What a waste. While going to Ball State, I spent all that time near Muncie and never made it to "only regitered jar museum in the world," and now it's going away:
MUNCIE — Philip Robinson sat in his living room, his face appearing very tired although it was still morning.
“It's time to let go,” he said of his collection of more than 4,000 fruit jars and 58 kerosene lanterns that he recently turned over to Greg Spurgeon, a Rosedale jar collector.
Spurgeon will be selling the items that used to fill the Robinson Jar Museum in Muncie — valued at about $300,000 — at auctions and on eBay.
“I will get 75 percent and he will get 25 percent,” Robinson said slowly, explaining the terms of a legal agreement between the two men, both longtime members of the Midwest Antique Fruit Jar and Bottle Club.
Robinson, 85, decided to close the museum — the only registered jar museum in the world — because of his battle with prostate cancer.
Oh, the tragedy. First, Indiana loses the Lincoln Museum, and now this. Too bad. I grew up with jars and, besides their intended use of allowing one to eat vegetables all winter long, they have two uses the museum might not have highlighted: carrying around illegal liquor and, in an emergency situation, such as a long car trip, collecting the body's processing of same.
