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There were cars made in Wayne before Ford? Yes! The first was made by a man named Charles Collier, a Civil War veteran, he moved to Wayne around 1900 and opened a bicycle repair shop at the corner of Brush and Newberry. Known as a tinkerer, Collier put bicycle tires on a buggy...

“I only have one wrinkle,” Jeanne Calment of Arles, France, once said. “And I’m sitting on it.” As you might surmise—just from that quote alone, Calment wasn’t the kind of woman who bit her tongue. But, then again, when you’ve lived to see the age of 122 like Calment did, I think...

It was announced in August 1950 that Ford would build a new plant just west of Wayne in what was then Nankin Township. The new plant would be built on the Stellwagen farm, on the south side of Michigan Avenue. The Stellwagen’s had come from Germany in the 1850s and settled there,...

Has your household’s cache of leftover Easter candy been depleted yet? Back when my kids were really little, I used one of my favorite treats as “filler” for their Easter baskets—much to my kids’ dismay: “Oh, darn! That’s right! You despise Hershey’s Special Dark! Sorry, I keep...

Jell-O. Kleenex. Onesies. Popsicle. Q-Tips. Sharpie. We might not realize it, but we use proprietary eponyms—when a brand name becomes synonymous with a particular item—all the time. It doesn’t seem to happen so much anymore—then again, we hear Just google it a lot these days....

The history of theaters in Wayne begins with the Palace Opera House, which was a one-story meeting hall with a raised stage at one end. It was located about where Bakers Acre is on Michigan Avenue. Dances, speakers, political rallies, and high school graduations were held here...

I openly admit it: I am a reluctant beneficiary of technology. I like the smell, feel, and sound of turning a weathered page of a hardcover book. I prefer writing my lists on the backs of discarded bill envelopes or pieces of scrap paper as opposed to taking advantage of my...

For the past year or so we have been working hard at the museum to digitize our collections and get them online for all to see. So far we have scanned in over 15,000 photographs, slides, negatives and digital images. Many of these images have never been seen before and show...

Health insurance. Gas prices. A Netflix subscription. Show me something that’s not going up in cost, and I’ll sell you one of my tiny yet beautiful islands near Italy’s Amalfi Coast. (Spoiler: I own no such property.) The point I’m attempting to make here, my dear reader, is one...

At first blush, your response may be, “Of course not.” In all seriousness, don’t we all yearn for something better in one area of our lives or another? A nicer car. A bigger home. Less credit card debt. Or perhaps you measure success in a manner that isn’t quantifiable with...