When they were kids, John L. "Bud" Hutchings and J.B. Cooper remember, the Hutchings household was filled, it seemed, to the rafters.
Eggs of wild birds were kept under here and over there. Boxes and boxes stuffed with glittering minerals, primordial fossils and Indian arrowheads and artifacts filled nooks and corners. Stuffed birds posed quietly in the taxidermy shop."I went into his house sometimes," says Cooper, who as a boy lived just across the creek, "and I just wondered where they slept."
Hutchings' father, also named John, was Lehi's first door-to-door postman, walking miles and miles every day. But that didn't stop him from roaming the countryside, exploring, searching, finding things.
"On weekends and holidays and nights after school, I'd go with him either to the mountains or to the desert," says Bud Hutchings, now 71.
The senior Hutchings, who passed away in 1977 at age 88, "was an extremely knowledgeable guy," Cooper says. And an indefatigable collector. "This was a hobby, but it became more than a hobby."
By that he means Hutchings' passion became his family's passion.
But it also became a museum.
The John Hutchings Museum of Natural History is one of Lehi's points of pride. For almost four decades it was housed up the street. Today it pretty much fills the restored Veterans Memorial Building at 55 N. Center St., its home for the past two years.
The structure itself is a historic relic. Proposed in 1918 as a functional monument to the soldiers, sailors and marines of Lehi who served in the Great War, it became "the first municipal facility in America erected to the memory of World War I veterans," notes a plaque near the entrance. It included a Carnegie public library, the city offices (and the jail) as well as the central memorial hall.
The main entry continues to exhibit uniforms, clippings and diaries in tribute to those who fought overseas from the First World War to Desert Storm, as well as plaques honoring them. "These plaques have 991 names of people from Lehi," notes Bud Hutchings, the museum's co-director.
But in rooms to the left and the right repose the eclectic gatherings of John Hutchings, amplified by other exhibits and collections donated or lent to the museum.
"Of all the little museums I've ever been in," says Cooper, a museum guide, "this is the most diversified. And I've been in them from Alaska to Mexico."
Visitors discover an array of 19th century and turn of the century equipment and appliances, from woodworking tools to such kitchen utensils as lemon peelers and butter paddles, all understandably organized and enumerated. There are also handicrafts from a century ago, such as Mary Ann Davis' intricate framed sculpture of butterflies and flowers made from human hair.
A colorful bottle collection, backlit by a front window, gleams in a rainbow of colors: clear, blue, green and gold. They range from an old Coca-Cola container to a slightly purple bottle once filled with Quaker Maid whiskey.
The Indian room remembers a time when the Utah Valley and Utah Lake offered home and sustenance to thousands of Indians. The fossil room houses an intriguing collection of trilobites, brachiopods and dinosaur teeth, among other discoveries. Most were found in Utah, but some come from Wyoming, Ohio and other locales.
Historic exhibits outline the area's history. One remembers the Utah Sugar Co. factory. Other artifacts recall Lehi's importance as a mercantile center for the soldiers of Johnston's Army and Camp Floyd, established in Cedar Valley to the west following the "Utah War" of 1857.
Another old gun - once stolen from the museum but later recovered - is believed to have been the property of outlaw Butch Cassidy, found, says an exhibit note, "in Robbers Roost country with quilts and letters to Butch."
His father found the stubby rifle around the turn of the century, says Bud Hutchings, "before I was born." He later took it to Price, where Matt Warner, a former member of the Wild Bunch gang, had become a lawman.
Warner paused warily behind a slightly open door, gun in hand, wondering who the armed man approaching him might be. Hutchings identified himself, and Warner recognized the time-weathered weapon.
The broken gunsight had been repaired with a coin.
"That's my quarter," Warner said.
The John Hutchings Museum of Natural History, 55 N. Center St. in Lehi, is open 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Saturday. Admission is $2.50 adults, $2 students and senior citizens, $1.50 for children 12 and under. Group tours are available. For more information, call 768-7180.