A Friendship Found Through Stories and Collections

I was sitting in my home, doing nothing really, when the telephone suddenly rang. Little did I know what was in store for me by picking up that phone. At first, it seemed innocent enough; some guy had found my number and needed help with his computer. Being a computer consultant, I was glad to help. It seemed that his computer had crashed and all his information and images had been lost. After calling the manufacturer of his computer for support and spending many hours trying this and that, he was finally told to reformat his hard drive. Fortunately, he asked one simple question: Will I lose anything? Yes, of course you will, but this is the only way. Probably from the support person’s point of view, this was true. You see, they are typically just following a set of instructions given to them. Before doing this, he felt that he would try to find someone locally to see what could be done. This is when I picked up my phone.

To make a long story short, he brought the computer to my place, and we sat together just about the entire day while the information was being recovered from his computer. During this time, we talked, we ate, we laughed, and just formed a friendship. As the information and images were extracted from his computer, it became apparent to me that this was no large number of family pictures.

It was, in fact, a lifelong collection. You see, Mel (Mel Birnkrant) has the largest collection of Mickey Mouse and comic character memorabilia there is. He has amassed this collection, and now his entire house is literally a museum. Not one that you can go and tour, though. After all, this is his home, where he lovingly cares for every item and is very protective of it all—and rightfully so.