A step back in time Man’s home is a personal museum of childhood memories
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emember added in 2008. A plethora of old toys, lunch boxes, kids’ bubwhen songs ble bath bottles, records, children’s books and even an old 1980s were on clothing rack from the McDonald’s McKids campaign, which old 45s, when children eaHollis relocated from the Sears department store in downtown By Aaron Tanner gerly awaited Saturday morning Birmingham. Photos by Brad Daly for their favorite cartoons on netRemember Captain Kangaroo, Romper Room, Bozo the work TV, and Rock City barns domClown, The Flintstones and family shows like Hee Haw and Boinated the American roadside? Those nanza? Hollis has these items. Downstairs, you’ll find old grocery memories are items, cereal boxes, restaurant menus, captured inside tourist brochures, road maps, a replia time capsule ca of Hollis’ childhood bedroom and that is disguised as even a Christmas display with a giant a 1960s-era ranch animated Frosty the Snowman and a house off of Alabama moose with a rotating head. Highway 5 in the Walker After reading a magazine article in a County town of Dora. dentist’s office in 1981 featuring a man Tim Hollis is a writer who collected many of the same toys and collector who turned from Hollis’ childhood, Hollis was his childhood home into a eager to start his own collection in an museum of pop culture from effort to recapture his youth. children who grew up in the “I thought it would be fun to rebuild ’50s, ’60s and ’70s. the collection I had as a kid,” Hollis The tour begins in a room Tim Hollis gestures toward part of a sign from the Bob Sykes says. Although there are some items with souvenirs from Six Flags BBQ that was in Sumiton from about 1970 until the early 1980s. he wishes were in his collection, such over Georgia when the park first as a Mr. Do Bee tricycle from Romper opened in 1967. Also on display is the typewriter on which Room, Hollis gleefully says he has most of the items he had as a Hollis learned to type; a coffee table filled with his 29 books child in the museum. on pop culture and Southern tourism; and the computer Today, when he visits antique stores, he’s just looking for anywhere he crafts his next book. thing that catches his eye, or something that might make a good But the real magic is kept in the two-story addition that he display piece. But he’s not collecting nearly as much as he once Hollis’ parents’ bed, with his own Peanuts sheets and bedspread, which dates to about 1969.