Elmer's Quirky Book

I promised an oddity from Elmer so here goes. But before I get started I want you to know that I’ve coined a new word for books and paper that defy classification and are so wonderfully quirky, they may be of value only to the quirkiest of the quirky. Henceforth all such items, regardless of derivation, shall be called Elmerisms. If the word resonates for you, by all means take it. If enough people do, Elmer will be immortal.

So then, today’s Elmerism is a homemade travel guide which at first glance would lead you to believe it was created by a child for completion of the ubiquitous assignment How I Spent My Summer Vacation. But a more careful look shows that it was written and compiled by John Skelton, who at the time of creation was custodian of the Avebury Museum and Ancient Monument in Wiltshire,England. By custodian I believe he may have meant curator, as Mr. Skelton’s interest and knowledge of the subject seems to transcend the broom closet and its accoutrements. On the back of the book he carefully recorded the hours of the site’s operation, but neglected to put a date anywhere, so I had to do a little internet sleuthing. I had hoped that by typing in Skelton’s name on google I would get a match, but all I found were John Skelton the English poet and a few John Skeltons on Facebook. There was nothing to do but to read Mr. Skelton’s work.

So I settled in with it last night,and sure enough, a clue emerged – two clues actually. The first was a reference to Alexander Keiller to whom Skelton accredited the museum which bears his name and its collection of artifacts from the Windmill Hill habitation site. Keiller, whose family made a fortune in the marmalade business, bought the site in the 1930’s and began serious restoration and unearthing of buried stones. Skelton noted that Keiller died in 1955, so of course the homemade travel guide came into being after that. On then to the second clue.

“There is still two-thirds of Avebury Stone Circle to excavate and many more will be the finds of great importance that will tell a further story of what went on inside the Great Prehistoric Temple of Avebury. One day it will all be restored to its former grandeur and People will come in their thousands to see it from far and wide. It is the most important prehistoric site in Britain,” Mr. Skelton wrote near the end of his book.

A google search on recent excavations easily provided a plausible time frame for the book. After the 30’s no more digging was done on the site until 1969 when a new school was built close by. After that it wasn’t until 1982 that an excavation commenced to produce carbon dating material and environmental data. The third, and so far last exploration, was undertaken in April 2003 when a 100 ton stone, the largest in the UK, was discovered seven feet underground. Later that same year the National Trust found 15 buried megaliths and identified their size, in what direction they lay, and where in the stone circle they belong. So that means that somewhere between 1955 and 1969 Mr. Skelton took pen to paper. Skelton’s work was a gift presented to a Karl and Mrs. Cerny who may have been planning to visit England, perhaps from the United States. Whether they made the trip, or not, they must have sufficiently valued their guide enough to squirrel it away, which is really a lovely thing in our throw-away world.

But does the book have monetary value? I find it hard to believe that it does. Nothing in the manuscript is new and undocumented and, while wonderful, similar photographs exist in abundance. The book’s value lies in the passion of one man who loved his work, in the wonder of a site he deemed greater than Stonehenge, and in the appreciation of a second man who bought it at a garage sale somewhere in the greater Cleveland area because it spoke to him. And now it speaks to me too, so I guess it’s my turn to take up the mantel of custodian and save an Elmerism from the recycling center.