“Moose Room”

Student Collector

Aubrey SquiresFollow

Date Collected

Winter 12-5-2017

Place item was collected

Hyrum, Utah

Informant

Dixie Johnson

Point of Discovery/Informant Bio

Dixie Johnson is a 64 year old Caucasian female. She was raised in Cache Valley, Utah. She has four sisters and no brothers. She graduated College with an Associates of book keeping. Some of her family is LDS and the rest have different beliefs or are not religious at all. She is a teachers’ aid and a reading group teacher at a local elementary school. Her hobbies include: working in the yard, putting puzzles together, making quilts, cooking, canning, camping, hiking, and reading. The relationship I have with the informant is friend and future mother in law.

Context

This interview was completed while Dixie was driving us to the store. She didn’t make eye contact with me because she needed to focus on the road. There was a light flow of traffic, which made the drive and conversation an enjoyable experience. She started her story off with, “I started collecting moose items 20 years ago. It started with the moose painting that was painted by my husbands’ relative. It was moved from the living room to make room for more pictures and placed in the master bedroom. I made moose curtains to go with the painting, but the problem was that my husband didn’t like them because they didn’t match the wall color. I was therefore asked to take them down. I bought a bed spread that has moose on it and I only use it during the winter time because it is so warm. The rest of the time it’s stored in the master bedroom closet. I started calling this room the moose room and soon I was collecting more and more moose items to go in my moose room. There were so many stores that carried moose things. You could buy towels, stuffed animals, light switches, picture frames, and other things that had moose on them. Since I like moose ordainments too, I received one as a Christmas gift one year. It had a moose on a slay. Then last year my husband bought me a moose scarf for Christmas. You’ll have to see it, it is the greatest. There was one time that I even made a moose quilt for a friend of mine. It had bears, moose foot prints, moose, canoes, and cabins on it. It was supposed to be a camping quilt. I wanted to make myself one, but I couldn’t find the material for it. I had a friend that would bring me back a moose stuffed animal every time she would return from her mini vacations. I would also receive moose cards from other people who knew I liked collecting moose things. Recently when I would try to find moose bathroom objects I couldn’t find anything. It seemed like it was the wrong time of year or something. The last item I bought was a Christmas towel with moose on it. This was two or three years ago, and I haven’t collected any other moose things since. I’ve had to many other things to think about. I still like the idea of adding more things to my moose room, and if I ever come across something that catches my eye, I’ll buy it.”

Text

The first picture is of the moose painting that started the “moose room” theme and that got her wanting to collect more. The second picture is of the moose stuffed animals that Dixie's friend would bring back for her from her mini vacations. The last picture is of the moose scarf that Dixie received for Christmas last year, that she loves so much.

Texture

“Everything that I could see, that I could find that had a moose on it, I loved it, I just kept collecting, and I don’t have that much. I’m not a super collector, but whenever I see a moose item that has a certain thing, I just like to buy it.” Dixie has all of her moose items displayed in her master bedroom and master bathroom. These moose items are never played with, instead they are to be looked at and enjoyed whenever visiting the moose room. Dixie doesn’t share this moose collection with very many people, just her family and close friends. She really likes her moose items because they are fun and a joy to look at. No one in the home likes moose, so they don’t show any interest in what’s in the “moose room,” but Dixie thinks they are fun and she enjoys looking at them.

Course

Intro to Folklore, English 2210

Instructor

Lynne S. McNIEll

Semester and year

Fall 2017

Theme

G8: Needle Work

EAD Number

7.0.14

Recommended Citation

Squires, Aubrey, "“Moose Room”" (2017). USU Student Folklore Fieldwork. Paper 268.
https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/student_folklore_all/268