Unique collections now on display in Davisons' window

By Steve Moyer

Nevada Daily Mail

An old adage says that a person's eyes are the windows to the soul. For a retail store the front window display helps show the store's soul to passersby and hopefully draw them into the store to purchase something.

Passersby the Davison Shoe window will notice a display of antique irons and washing implements, a collection of handmade canes and some musical instruments displayed in the front window of the store.

The items are all owned by local residents and there is a story behind each of the artifacts displayed. Store owner Marvin Davison asked several residents to provide the items to display during Bushwhacker Days and for some time afterwards. Gene and Karen Story, Marion Shrimplin, the Rev. Hubert Fox, the Rev. John Nichols and Davison himself contributed items to the display, which covers several windows.

The musical instruments are easy to explain -- the theme of this year's Bushwhacker celebration was celebrating America's musical roots. The antique irons and the canes are somewhat harder to figure out but the large shoe is a natural for the window.

The super-sized footwear isn't just window dressing -- it was made to fit an actual person, Robert Wadlow, who stood 8 feet, 11.09 inches tall. Wadlow was a representative of a shoe company and his presence guaranteed attention. Davison said Wadlow had once been in Nevada on business.

"I saw a picture once where he was standing outside Zion's Shoe store on the south side of the Square, and he was clear up above the window there," Davison said. "That's one of the shoes made for him, it's a size 28 and a half."

The canes are made by Fox, who took up making them as a hobby, and according to Davison, Fox doesn't sell them.

"Reverend Fox makes all those," Davison said. "He said one day he just decided to start making them. Some of the wood --he was in Thailand as a missionary, he and his wife for some years -- and some of the wood came from there, some from different places and a couple of them came out of his back yard where he lives now, here in Nevada. All those were handmade by him."

The instruments displayed by Shrimplin each have something to make them special in his eyes.

A mandolin is probably the strangest instrument in his collection.

"That's an unusual instrument. It was made in 1929," Shrimplin said. "I haven't had it very long, I lucked onto it. They had a church bazaar over at the Methodist Church and I went over there. I went into this one room and there that thing was. I said, 'How much for that?' and they said '10 bucks,' and I said I'd take it. I cleaned it up and tuned it up and finally got it in tune. I can't play it very good but it's more of a show piece than a music instrument, in my opinion."

Shrimplin's display also includes a tenor banjo, which differs from the traditional banjo because it only has four strings. There also is an arch-top guitar and the first instrument Shrimplin ever owned, a ukulele.

Shrimplin said, "I couldn't afford a guitar so I found this one and it was pretty cheap so I bought it, I was still in high school then. I remember Ray Darlington and another fellow and I were in a band and they had a carnival and we played a show at the carnival. I played the ukulele and sang, I learned a song called 'Making Love Ukulele Style.'"

Other items are mostly irons and accessories to help dry clothes. Story said most of them are his wife's and he wasn't aware of just how many antiques they had until they started moving.

"What I can tell you is we moved," Story said. "We didn't know we had an iron collection until we moved and found out we had a bunch of them. What happened was you find some here and you find some someplace else and one thing and another, then you have a collection."

One of the items is a crimper with a flat bed and a roller.

"I think the crimper was used on ruffles and such," Story said. "Men's cuffs and necks used to have ruffles there and that's what them crimpers were for, to iron them."

There are several kinds of irons in the display, and several different methods were used for heating them up. Before many areas got electrical service, people still wanted their clothes pressed and these irons all work without electricity.

Sad irons usually had several bottom sections and one handle. The bottom sections would be placed on a stove to heat up. When one got too cold to iron, it would be placed back on the stove to reheat and another bottom used until it also cooled. The first might still need heating, so a third iron was put into rotation to avoid having to wait.

One of the irons has a chimney that resembles a faucet attached to it. Hot coals were put into the iron to keep it warm and the chimney gave the smoke someplace to exit. The third type of iron is a gas powered iron. White gas, a type of fuel often used in camp lanterns, is burned to warm the iron.

Davison said the display was designed to go with Bushwhacker Days, everything displayed showed some aspect of Nevada and Vernon County life, now or in the past, and those who participated seemed to enjoy sharing their items for public view.

"We asked them to bring the stuff up. and they brought people up to show them the windows," Davison said. "It's kind of neat to do something like that. We tried to tie it in because that is the theme of Bushwhacker Days this year -- music of the years past."