A Boy and His Blog: Old Mill Pond Museum in Lindale, Texas

My Mom, who is the wonderful field trip coordinator for the TACHE group in Tyler, scheduled another field trip, this time to the Old Mill Pond Museum in Lindale, Texas. After everybody arrived, they split us up into two groups. The group I was in went to the Mill Pond Museum first. Inside it was designed as an old-timey watermill. First, we got to see an old drug pharmacy and doctor's / dentist's tools. Next, we saw an area with a lot of old axes, saws, and blades. Then, we saw the cooking area, here there were many old fashioned cooking instruments used long ago. My favorite part of this area was the nut crackers. They were in the shapes of parrots, alligators, and squirrels. When we were done with this part, we saw the cleaning section. In this area they had a huge collection of old irons that were really heavy. Here they also had washing boards and other laundry utensils. After this area we saw musical instruments such as zithers, banjos, and a 115 to 120 year old organ.

Since the place is called Old Mill Pond, we got to see the water wheel and learned how it ran. I was surprised when they told us that the big wheel did not take much water to make it run. But I was sad to learn they do not use the power from the wheel any longer because it is too much work. Next, we saw the farming section, here there were old gardening tools, a long metal pole with spikes which was used for drying corn (you would stick the corn on the spikes and later you would have dry corn for seed or feed). Dry corn can be kept longer because it will not spoil as fast. Also, there was a board with little pegs sticking out of it you would stick the pegs in the ground and it would leave holes for planting tomatoes. These along with many others were some of the tools in the farming section.

Then, we went up into a little loft area and saw a train replica of old Lindale. The train was not running the day we were there, I hope to go back and see it running sometime. After that we saw old school books and desks. We saw tools they would have used a long time ago for building, like saws, hammers, and wrenches. Next we were shown nesting houses for chickens.

We got a tour of the property that the land was on; here I learned that there once was an old brick factory where the museum is located. We saw several buildings that had old tractors and farm equipment inside. We were shown a replica of a old church. We had lunch at the picnic area. After lunch we got to spend more time looking around in the museum. I had a really fun time and I'm looking forward to going again.

If you have not been, I suggest that you go. You can tell by how many pictures I took, I really liked the trip. Thanks Mom!