I learned a couple weeks ago that in the sixties and early seventies there was a pharmacist here in Grand Rapids by the name of Middleton who collected 16mm films. In the basement of his drugstore he kept a library of everything from school instructional films to local films to major features, and would rent them out with a 16mm projector to his friends and customers. When Middleton died, he left all the films to our local library with the stipulation that they never be sold. Shortly after his death, VHS hit the market. Suddenly, 16mm films were about as attractive as driving around an AMC Gremlin. Other libraries and TV stations trucked their cans of 16mm to the Middleton Film Library for free to make shelf-space for video cassettes. The collection grew.

Over the past several decades, the Middleton library has moved from basement to basement. Some of the films have succumbed to poor storage conditions, but a lot have survived. I was around for the most recent move, to a climate-controlled facility here in town. When I arrived to meet the man who has inherited the library, Ghirb Eevsting, the scene looked like the reunion of a high school audio/video club from 1976. Middle-aged men were telling stories of their lives in production and sharing old techie knowledge while shelving cans from shopping carts. A can with the words "Nazi War Propaganda" written in marker was elected to be screened first. Then we ate pizza and talked about the future of the library.

In short, there is no plan for the future. Right now it's a bunch of guys with a bug for treasure hunting who will eventually transfer the films to digital video. Our lunch conversation moved to less romantic talk about possible grants and in-fighting between non-profit media organizations. But even amidst the bureaucracy of non-profit fund raising, there's something about this collection that invigorates film geeks. In fact, a collector from San Francisco and one from New York each offered to pay for a semi-truck and movers to pick up the entire library if Ghirb would sign ownership over to them (Ghirb still doesn't know how these collectors found him).

As I ate pizza with them, I thought of my grandfather combing the beach with a metal detector. I would walk next to him as he hovered the donut shaped end of the wand over the sand and listened intently to sonar ping sounds in the headphones. I'd jabber about finding a hidden pirates' treasure and he'd eventually tell me to leave. I wanted a treasure and he wanted to hunt.

The middle-aged A/V club hopes there's a treasure in the basement. But I get the sense they're in this for the hunt more than the treasure. They believe they've got something precious. They believe there's tremendous value is saving these relics, even if nobody is willing to step up and fund their expedition. As for me, I don't know. Maybe they should scrap them. How much time will be spent sifting through half-rotted junk looking for something great? Who decides what's great? My grandpa hunted for gold on his vacations. These guys will be pouring more than vacation time into this collection.

I want them to follow their hearts, but I'm skeptical at the same time. Is it a fool's errand to archive this collection? I'm ashamed to admit it, but it's a nagging question for me. How many people actually find a Van Gogh in their attic?