Got damage? They can fix that

As a young boy in the 1920s, my dad had a little book that stayed with him until he gave it to me. It’s called “Billy Bunny’s Fortune” and it is quite gray. He also made a putty jug in elementary school that was covered with a hard-tack brown coating into which he had stuck all sorts of little finds, including marbles, jacks, bottle caps and teeny toys such as a fireman’s hat and a pistol.

Some of the teeny toys have fallen off over the years as the putty jug has lost its adhesive character.

These are worthless and priceless keepsakes in my family and just the sort of things I would take to the Preservation Fair that the Carnegie Museum of Natural History is holding Saturday. Location: 4400 Forbes Ave. Oakland.

If you have treasures or precious old things that need to be preserved, conservators and vendors will be on hand from 10a until 4p to give you suggestions. They will not appraise anything. (The photo here, from the Pitt archives, shows celluloid damage that a conservator would know how to repair.)

The event is free with museum admission, and you can find out more here.

This is a collaborative project of the museum and the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Information Sciences. One of the featured speakers is Rick Sebak, whose documentaries about the ‘burgh include “Stuff That’s Gone,” “The Strip Show,” and “North Side Story.”

Students from Pitt’s school of library and information science program demonstrate how to handle wet books, papers and photographs.

I don’t own the putty jug, but I may hop over there with “Billy Bunny’s Fortune.”