"Wallace Barrow, known as 'Wheel' to his closest associates, a lifelong Camperdene resident, once visited the museum as a child, never thinking he'd eventually be running it as President of the Museum Association," wrote Alice Armour Armstrong. "The Association is a private corporation composed of twenty-five trustees and corporators who meet once a year to elect officers, and an executive committee to oversee library operations. The Association runs the museum, which serves the town of Camperdene but is not owned by it."

"'The four winds blow --east, west, south, and north -- and still the Association has not changed much,' said Barrow, who lives next door to the library in the Barrow Company Funeral Home, a firm founded by his grandfather. "By God!' Barrow exclaimed, "I've been around. I've traveled. Wherever I travel -- and I include Europe -- I never forget the Museum. I've been to Europe seven times. My Swedish wife speaks Swedish. The two of us go all over, going into buildings and looking things over, you know,' Barrow was quoted as saying.

Three days later, Neil delivered a speech before the Camperdene Rotary Club, talking of the importance of the elastics and suspenders industries in the early history of Camperdene. He spoke of Simon and Louisa Spagnoli and how Simon had become a suspenders manufacturer and philanthropist, with a focus on religious and educational institutions and causes. Neil spoke of how Simon's wife Louisa had almost single-handedly brought the Museum of the Year 1912 into being in the year 1913.

Rotary Club member Wheel Barrow was not present at the Rotary Club meeting when Neil spoke. He did show up for the first meeting that year of the museum corporation, proposing to have the museum be closed every Thursday, all day, between February and September. He proposed hiring temporary "Designated Help" for filling the places of staff members out sick or on vacation. The Designated Helpers were named: (1) Wallace Barrow's wife Candyce; (2) Captain Cunnigham; and (3) Carla Spagnoli." The proposals were approved unanimously. Neil proposed developing a new Museum of the Year 1912 logo. He had brought in a sketch he'd made with the help of Friends' President Nick Wentworth. Carla Spagnoli requested an alternate design. A Museum Logo Design Committee was proposed, and adopted, with Carla Spagnoli at its head. Within the space of six days, the committee would meet, reject all of the logo ideas, and then disband.

At the same meeting, Barrow formally acknowledged a recent Christmas gifts to the museum, a television donated by the Camperdene Media Cable Company. He said he had a friend, a past president of the Rotary Club, Roland Henselmeier, who'd told Barrow he'd donate a stand from the Arts & Crafts era, "probably from 1912," to put the TV on.

The next day, the Camperdene Daily Journal carried an article about community service organizations -- the Lions Club, the Rotary Club, and so on. It focused its attention on the Rotary Club, quotong one Roland Henselmeier at great length. "The results of their contributions are visible all over town. Henselmeier, past president of the Rotary Club, said that in the past year the Club built a new pavillion at the Town Park, awarded scholarships to Camperdene High School Students, gave over $3,000.00 to the Camperdene Public Library, and donated a coffee table dating either from the year 1911 or the year 1912 to the Museum of the Year1912."

Neil wrote to Roland Henselmeier immediately, informing him the library hadn't actually received any table from the Rotary Club, asking for help in determining what kind of table the Rotary Club believed it had contributed. Henselmeier told Neil it had been a nightstand, but he in fact had no idea when that might have happened or where it had been put, if anywhere.

At a special emergency meeting of the Rotary Club, Roland Henselmeier stood up amid his fellow Rotarians and denounced the Museum of the AYear 1912 -- especially Neil's "provocative" letter. Corporation president Wallace Barrow, present at the session, was not pleased. He departed the meeting in a huff. He phoned Association Vice President Captain Cunningham and arranged to meet with him prior to the closing of the Library and Museum that night. The two entered ominously. They announced to Neil they needed to speak with him. He closed the library and sat down with them at one of the long tables in the periodicals room. He was instructed, plain and simple, to write an apology to Roland Henselmeier -- post haste.

"Mr. Barrow," Neil responded. "I did nothing out of line. Mr. Henselmeier has no right or reason to speak poorly of this institution." But Barrow again demanded Neil apologize to Roland Henselmeier, to set the matter right.

Neil could not reached Roland Henselmeier by phone. He wrote a polite, brief note: "I intended a courteous inquiry, but I see now that I as much took you by surprise as I myself had been taken by surprise. Now we're both stuck with a misunderstanding, and I apologize. This matter pains me very much. I am sorry things took the turn they did."

Roland Henselmeier responded, "I appreciate very much your letter and look forward to continued efforts in support of the Museum of the Year 1912. Sometimes things go astray, but most often, as in this instance, can be put back on track to the advantage of our interests. I accept your comments and look forward to future contacts as well as correcting the oversight that gave rise to our communication."

In the meantime, a new Corporation member was assigned by Wallace Barrow to the newly formed Artifacts Committee: Mr. Roland Henselmeier. In one of the Museum display cases Henselmeier boldly installed materials he had collected in his travels in Alaska in the 1950s along with his wife's 1920s umbrella collection and several of her most prized antique kitchen utensils.

To Neil's surprise, Minna turned out to be a huge fan of the display of Mrs. Roland Henselmeier's 1920s umbrella's and kitchen gear and Mr. Henselmeier's 1950s Alaskan souvenirs. Though that irked Neil, he also felt deepening tranquility arising from their mystical bond -- the peculiar struggle and aggravation of their marriage, their sharing through thick and thin, their surviving. Minna felt no pain at all from things that just about crushed Neil, whose avocation seemed avid, dogged recognition of wrongs -- a vigilante, ever enmeshed in discerning what was evil from what was good.

Henselmeier next installed a "Salute to America" exhibit of "popular culture artifacts" -- a plastic hot dog, a baseball glove with a tennis ball, an American flag, patriotic medallions, cross-country maps, a three-cornered Revolutionary War soldier's cap, a Coca Cola bottle, and Chinese firecrackers.

Now Captain Cunningham was headline news: "Powderkeg Cunningham -- Preserving the Past."

"Dick 'Powderkeg' Cunningham is sitting in an alcove of the Museum of the Year 1912," wrote Alice Armour Armstrong for the Camperdene Daily Journal, "recounting why it took him so long to make his mark in Camperdene. 'I distrust these pretentious clowns who move to town and immediately start meddling,' he says carefully. He tells of his moving to town twenty years ago, when his six children were toddlers. 'Now they're all grown,' he chuckles wryly. Bearded, with a pipe poking out from one of the front pockets of his plaid flannel shirt, Powderkeg's salt-and-pepper eyebrows bob up and down over his bifocals as he talks. As a Town Meeting member, clerk of the Conservation Commisssion, Vice President of the Museum Association, chair of the town's historical commission, and as an active member of the Camperdene Historical Society, he says he's quietly gone about becoming 'unofficial guardian of the town's heritage.' Powderkeg, who also sweeps and vacuums at the Unitarian church, says he's lucky to have a wife with a good assembly line job at the elastic company, enabling him to dedicate himself to his 'higher calling'."