OXFORD – Jim Lamb calls his Shell gasoline station museum “a bad habit gone array.”

Lamb said he got the “bad habit” about eight years ago when someone handed him a Shell key chain with his grandfather’s Shell station and insurance company logo on it. “That’s what started it,” he said.

His grandfather, Conrad W. Lamb, owned a Shell gasoline Station in West Paris on Main Street that closed in the late 1960s. Jim Lamb had worked there as a youngster. His grandfather also ran the attached Lamb insurance agency.

The key chain was the start of a decades long search for Shell gasoline memorabilia and the dream to open a museum to showcase his collection.

The search continues, but the dream came true Saturday evening when friends and family gathered at the newly opened museum beside his business Parts & Pieces on Route 26 in Oxford for the official opening.

“It has everything you would see at a whole gas station,” said Lamb of pieces in the collection that came from as far away as New Zealand and includes everything from tools to advertising memorabilia, gas tanks and metal Shell chairs. “It should bring back a lot of memories. You just don’t see this stuff today.”

Although he peruses the Internet constantly for new finds and takes an annual buying trek to Florida – his wife Chris’ favorite part of collecting – one of his biggest sources was a local garage.

“I emptied the contents out of a garage that was just sitting there for years,” said Lamb.

Other memorabilia belongs to a cousin who has it on loan. “A lot of it I bought on line,” he said.

Besides the usual Shell memorabilia, the museum features a juke box that was acting up days before the museum opening and an old Coke machine. Although opening day didn’t magically bring the music back to the juke box, Lamb said he found identical one in purple that he knows works and might find its way into his museum.

The 20-by-28-foot museum is free, although he encourages donations, and it is open by appointment. Lamb said he is hoping that some people might like to donate or loan any Shell memorabilia they have.

Anyone interested in seeing the museum or talking to the Lambs about Shell memorabilia can reach them at 539-4674 or 539-2363.