If you had asked me 50 or so years ago what was in my courthouse collection, I would have thought you were nuts! What did I collect in those days? I collected rocks. Of course! Every kid collects rocks. The Beach Urchins would even collect rocks from gravel parking lots. And then there was my Shell Collection! This collection consisted of a single small box of carefully curated and polished shells purchased from some tourist trap by my great aunt Elizabeth down in Crazy Old Florida. Make no mistake. I am not being snarky about this. I loved that little shell collection deeply and kept it into my young adulthood. I finally got rid of that little shell collection (you’re welcome) but I could not quite follow through on that with The Commander’s shells, the ones she actually picked up on Florida beaches. I was about ready to take those shells over to the Scrap Box but I got cold feet and took them back up to the moomincabin instead.

And then there were my adult collections. Fabric anyone? Beads? I used those things for a really long time and then all of a sudden I sorta didn’t. I fell backwards into a full-time career just as The Commander began to need a wee bit more help, even though wild horses couldn’t make her admit to it. So I began to get rid of those collections. I’m not done with that yet, in fact I am a bit stalled, but I did make progress and my life continues on an upward trend to less baggage.

I collect very little these days and I don’t think that a Courthouse Collection is going to get me into very much trouble given that it’s “just” photos (but we won’t talk about my photo archive(s)). I can’t exactly put courthouses into the Landfill Dungeon.

I have three courthouses in my collection at this time. Hillsdale County, Lenawee County, and now Grand Traverse County. I could certainly add the beautifully restored Chippewa County courthouse except that I don’t think I have a picture of it from the outside. I have certainly spent a lot of time (including IN the courtroom, alas) there in the last few years.

It’s sad that so many of the old county courthouses have not been maintained or have been replaced by new modern buildings. I can’t remember if our own Washtenaw County courthouse is what’s called the Cheese Grater or if that’s another building but it does not in any way resemble the Grand Traverse County courthouse.

For the duration, I am collecting courthouse pics. The Great Lake State and hopefully some other states if I can ever get outta town… I love these old courthouses.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 22nd, 2016 at 7:20 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.