So…this isn’t how I thought I’d be using my degree in history. Still, I don’t exactly hate the situation either. I’m one of exactly two people working at the ladder museum, and I’m at least learning some stuff about Australia’s ladder-related history. There’s a lot of it, funnily enough.
Still, there aren’t exactly tons of visitors either, which is why I thought I’d compile a book. A tour guide doesn’t have much to do when there aren’t any people to guide, so I might as well get to work on our future gift shop. It has to be really good, though. Like, one of those glossy, coffee table books that you have sitting on your coffee table, that visitors will pick up and flip through while you’re in the other room making the coffee. And then you come back with the coffee and they say something in regards to the folding platform ladders on page seventeen, and then the conversation turns towards how folding platform ladders were brought to Australia in the late 1930s, and they actually made a great contribution towards the war effort. And then the visitor says they didn’t know that, and there you go. A conversation starter if there ever was one.
But the book has to look REALLY good, because it’ll be fighting for coffee table space amongst all those kitten and puppy books that are in the same category. This book has to make its way to more than just the ladder enthusiasts, even though this job has taught me that they do exist in greater numbers than you’d think. No, really. I now know at least ten or so people who’d take a coffee table book on aluminium trestles and proudly place it in the middle of their living room, hoping people will ask about it. But I’d like the book to be good enough to reach a wider audience than just them.
-Dale