- Well, I've drawn a bit of attention.

I wave.

Some of them will wave back.

When they see me, they will wave back.

Come see my mini museum.

(bright music) This is my collection.

The canal people has allowed me to have brochures to hand out.

(bright music) We lived downtown in Lyons until I was five.

My older brother was born in New York City, then I was born in Ilion, and my younger brother was born in the apartment that we lived in in Lyons.

They called it the Poorhouse Lock Road and then this was the Poorhouse Lock because there was a road and that's how people got to the poorhouse, which was for people that didn't have anything.

Mother bought it in '43.

My father was in the service at the time.

He was in the Navy.

I loved it.

Resented it to a point because I wasn't a town kid and I didn't have a bike until I was 10, so if I went somewhere, I walked.

So I'd just wander around here and around the other part of my canal, the double chamber.

I would wave to the barges there.

In the '40s, barges went 24/7.

As the tugboats got by here, they would toot three times for the lock tender to know, we're almost there.

Do you know what it's like as a kid to hear the?

(mimics horn blaring) Three toots.

Scared the daylights out of us, you know?

For quite a while.

It didn't happen a lot, but enough to be memorable, yeah.

My father became a lock tender down here in the '50s.

He worked the night shift.

I would take a supper down.

I'd take a pail, lunch pail down for him.

No lights back then.

No traffic.

Very little traffic.

My brothers and I inherited.

As you can tell, did very little.

The knotty pine wall board, my father put in, the hardwood floors, my father put in.

Everything just stayed.

We just lived.

Survived here.

Oh gee, it's changed so much.

(gentle music) I used to ride a bicycle a lot and I met some people when I'd be down by the lock and they were going through or something.

I chit chatted a little bit.

I said, "Oh, come on.

Go and look at my house.

That's part of the old lock."

(gentle music) When I started to share the story, thought, hmm.

Then found people were interested.

(bright music) Just the idea of the past history and that there was such an abundance of it right here.

I've had odds and ends over time and oh gee, that's got to do with the house.

And it just kind of got into the joy of it.

The fun of it.

Found this horseshoe outside once, stuck it on a branch.

The branch grew over it so that it was embedded.

Sometime later I found out it wasn't a horseshoe that was embedded in the branch.

It was a mule shoe, so it is authentic.

(gentle music) Then I started to think as the older I get, there's not too many people my age that have that kind of a memory.

I'm glad I have been able to tell people about my small amount of history, but that can always open the door to somebody else's bigger find.

(cheerful music)