(from Four Go Mad in Massachusetts)

 

There are two Greenfields in western Massachusetts. One followed the normal course of history and became a typical New England town that anyone can drive through. The other is a very small, meticulous recreation of Greenfield from around 1895, called Old Greenfield Village. The restoration of this village has been the exacting and exhausting avocation of Waine Morse, who has gathered and organized thousands and thousands of items of Americana, restored historic buildings, and constructed it all on the land next to his house. A visit to Old Greenfield Village is a fascinating look into the history of Greenfield—but it’s also an experience tied up with the personality of Waine Morse.

 

We first enter a blacksmith’s shop at the entrance to the village, where we meet Waine Morse and two other tourists, both women. Morse hands us a map and explains the layout of the village. Pulling out his own copy of the map, he gives a blow-by-blow rundown of each numbered stop and the correct order for us to visit these stops. (I wonder why he handed us the map if he’s going to explain where everything is, but then I’m not the mayor of Old Greenfield Village.) He also carefully explains the tape decks we’ll encounter in each room, which give recorded explanations of the rooms and settings. Then he gives us specific instructions about turning the lights in each building on and off and apologizes in advance in case we walk into a building with a light that is already on.

 

Just as we are ready to step out into the village, Morse maneuvers the group to the other side of the building. Quite unexpectedly, he begins a tour of this room, pulling up from his vast knowledge the uses for even the most unassuming tools hanging on the wall, along with background on their previous owner. He leads us in a counterclockwise circle around the room, pausing to make sure we stand in precise spots along the way.

 

Then Morse leads us into the village. “You go to buildings one, two, three, and four!” he directs us. “You go to buildings three, four, one, and two!” he tells the women. We’re a bit confused, since he is encouraging us to deviate from the proper path he so painstakingly mapped out, and now he’s breaking all of his own rules.

 

The four of us start with the general store, which is crammed with old products. There are so many boxes and signs in here, it’s like a three-dimensional, find-the-hidden-treasure puzzle. We poke around and turn on the tape player—clearly marked with instructions for using the color-coded buttons to play, stop, and rewind.

 

Jana comments on what looks like a coffee grinder. Morse, who’s been hovering near the entrance, corrects her. It’s really a scale. “The coffee grinder is over there in the corner!” he explains and then leaves.

 

A sign announces that the general store sells “fancy goods” of “select flavors” and also “notions.” Hugo holds up Harry’s new, coveted Batman action figure, which we just purchased at a tag sale along Route 2. “Batman for sale!” he calls out.

 

In the meantime, we’re halfway listening to the taped narration. Read by Morse’s wife, it is clearly homemade, with stops and gaps and pauses for breathing and swallowing. As soon as it ends, Jana and I rush to the tape deck like mad people, to make sure we press the correct button. “Red button, yellow button! Red button, yellow button!” I bark at Jana.

 

As we exit the general store, we again see Morse, who’s waiting to point us along to the print shop. Morse’s omnipresence is beginning to get to Jana and me. We’re almost afraid to talk about what we’re seeing, for fear he’ll pop out and correct us.

 

We go to the print shop, which is filled with old printing materials as well as some handmade signs of Morse’s calling visitor attention to the old printing materials in the room. Then we head to the newspaper office.

 

We don’t feel like playing the tape, but we’re afraid we’ll get in trouble if we don’t. We play it and figure we better stay for at least as long as the narration runs. Hugo keeps fiddling with a printing machine, trying to get it to work. I see Jana cringe every time she asks him to stop. Despite all the instructions for tape playing, we don’t have a clear sense of how involved with the machinery we’re allowed to get.

 

I start to worry that we’re not following the tape instructions correctly. After the tape ends, I worry that Jana didn’t push the red button before the yellow button. Maybe we should review the instructions before we operate the next tape. And then I worry that we’ve forgotten to turn off some lights. I’m getting so wrapped up in the procedures that I haven’t really been able to appreciate the restoration of the village. In fact, Jana and I are spending as much time looking at the handmade instructional signs—left, right, west, east—as we are looking at the artifacts.

 

One fascinating aspect of Old Greenfield Village is that it isn’t just a collection of artifacts. Morse has arranged his collections meticulously in authentic display cases and placed them in authentic store spaces to create the illusion of continued use. This sense of immediacy really works in the pharmacy—though surely it is better-stocked than it would have been back in 1895. We see such things as Lee’s Save the Baby, Von’s Pink Tablets, Canine Restorative Tablets, Goose Oil, Squills, and Jana’s favorite, Dr. LeGear’s Blister for Livestock. One crate informs us that “Mellin’s Food is the only Perfect Substitute for Mother’s Milk.” I wonder if any of these tablets or elixirs could calm our nerves.

