By JEFF OVERLEY
The Orange County Register
NEWPORT BEACH – When your home videos are memorialized in a museum, it's a sure sign you're a part of history - for better or worse.
"I hate to admit our pictures are in a museum. That's how old we are," said Lois Sargent, 76, a former Newport Beach resident whose 16mm reels of speedboats racing off Lido Island are in a Newport Harbor Nautical Museum exhibit that debuted this weekend.
"Dredges to Dreamboats: 100 Years of Nautical History," gives a tip of the top hat to Newport's centennial, showcasing everything from model ships to cans of albacore tuna packed during the town's commercial-fishing heyday.
Designed by Cal State Fullerton graduate students, it's the last new exhibit before the museum moves from its landmark riverboat on East Coast Highway to the Balboa Fun Zone.
Wooden skis and an old sport-fishing reel are among the antique tokens loaned by longtime residents.
On Sunday, a trickle of tourists shuffled past a wool swimsuit dating to 1920 and movie poster prints for classic films such as "Cleopatra," which was shot in Newport.
Ten-year-old Ethan Marosi took a keen interest in a 20-year-old jar of Superman Krunchy Peanut Butter, a product once packed by long-distance paddle boarder Larry Capune.
"Andy, I dare you to eat moldy peanut butter!" Ethan howled to his older brother. "You first," Andy replied.
Eyeing black-and-white snapshots of Balboa's sparsely developed peninsula, 77-year-old Ted Mertz recalled his days as a preteen growing up on the blossoming sandspit, when he'd pick up splinters running along the old wooden boardwalk.
"Now they've concreted it all over," said Mertz, who lives in a Bay Avenue cottage. "It's quite a change."