Good news! Tourism officials in Logan, Ohio have found a new home for the thousands of pencil sharpeners that once belonged to an Ohio minister who died last summer.
Rev. Paul Johnson’s collection of 3,479 pencil sharpeners were housed in a small shed behind his house in Carbon Hill. Open by appointment only, he called it the Pencil Sharpener Museum. Now his items are on display at the Hocking Hills Regional Welcome Center, which was dedicated last Friday.
Johnson started collecting after his wife gave him a few pencil sharpeners as a gift in the late 1980s. He kept them organized in categories, including animals, buildings, superheroes, Christmas, Disneyland, cars and trains with the oldest being 105 years old. He once said “There are no duplicates. That would spoil the museum.” Even if computers now make sharpeners irrelevant, Johnson’s Museum will live on.
