual museum, such as the Museum of Junk Food or the Museum of Unfulfilled Longings. Describe the museum.

            Joan was glad to be away from the narrow streets, crowded buildings, and chaotic noise. She had her windows open and the stereo loudly playing Vandelux’s “It’s All In Your Head” while cruising down the highway north of home. Her mother had just passed away, her father having gone seventeen years earlier, so she took a few days off work and chose to get out and let herself think. Or not think. Remember. Cry. She just went. It was a route her family would take during trips every few years. She hadn’t told anyone she was going anywhere. Nobody needed to know. The world was hers. She would go as far as circumstances let her.

            Stopping for gas at a small wayside station, she stood and looked around as she let the nozzle fill her tank. There was a house behind the station, and she’d seen a family membe

r of the proprietor come out of it and into the store when she drove up. On the other side of the building was the beginning of a driveway that she expected led to a barn or garage, but when she took a couple steps to see where it led, she was delighted to see another house. Rather than a residence, it had a sign in the yard that read, “Museum of Forgotten Items.”

            She gazed at it. What could this mean? Forgotten from past decades? It could be a nostalgic experience. The windows around the building were large, and she saw curtains. The yard around it was well-kept, even landscaped, with a row of shrubs and a fence. When her gas nozzle popped, she drove around and parked in front of it. The door had a sign and a doorbell. “Please ring doorbell for curator.” She did. She didn’t hear anything, and after a minute, she stepped over to a dim window to peek inside for movement. Soon, she heard the padding of boots behind her on the driveway that led to the house. A woman was coming from the back door of the station and crossing the driveway to come to the museum.

            Joan greeted her. “I was intrigued by the sign,” she said to the woman.

            “Good. That’s what I was going for.” The woman was probably ten years younger than her mother. She had an easy smile, her hair was up in a haphazard bun, and the green denim apron she wore had a fun number of pockets. She pulled a key out of one as she stepped between Joan and the door. “Let me get the lights on for the showing.” Disappearing behind the door, she closed it. Joan saw the windows light up, heard footsteps walk around and return, and then the door opened.

            “Welcome to the Museum,” the woman stated with a smile. “My name is Cadence. I will be your guide.” She seemed to be enjoying herself, putting on an air of expertise. “This museum highlights items from real people who have put an item down or dropped something personal in this gas station during their trip and have not returned for it.”

            Joan lit up. How intimate and surprising! This could be interesting as much as it could be mundane. I said, “I bet there’s a dirty, worn, stuffed animal toy of some sort here.” Joan smiled, thinking of all of the times her own kids had left their favorite stuffy somewhere. Cadence smiled wider.

            “If you’ll follow me, you can see our display of twenty-three stuffed animals that were left behind. There are sixteen found on or near the check-out counter, five from the floor in the store, and two that were found out in the road or in the driveway.”

Joan looked at each: A cat with no tail; there were quite a few dogs bearing varying degrees of grime; teddy bears missing an eye or nose; also an octopus, one penguin, and even a purple axolotl! She brought Joan past a collection of buttons, then pins and a brooch, necklaces and bracelets – some with beads, some that were metal chains, and some that were woven threads, books of which some were displayed open to an intriguing page with handwriting in the margin, and a corner filled with jackets, hats, scarves, buttoned shirts, and zippered hoodies.

“While this does look like a thrift store,” Cadence explained, “We do not let anyone take these things unless they are the one who has lost the item.”

“So, this is how you keep the stuff in case someone comes back,” Joan stated.

The curator nodded. “Especially the things like necklaces that are lockets, cell phones, and cameras.” We moved on. “Here is the locked display where we keep phones and cameras.” Joan looked at the China hutch.

Past her own reflection sat a worn Nikon digital camera from the days before cell phones. The sight of it caused a sudden flux of memories – she and her sister. Taking a photo of her in a tree. She takes one of Joan holding a butterfly. Joan films as they run down a dirt road. Laughing and taking photos of making faces in the car. At the cabin, asking each other where the camera was. Upset while Dad says that “sometimes things get lost.”

