JAUNTS : A Trip Back in Time for What Ails You : ‘Grandma’s Attic’ exhibit at the Stagecoach Inn Museum offers a glimpse at home remedies and other artifacts of yesteryear.

You’d be hard-pressed to find a grandma with a magneto electric machine--a 19th-Century remedy for “nervous disorders”--stashed in her attic. Or, old-fashioned toothache drops, still in the bottle.

But these oddities and others are part of “Grandma’s Attic,” the featured exhibit at the Stagecoach Inn Museum in Newbury Park.

Don’t expect the 100 or so old and not-so-old items in the collection to be artfully showcased--that is not the effect the museum sought. Instead, this array of, well, stuff, is piled up just the way you would expect to find it in someone’s attic.

It’s not so much that items are rare or old, but that they were precious to someone, and viewers identify with that.

“People say, ‘Oh, my grandmother used one of those,’ ” said Blanca Relle, a museum docent, as she held up a 1911 manually operated vacuum cleaner. Equipped with a long upright cylinder, it sucked up dirt when the operator pumped the handle like a bicycle pump.

Perhaps the most intriguing gizmo is the 1854 Davis & Kidder patented magneto electric machine. The directions on the wooden box call for the person afflicted with nervous disorders to hold two metal cylinders while someone turns a crank on the box to build up an electrical charge. Whether it cured anyone’s afflictions is doubtful, but the contraption still packs quite a jolt.

Viewers won’t be able to give it a try, though, because the entire exhibit on the second floor is behind a glass barrier and off limits to any handling. “Grandma’s Attic” will be on display until September.

Many of the items were donated to the museum, while a few are on loan, according to the museum’s interim manager, Carol Anderson. Some come with stories, but unfortunately most of them don’t.

One donation comes from the family of Clifford Eaton, who repaired antique furniture in his Thousand Oaks shop. His collection of antique tools from the mid-1800s hangs on the wall and fills up a corner.

Another offering comes from a nurse: a World War I Red Cross nurse’s uniform and cap.

Another find actually comes from the museum itself: a collection of old medicines in their original containers found in the museum basement. Mexican oil, powdered wood charcoal, and something called Zemo ointment, to name a few. They’re all stored in an old cabinet advertising Dr. M.A. Simmons Liver Medicine.

Some of the collection is whimsical: a flapper costume and a very heavy bearskin coat, wooden skis with bamboo poles, snowshoes, even a vintage sled with a rose painted on it. An assortment of clothes includes a gentleman’s black swallowtail coat, vest, silk top hat and walking stick.

A child-size miniature house, modeled from a Kansas City doctor’s home, sits in the middle of the exhibit surrounded by such stuff as a Mickey Mouse target, an evening cloak and a portable Corona typewriter with three figures on each key.

Grandma’s Attic is only one exhibit at the Stagecoach Inn Museum, which has a fascinating history of its own. The original inn was a stop for the Butterfield Stage when it carried passengers through the Conejo Valley from Los Angeles to San Francisco in the late 1800s.

Constructed in 1876, it was called the Grand Union Hotel. When the Ventura Freeway was constructed in 1966, the hotel was moved to its present location on South Ventu Park Road. A fire in 1970 burned it to the ground, but it was rebuilt as it originally appeared and opened again as a museum in 1976.

The inn has 10 rooms, each decorated in a different motif: a baby’s room, a sewing room and a boy’s bedroom. One room houses antique pressing irons from the collection of John McCormack. The most talked about is the bedroom of Pierre, the inn’s so-called ghost, who in real life was a Basque sheepherder murdered at the inn.

The museum complex includes things to do and see outside as well. A short nature trail wraps around the property with markers to identify vegetation. Visitors can also meander through the new rose garden.

Other sights include a replica of a home built in 1874, a Chumash hut, a beehive oven of the type used by Native Americans who lived in the area, an adobe house, a blacksmith shop, windmill, and carriage house.

Details

* WHAT: “Grandma’s Attic,” an exhibit at Stagecoach Inn Museum.

* WHERE: 51 S. Ventu Park Road, Newbury Park.

* WHEN: Exhibit runs until September. Museum hours are Wednesday through Sunday, 1 to 4 p.m. The entire complex is open Sundays from 1 to 4 p.m.

* HOW MUCH: $2 for adults, $1 for seniors and kids 5 to 12, and kids under 5 free.

* CALL: 498-9441.