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In the small town of Dora, near Birmingham, Alabama, you'll find the Hollis Museum, but only if you know where to look.
"People usually find me on the internet, my books, or Road Trips of America," explained Tim Hollis, who built the museum dedicated to the pre-1980s pop culture behind his childhood home.
"Well, the funny thing about the Hollis Museum is that it started out to preserve my own memories of childhood, but it ended up preserving everyone else's memories," Hollis said. "Sometimes I call myself the archivist for the rest of the world because usually what someone is looking for, they can find here whether it's toys, souvenirs, whether it's something from the holidays or the grocery line, it's usually represented here."
Hollis says when visitors first walk into the museum they're drawn to a floor-to-ceiling wall of lunchboxes where they're bound to find at least one they toted around as a kid.
PHOTOS: Alabama Man's impressive pop culture collection literally fills a museum
"I have people who come in here and about the time they walk through the front door, they start crying because the memories just hit them in the face. It's easy for me to forget because I live with this stuff. And, it's easy for me to forget that most people don't live with their own past," Hollis said.
The Alabama man said his parents kept everything, so he grew up collecting items everywhere he went, even on a family vacation to the Land of Oz attraction in Beech Mountain, North Carolina.
"When we went on vacation, it was my dad and I who loved it. My mom absolutely hated traveling of any kind," Hollis recalled. "Somehow we talked my mom into getting into one of those balloon gondolas at the park....so, we're going along in the balloon, and my mom is saying, ' Boy, I can't wait till we get out of this thing!' And then the whole ride shut down. There we were in a balloon above the treetops swaying back and forth in the breeze, and if you've never seen someone have a come apart, you should have seen my mom that day. "
Hollis said that he keeps a log of everything in the museum, but every time he peaks inside he rediscovers something. His fear is that soon he'll be rediscovering everything.
"Unfortunately, I come from a family with a lot of Alzheimer's in it. Pretty soon it'll all look new to me," Hollis said.
Without any living family members, Hollis is searching for a way to have the museum live on, and with it, the memories of many childhoods.
