The Drowned Violin by H. Mel Malton

Author:H. Mel Malton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dundurn
Published: 2006-09-02T04:00:00+00:00

Ten

The Kuskawa Pioneer Museum was set on a forty-acre piece of land next to Lookout Hill. It was a whole village, really, not just a museum. There were lots of old-fashioned buildings. Some had even been picked up and moved by truck from where they were originally. There were houses, a general store, a schoolhouse, an inn, a blacksmith’s shop and lots of farm animals. People walked around in costume pretending to be pioneers, making candles and soap and feeding the chickens, and you could join in yourself, if you wanted to. Alan, Ziggy and Josée had been there dozens of times, usually on school trips. The best time to go was near dark, when it got a little bit spooky. They always went at Hallowe’en.

The museum displays were kept in an old community hall building. Inside, it was all shiny wood—floors, walls and ceiling, and the sun blazed in the big windows. It was echoey and hot and smelled of furniture polish and old things. There were all sorts of displays set up about life in pioneer Kuskawa, with old logging equipment and clothing, machines and old-fashioned toys. Ziggy liked the logging display the best, because it had pictures of the nearby provincial park before all the really big trees were cut down. Josée’s favourite was the display of women’s clothes, long dresses and parasols, funny old boots and creaky corsets. Alan preferred the section about the old Laingford Jail. There were real handcuffs in a glass case, plus an old leather-covered notebook where some long- ago policeman had written down his case notes.

Alan led the group past all the usual displays to the one at the back of the museum. “It’s this one over here,” he said. A sign said “The Keewin Inn Era”. Two mannequins dressed in formal clothes danced in front of a backdrop that looked like a big porch looking out over a lake. “It doesn’t fit in with the pioneer stuff, so I guess that’s why they put it at the back,” he said. “It’s from the 1930s. There was a famous sort of dance hall place back then, on an island over on the other side of Steamboat Lake. They had big bands playing there, and people would come in their fancy boats.” There were hundreds of photographs, mostly of people dancing, but of musicians, too. Some of the pictures were close-ups of people who looked like movie stars, signed at the bottom.

“It closed in 1950,” Alan read aloud from one of the signs.

“Yeah—that place is a golf course now,” Monica said. “My dad goes there.”

A small café table was set up beside the dancer mannequins, made to look like they had just got up from a meal to have a waltz. Alan pointed to the place settings. “There, see? Like Mr. Sadler’s drinking glasses.”

All the plates had “Keewin Inn” written on them, and the glasses did, too. The silhouette logo on the dinnerware was of two people dancing under a crescent moon.

“Well, these museum glasses are still here, Alain, so I guess Mr.

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