Peter Fetchko has spent his life studying artifacts. During his 30 years as curator of the Peabody Museum in Salem, Mass., he also developed a love for Japan. While working as a curator, Fetchko and his wife, Francoise, purchased a cabin just off Billings Hill Road in Bryant Pond. They moved to the place they now call Standstill Farm in 1999 when Fetchko retired. Though Fetchko gardens and tends a small number of farm animals, he has maintained his interest in history and Japan, an interest reflected in the design of his house. 

 

A: I was born in Yonkers, N.Y., on July 3, 1943. I am the last of three, with an older brother and an older sister. I was pampered for sure. I am the second generation born in America. My great-grandparents came from Slovakia. They settled in Yonkers. There was a big Eastern European community in Yonkers. My father belonged to the Russian Club. My grandfather was a member, too. He spoke four or five languages. 

 

A: When I was 12 years old, I had my first museum in my basement. I charged the neighborhood kids two-cents admission. I can’t say all of what was in the museum was authentic. I was one of those dinosaur kids. I was a little bit of a pyromaniac. I had a working volcano. I also had everything from fossils to minerals to live animals, snakes, pets and salamanders. I had a chair that Pocahontas sat in — it was fraudulent. I don’t remember great numbers of people, but it kept me busy and got me interested in natural history and anthropology. What was really important is one day a man who ended up taking a real interest in me came through the door of my museum. He became a real mentor. 

 

A: He was a relative and also a medical doctor. It was the fact that I had this interest that he then took an interest. I was not destined to go to college. It was only through this doctor’s influence that I went. He practically twisted my arm. I was very timid, and I didn’t have much self confidence. No one in my family had gone to college. My mother only went through high school and my dad eighth grade. They grew up in the Depression. I applied to one school, Westminster College in Fulton, Mo., and I got in. The doctor did medical research and created collections in Papua New Guinea. Once I had finished my undergraduate work, which was in biology, I worked in his laboratory in Washington. I was the field support unit. I would send necessary medical supplies, equipment, things like that, to Papua New Guinea, and he would send artifacts back. I spent my time processing these artifacts. These eventually went to the Peabody Museum.

 

A: I worked in the laboratory and then got drafted. It was 1968, the middle of the Vietnam War. I thought about going to Canada, but people said I would never be able to do what I wanted to do. I was in the Army, but I did not go to Vietnam. I worked in an induction center and had a part-time job growing tissue cultures. I am in favor of the draft. Everyone should serve. It’s very poor to have such a small part of America taking on these obligations.

 

A: I applied for a job at the Peabody Museum. The Peabody is the second oldest continually run museum in the United States. When I was in Washington, the Papua New Guinea collections were given to the museum. On a whim, I wrote to Ernest Dodge, the director of the Peabody, and asked for a summer job while I tried to decide what I wanted to do. I got the summer job. That summer, I proved myself, I met Francoise (who was from France) and I got married. Then I went to graduate school at George Washington University to study anthropology. I concentrated on the Peoples of the Pacific. I was 25. Francoise was 23. I worked part-time at the National Institute of Health. I was on the GI bill. Francoise was giving French lessons. That’s how we survived.

 

A: I went back to the museum and was a curatorial assistant. At the time, there were large collections which had never been inventoried. Some of them had been there for 100 years and had never been utilized in any systematic kind of way. It was always interesting to find a mouse’s nest in a historic wig or an archaeological collection in a crate. In 1971, I went to the Sorbonne to do a post-graduate program. I needed to learn French, for obvious reasons. Francoise, our two sons, Nicolas and Sebastien and I ended up spending a year in France. I went back to the museum afterwards and stayed at the museum for the rest of my career, which was up until 1999.

 

A: I got interested in the archaeological collections in the museum. Many of them were created by Mainers. One of them was Edward Sylvester Morse, who was born in 1838 in Portland, Maine. He later became director of the Peabody. He was a student of Lewis Agassiz, a famous biologist who was at Harvard and who was opposed to Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. Agassiz used brachiopods — organisms that had not changed over time — as evidence of immutability. Though Morse had (the opposite view), he became very interested in brachiopods. Japan has many varieties, so Morse went to Japan and set up one of the first marine biological laboratories in the Pacific. He began to teach Japanese students. Almost immediately, he was invited to teach at the University of Tokyo. His interests began to shift from brachiopods to Japanese culture. He wrote some famous books. I followed this. In 1977, the anniversary of Morse’ first trip to Japan, I put on an exhibit at the Peabody called “Japan Day-By-Day.” We had quotes from Morse along with our Japanese folk art collection, which was one of the earliest ones in the United States. There was great interest in Japan in the Morse Collection, which we had brought up out of the basement and out the attic. We began to bring exhibits to Japan. They had these exhibits in department stories, which is often done there, and at the Edo Tokyo Museum. Eventually I went to Japan. Francoise and I actually lived there for six months, one year. I was the token Westerner. We lived there during the economic bubble. We could never return the hospitality that was expressed to us. Francoise and I went over 20 times.

 

A: It becomes trite when you say you either know your history or you are doomed to relive it. There is that aspect, but there is also the understanding of humanity, where we have come from and how we have gotten here. Much of life is luck and chance. I think that’s why we need to show compassion for others in the world. It’s only by the grace of God, and my walking stick, there goes I. (I say this) and I’m an atheist.

 

A: I had always been a gypsy. We didn’t actually own our house in Salem, because the museum did. Francoise wanted to own something. We decided to come to Bethel one year to look at houses, but nothing felt right. The next year we looked at woodlots. It was April, there was still snow on the ground, and it was muddy. Francoise was not impressed. I said, all we need is a place to put a few teepee poles. We walked a little further and there in front of us were some teepee poles. That’s what brought us to this piece of land. We built a cabin in 1991, which we had only anticipated using as a weekend “resort.” When we left the museum, we moved to Maine to see if we liked it. We found Maine to be a beautiful and wonderful place. We’ve met wonderful people, we have wonderful neighbors, and we have made wonderful friends. We have been here ever since.