Looking back across the years, from my comfortable perch here in Mouse Heaven, I am finally able to admit that the Mickey Mouse Exhibit that took place at Bamberger's Department Store, in Newark New Jersey, was Amazing. Amazing for so many reasons! Reading some of these newspaper stories brings it back to life for me. They use words, like “extensive” and “remarkable”. I found those words amusing when I read them, 40 years ago. To me, the collection seemed anything but extensive, and with the exception that the carousel Mice that Bambergers bought for me, thank God, it was not expensive! I saw it all as modest, barely enough to pad out an exhibit. And yet, in retrospect, it really was rather remarkable. To think that I had amassed all these many objects, over the span of five short years, and did it on a shoestring.
That is a testimony to how Amazing the times were then, and also to my wife’s amazing patience and remarkable generosity, for she let me spend most of the little money that we had on Mickey. Amazing too, is the fact that I was ultimately willing to risk it all, risk all my precious Mickeys, to bring a touch of Christmouse Magic to an urban nightmare that was Newark, at that moment. God knows, I wouldn’t do it for money. But, in the end, I did it all for Mickey .... and Minnie, those big fat juicy carvings that once adorned a carousel in France, and now adorn Mouse Heaven, and are so adored by me.
The story of the Bamberger show is one that, one day, I intend to tell and document, with fast fading colored slides of the whole thing. I’d better hurry, for I am fading fast as well. Meanwhile, if you’d like to read a little more about the carousel carvings that made the whole show possible, Click HERE, and it will take you to the proper page of “Greetings from Mouse Heaven.”
Below, I am including just a few of the many ads and articles that appeared in local papers. There are many more that, at the moment, seem to be hiding, but I will add them, when I find them.
