ALDEN &045; Ila Schmidt, 83, remembers her mother in the ’20s and ’30s yelling at people for eavesdropping on the 12-connection party phone line her family used. Too many neighbors listening at the same time lowered the sound level.

&uot;I remember my mother saying ‘I wish they’d

hang up so I could hear.’&uot;

Schmidt is a volunteer at the Alden Community Museum, where an old switchboard reminded her of the subject. The machine looks like a small organ with holes and retractable cables instead of keys.

It’s one of the thousands of small reminders of what life was like in Alden and the rest of the country in the 20th and 19th centuries. The museum offers history, but not the history read in most textbooks. It’s the history of kitchens, of objects that may have made life easier, difficult or just different from how life is lived today.

But there’s another component. The volunteers, mostly in their 70s and 80s, offer a living history and interpretation of the objects.

Old upright Remington typewriters, adding machines, butter churners, grass weavers, chamberpots, wooden cabbage shredders

&045; things that people may have forgot existed, or never knew &045; fill the place to the ceiling.

&uot;I think people like to look at this stuff, but they wouldn’t want to use it,&uot; said Lois Hemmingsen, 76, &uot;We think life is hard now, but look at what they had to deal with.&uot; Lois said when she was born her house was new, and had indoor plumbing and electricity, but pointing up at the row of gas lamps, she said many of her friends as children didn’t have the same conveniences.

For some, a visit requires imagining a life that they have never experienced. But for most of the volunteers, there’s first-hand knowledge of many of the artifacts.

&uot;We can’t seem to interest the 40-to-60 people. We get the 70, 80 and 90 people,&uot; Ruben Schmidt, 82, said.

He said there is one woman in her 60s, and another in her 40s, but all other volunteers are older than 70. &uot;You have to be a certain age before it starts appealing to you. Young kids like it. They’re interested but they’re not too much help.&uot;

Lori Nelson, 46, said she helps out because of her interest in history. But even some of the things she has used in her lifetime are in the museum, like a stovetop toaster. &uot;It doesn’t take long … It doesn’t take too long for something to be here.&uot;

On Friday her daughter, Krystle, 10, and Hemmingsen’s granddaughter, Courtney, 10, took a visitor on a tour. They admitted that they don’t know what half of the stuff was, but seemed to enjoy fiddling with the switchboard, playing with an antique car horn in the basement and laughing at the table crumb brush and tray set upstairs.

The museum, on Broadway in downtown Alden, is open from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Fridays.

(Contact Tim Sturrock at tim.sturrock@albertleatribune.com or 370-3438.)