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Sarasota Family's Museum Full Of 'Crap,' Son Says

Sarasota Herald-Tribune photo by ROD MILLINGTON

Bucko's Museum has an eclectic collection of items that includes everything from Japanese glass floats to rusty meat grinders.

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By BILLY COX of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune

Published: December 26, 2007

SARASOTA - What do you call Japanese glass floats, used fire extinguishers, rusty meat grinders, at least one dynamite plunger, a 1924 Dodge Brothers electric hand-crank car that hasn't moved since 1977, moose antlers, gourds, air horns, farm tools, footlockers, heavy rotary phones and a filing cabinet that once contained the records of the federal case against Manuel Noriega -- all stashed under one roof?

"Crap," declares Willy Barrineau.

More formally known as Bucko's Museum, this is an exaggerated version of the quandary most people will find themselves facing at some point: what to do with a dead parent's collectibles.

"Look at this," Barrineau says with a hopeless shrug amid the dusty remnants of his father's idiosyncrasies, spread out on maybe 5,000 square feet of floor and shelf space. "I don't even know where to begin."

Because some of it might be valuable. Like, check out this 1934 New York auto tag, 4U13-41. It is the same number that led to the arrest of Richard Bruno Hauptmann, who was executed for the 1932 kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby. In fact, there is a brittle strip of typewritten text on the back stating this same plate came off Hauptmann's car. The weathered relic was discovered in a trunk Willy's dad bought in Sarasota years ago.

"But is it really the same one? I don't know. I don't know about most of this stuff. Dad took most of it to the grave," he says. "And it'd probably cost me a fortune to get it all appraised because there's just so much crap."

Rewind to 1959 to understand why Willy feels so overwhelmed. That was the year his dad, Jack D. "Bucko" Barrineau, opened an Army-Navy surplus store on Myrtle Street in Sarasota. Today, it is called Bucko's Office Furniture. Back then, its motto was "Anything Everything."

Clearly, military clearance items were just the beginning for Bucko. His 82-year-old widow, Elizabeth, remembers the halcyon, cross-country, flea-market vacations in search of the weird, the obscure and the obsolete.

"We went as far away as Newfoundland," she says. "We were closer to Ireland than to Sarasota."

She didn't even like antiques. Not at first. The hankering crept up on her through repetitive exposure, like a slow fever. Soon enough, she found herself wedged between unwieldy New England lobster traps on long van rides home that grew increasingly satisfying.

Her vocabulary became more arcane. When she talked about contraptions such as pig oilers ("They would rub up against it, like they were getting a massage, and they would get oil all over them, maybe to ward off insects?"), few could challenge her.

Bucko's "Anything Everything" creed evolved into public spectacle. The last time the old Dodge was street legal, when Jimmy Carter was president, it conked out in the middle of an Independence Day parade.

"Exhaust was coming up through the floorboards," Elizabeth recalls. "It was lucky someone didn't die of asphyxiation."

Truth be told, Elizabeth doubts Bucko harbored financial motivations. He gave away more stuff than she can name.

"I think he did it purely for customers to look at and enjoy," she says.

As his inventory grew more eclectic and commercial, Bucko's standards for amusement got broader. For every singular or noteworthy addition to his collection -- a mint-condition train whistle or vintage clanging bell or nifty railroad lantern -- came a windfall of kitsch.

"Oh, there was just so much junk, so much trash, like those horrible fish that sing when you walk by," says Elizabeth, who was hardly immune to the lure of dubious artifacts. Such as the punch-card voting machine immortalized during the hanging chad presidential election fiasco in 2000.

She picked up one of American democracy's greatest embarrassments a few years ago for $20. She makes no excuses. She says, "I couldn't resist."

Times changed. The military surplus warehouse evolved into the office furniture store. The three children followed their parents into the business. They expanded the size of the showroom, where incongruity was the prevailing vibe:

Foot-pump washing machines, artillery shells, wooden wheelchairs, snowshoes and an autographed photo of Buddy Ebsen ("with warmest wishes to you and yours") competed with polished desks, credenzas and conference tables.

"Back in the '80s, when we were on vacation and the kids were taking over the business," Elizabeth recalls, "they gathered all the antiques, unbeknownst to us, and moved them into the museum. Not that it was ever really a bona fide museum. I mean, we never, ever charged admission. But we understood. It had to be done."

You can see the results today when you enter the furniture showroom. Over yonder on the east side is a doorway beneath a sign that reads "Bucko's Museum Restrooms."

But daughter Suzy Esber ventures it was Dad's garrulous personality, not the curiosities, that drew people. The place became a community fixture, even a magnet, for people wanting to drop off their own junk, unsolicited and often anonymous.

One year, the museum was an officially designated business destination for students attending Sarasota Vocational Center.

"We used to have these 'classrooms on wheels' come by and people would get out and look," Esber says. But when her parents went on vacation, "I'd get stuck doing the museum tours, and there might be 50, 80, 100 people at a time. It was distracting. But I guess if they walked away with a sense of awe, that was a great thing."

Although Bucko's Museum looks chaotic at first glance, there are pockets of order to it. Sleds are bunched together from their mounts on a wall that also hosts a display of seriously rusted farm tools. Old Royal, Underwood and Smith Corona typewriters share the same shelf space. The first computers -- Burroughs and Victor tabulators -- sit in clusters.

Willy Barrineau, at 59, is Bucko's oldest child. He is looking to retire in a couple of years. Maybe he'll sell the whole museum, lock, stock and barrel, to the highest bidder. It shouldn't be that hard to do.

Shouldn't be.

Bucko had been on dialysis for three years when he died at age 82 in January 2006. He left the disposition of his life's work unsettled, although his inclinations were clear.

"We didn't expect him to die. It was kind of unexpected, but I don't know why, exactly," says Willy as he relaxes next to the massive hulk of an exhausted spotlight.

"He was always saying, 'Let's sell this place.' I remember him taking stuff out of here and putting it in the showroom. Then, gradually, it would disappear back into the museum. I'd ask him about it, and he'd say, 'Oh, we can't sell this' or 'We can't sell that.'"

Elizabeth tries not get too sentimental. She has plenty of memories crowding her attic, and in the real world of limited floor space, somebody has to squeeze the trigger.

"It's worth," she says, "whatever you can get for it."

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