 

We move on, through a wooded area, to a clearing that reveals the church and the schoolhouse. Inside the church, we start the tape. A very stern voice tells us, “You may sit down in a back pew and listen. Sitting and listening are what this building is all about.” So we sit and listen and take in the lovely, simple little church, the historic photos of Greenfield, and the surrounding area, as well as the Bible and hymnal collection. There is a little pump organ and, finally, Harry and Hugo can resist the temptation no longer. They cease their sitting and their listening and knock out some tunes, drowning out the narration. Hugo makes grandiose gestures as he hits the keys with a studied fury. “I’m playing with the controls!” he announces. Harry tickles the keys gently. The tape runs out. “Harry, could you please push red, then yellow?” I ask him. He does so flawlessly—he doesn’t seem to carry Jana’s and my burden of needing to please authority.

 

At the schoolhouse, the other tourists are leaving as we arrive. “The teacher is a little scary,” one of them confides. The teacher, whom Morse calls Miss Weatherby, stands at the head of the class, a mousy little mannequin with a condescending glare. We begin the tape and Miss Weatherby speaks, ordering us to sit down, be quiet, not chew gum, and so on. She seems very bossy. No wonder Jana feels compelled to stick the dunce cap on and sit in the corner.

Miss Weatherby tells us all the rules that teachers had to follow in her time. They sound like the restrictions at a harsh monastery. Teachers had to wear two petticoats, weren’t allowed to get married, and had to scrub all the floors of the school themselves. No wonder Miss Weatherby is so cross. She warns that teachers could discipline with a hickory stick and then breaks into a wavering rendition of “School Days.” The high notes aren’t quite there—nor the low notes, for that matter.

 

Harry provides the necessary comic relief. “It’s time for recess, everyone!” he announces as the lilting voice fades. We decide that recess means heading over to what will surely be the kids’ favorite place, the candy and toy store.

“Look at the candy!” Hugo yells when we enter. He thinks he’s finally hit the jackpot. “All these look so good, I don’t know which candy to eat first!”

 

Thankfully, all the treats are behind the glass cases, keeping excited little boys from attempting to partake—which is probably for the best, since I’m sure the candy has been sitting there for more than a decade and is by now more potent than Canine Restorative Tablets. All the toys and games are also beyond reach and, thank God for small favors, so is the Moxie. I’m particularly intrigued by the aptly titled Crazy Traveller, which the box proclaims is “a comical and exciting game.” There’s also an unusual monkey doll whose face is a painted gourd.

 

We head next to the butcher shop, where I hope old-period meat will be on display behind the counters. I am disappointed. There is a recipe for making sausage, but no invitation to use the equipment.

 

“My name is Mr. Butchie!” says Harry, exhibiting an unexpected enthusiasm for the butcher shop and interrupting my perusal of the giant bologna-making vat. “I’m the butcher around here.” He has affected a funny, foreign accent of confusing origin. Hugo goes along with the ruse, pretending to be a customer who doesn’t know what anything is, including the scale (something he probably inherited from his mother). Mr. Butchie has to explain everything. Eventually, he gives us a bologna-making demonstration and hands us some to try, telling us it is made of “pork and this and that.” Hugo then threatens to eat Mr. Butchie and begins running around a pole, chasing his prey. The whole thing has degenerated into a Marx Brothers routine. I’m glad that these family trips can add material to the boys’ growing comedy repertoire.

 

When we turn on the tape in the plumbing and die casting building, the voice blasts out at high volume. “Why are these all on high?” Jana asks and turns it down a bit. As if on cue, Waine Morse runs in, makes a beeline to the tape player, and turns it back up. “What’s wrong with this?” he asks himself and then turns to us. “How are we?” he asks. “Just fine,” we meekly answer. I smile and turn to look at some posters from Greenfield Tool and Die, with slogans like “All this and gauges, too!” The vibrant color and swanky layouts suggest we’re not in 1895 any longer but rather 1950.

 

Morse walks out. He seems to be checking on his village. He stares at the ground for a moment, then bends down and picks up a little rock. He studies it for a while, as if he doesn’t understand where it came from or why it is on the ground, and then tosses it to the side, over a fence and out of Old Greenfield Village. As he is doing this, our narrator is describing a threading machine. She concludes by saying, “Bear in mind that civilization hangs on a thread. This tape is over, press the stop button, then rewind and press the stop button again.”

 

Could this be the secret credo that moved Morse to build his village, a belief that the world is teetering out of control and the only solution is to fashion your own world out of your own sense of order? Jana asked him earlier how he gathered his collection, and he simply replied, “This is my personal project.” Some might call Morse a control freak, and perhaps he is. But I think it takes that sort of person to build something of the magnitude that Morse has achieved all by himself. He’s built his own community, one that actually could be self-sufficient. To twist a popular phrase, it’s Waine Morse’s world, we’re just visiting it. But that’s what makes Old Greenfield Village worth the stop.