After that, he divided his time between coming up with new kazoo lines and trying to learn about the instrument's older incarnations. On the latter subject Original American Kazoo's records were no help, so he turned to the Smithsonian and to the author of the only published treatise on kazoos. He got some answers to questions about the history of the company -- When did it switch from being a metal-parts plant to a kazoo manufacturer? What were some of the earliest instruments it produced? -- from employees and from some of the 7,000 or so residents of Eden who stopped by the company to reminisce. "Someone would say, 'Oh, my mom used to work here. Now she's over at the nursing home. Let me ask her,' " recalls Berghash. "We called it the Talmud -- the oral tradition. It was all we had to go on."
Along with their stories, the town's residents also brought him their old kazoos, which he soon turned into museum exhibits. They contributed wooden kazoos, model-airplane kazoos, kazoos with foghorn-shaped amplifiers, kazoos disguised as liquor bottles (commemorating the end of Prohibition), and large kazoos made to look like saxophones, clarinets, and other musical instruments. "We couldn't figure out what those were for, but then we interviewed some people in their seventies who said they were popular at parties back in the 1920s," says Berghash. "It was their version of karaoke." The liquor-bottle models, he imagines, are the most valuable, but he hasn't a clue about how much any of it is worth. "I keep hoping Antiques Roadshow will come through here so I can find out," he says, referring to the public-television show.
As the collection grew, Berghash turned over the chore of building glass display cases to his 16 employees. Meanwhile, he labored with his in-house copywriter to create an illustrated time line. Among other items, the two hunted down photos of the company's early owners, 19th-century Sears & Roebuck catalogs featuring kazoos, and a 1928 letter from a lawyer requesting $21 to process a patent for "an improvement in musical toys or instruments." Where no artifacts existed, they fudged: a comb, a blade of grass, and a Chiclets packet represent primitive kazoos. Several aging photos of unidentified people (presumably former employees) performing unidentified activities (presumably related to the manufacturing of kazoos) were unearthed from the company's antediluvian file cabinets. "The copywriter would think of something," notes Berghash, referring to the captions that now accompany the photos.
These days, Berghash immerses himself in kazoo history whenever he can put aside his work at the dominant divisions of Brimms, which manufactures everything from denture cleaners to athletic mouth guards to cosmetic powders. He'll slip away, entering the candy-box-pretty Victorian house that shelters both the factory and the shrine to his company's least profitable product.
"When I look back at the different kinds of kazoos this company made over the years, I realize the early owners were probably a lot like me," Berghash says, straining to be heard above the kachunk, kachunk of the vintage dye presses. "They were serious businessmen who knew when to stop being serious."
If Arthur Barry knows when to stop being serious, he doesn't show it. The tall, mustachioed CEO of Presto Galaxy Suction Cups speaks in a voice so devoid of inflection that it's impossible to detect the presence, or absence, of irony. "If I was to sell metal bushings or ball bearings, it might not be so exciting," intones Barry. "But when I look around here and see all the ways people have thought of to use suction cups, I think that's very exciting."
Aside from Presto Galaxy's eight employees, few people know that a suction-cup museum exists inside Barry's long, narrow office in Brooklyn, N.Y., where the walls have been coated with plastic so that he can display his treasures. But the collection's lack of renown doesn't bother its creator. The museum fulfills its purpose, namely to provide Barry with inspiration and reassurance that his job is something worth doing. As such, it is either the ultimate celebration of beauty in the mundane or a bravura demonstration of self-delusion.
Either way, it keeps Barry going.
Few people know that the suction-cup museum exists. But that doesn't bother its creator.
Barry's exhibits -- which include an assortment of radar-detector and soap-dish holders; a rare British cup powerful enough to support large sheets of glass; and delicate, three-quarter-inch devices for removing glass eyeballs from their sockets -- may not send most pulses racing. Ditto for the dozen or so framed patents dating from 1866 to 1932 for suction cups that incorporate wire hooks, suction cups used to hold up cards, and suction cups that turn door handles. But Barry gets many of his new-product ideas by just staring at his surroundings. "My father used to come up with most of the ideas, but now I'm doing all of it," says Barry, who became CEO of the company when his father died, three years ago. "If I don't come up with new products, I don't stay in business. And seeing things that other people have come up with encourages me. It helps."
While his father was still alive, Barry had not only less motivation to delve into his stock-in-trade but also less opportunity. "My father was a very conservative businessman," Barry says. "When I took the reins, I was able to indulge my own interest in history and start doing research." That research began with a question that had been nagging Barry -- a former teacher in the New York City public schools -- since 1981, when he and his father shifted their company's emphasis from bird feeders to the burpable plastic circles that clamped bird feeders to windows. "I had always wanted to find out what the first commercial use of suction cups was," he says. "My theory was that it might have been the toilet-bowl plunger."