Joan let out the breath she hadn’t known she was holding. “Can we check something on that Nikon in there?” she asked. She could feel her face drain, her head get a little dizzy with excitement. “My family came through here a lot on trips. My sister and I had a camera like that we’d share, and it got lost. We each blamed the other for losing it, of course.” She laughed.

Cadence was grinning. “Of course!” She unlocked the hutch and took it out. She couldn’t turn it on, it was dead. She handed it to Joan. “We have a collection of charge cords that were forgotten, in a drawer here.” She beckoned Joan to join her in finding the right type of cord, and then invited her for coffee at the house behind the station while the camera charged. They talked about Joan’s family, and the experience of her father passing away unexpectedly 17 years earlier, and her mother having recently let go of Alzheimer’s to rest in peace.

“Will they be in the photos on this camera, if it’s yours?” The curator asked.

“No, probably mostly me and Jean. We were goofy and imaginative kids.” Joan sipped her coffee and then looked out the window. “And we were curious. There are probably a lot of photos of bugs and plants on the camera. Of each other climbing trees.”

Cadence watched Joan remember. After a moment, she asked if Joan wanted more coffee and checked on the camera. It was charged. She handed it to Joan and set her coffee aside. Joan looked at the woman who was helping her, made a nervous smile, and turned on the camera. She had to remember how to push the buttons to select things on the decades-old screen, and eventually found the photo history.

She gasped and smiled. “The tree house!” She and Jean were looking out the window. Next. Jean was hugging a dog. “Scooby!” She laughed. Next. A photo of the car packed for a trip. Next. A campsite with both of them sitting, roasting marshmallows. Mom or Dad must have taken that. Next. A blurry photo close-up of a moth. A photo of a bush’s spotted leaf. A photo… “I wonder what that is,” she laughed. “Oh!-“ She tapped a button. It was a video of running down a forest road!

She went through them and remembered some of the moments: when they played in that little creek, trying to catch tiny fish; when she made a little castle of twigs; she and Jean were in their sleeping bags taking pictures of each other not-quite-hiding under blankets. Then Joan gasped. Cadence saw her face drain. In a photo of herself peeking out of the sleeping bag, behind her on the tent wall there was a shadow of something with ears and a long snout! “Scooby didn’t go with us on this; that’s not him!” She gaped. Cadence’s eyes widened when Joan showed her. “We never saw or heard anything in the camp. Oh my gosh!” She laughed nervously. She flashed through more bugs, fuzzy photos of the surface of the creek, wet rocks…

Near what she recognized as the end of the camping trip, Joan found a photo she hadn’t expected. Her mom was sticking out her tongue and crossed eyes on the right side, and her father had crossed eyes and fish lips on the left. It was a selfie they had obviously taken as a joke, for her and Jean to find later. The next photo was of them looking normal, smiling. The brightness of the windshield of the car behind them almost swallowed the image.

Joan let out a breath with a shudder, and she felt a tear trace down her cheek. She wiped it as she continued. There was a photo of herself and Jean sleeping in the back seat, buckled in, Jean hugging her teddy bear, Tucker. Joan had a book falling off her lap.

The last photo was of the side of the very gas station she was at, the museum in the background with the sign. Though she could clearly read the ads on the window of the gas station, she couldn’t read the sign in the blurry background. “Jean must have thought this museum was worth a photo,” she said, showing Cadence. “I know I didn’t take this.”

Cadence grinned. “And then the camera was left here.” She concluded the “story” Joan had just flipped through. “Looks like… around ’85, by the price of cigs on that ad and the color of the station wall.”

“Sounds about right,” Joan nodded. “How long have you had the museum?”

The two women visited, Joan noticing cars driving in and out of the station. The woman’s partner or family member must be tending the counter. Joan learned some history of the area and of Cadence’s family, and told her own history pertaining to the area. It was an hour later before she realized the time.

“I need to go find a place for the night.”

“The Grand is just down the road and a left turn at the crossroads with the sign to Swift Gully.”

Joan thanked her and headed to her car. She noted, standing at her door, that she was at the same angle as her sister’s photo of the museum. With her phone camera, she took the same photo, then got into her car and headed down the road.

It felt good to go on an unexpected trip with her family again.