Parents can attest that kids sometimes are more enamored with the box than the gift that came in it.

So it should have been no surprise that the largely low-tech exhibits at the Agricultural and Industrial Museum in York would have captivated second-graders during a recent tour.

I had an opportunity to lead a tour for two classrooms that are part of the Lincoln Intermediate Unit summer migrant program.

Going in, I wasn't certain how mechanical exhibits would hold their attention.

From the first display on, the grinding gears and moving pulleys and steering wheels piqued their curiosity.

Here's a sampling of what intrigued them most:

  • May's Oak: This white oak, stemming from the late 1600s, fell about 300 years later during a storm in Emigsville.

    The second-graders were impressed with the size of the trunk, trucked to the museum after the oak's demise in 1997.

    I worked the touch-screen computer - perhaps the most advanced technology used in exhibits at the museum. Content on the screen was color-keyed to tree rings found on a large cross-section. If someone wants to know what happened during, say, the blue-ring period, a touch of the computer screen provides a sampling.

    The kids didn't mind that I had the screen. They touched the cross-section, sometimes with their entire bodies, barely covering the tree's 17-foot circumference.

    Students pressing the exhibit's play button lit up when William Penn's name came from a speaker. They had

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    been studying Bill Penn, and I explained the tree was alive at the same time as Pennsylvania's founder.

  • Air, Land & Water gallery: A display of surfaces progressively used to cover roads attracted hands-on interest. Some of the students imagined riding bikes on a bumpy, corrugated road made from logs set side by side. That ride would have been particularly jarring aboard the nearby Victor High Wheel Bicycle with a large front wheel and tiny back one.

    The students climbed through two exhibits:

    A 1936 Dodge farm truck bearing a York-Hoover body and a 44-ton diesel locomotive, called a switcher. It took some time for all 20-plus students in the group to crowd into the truck cab two-at-a-time. A few even had the strength and gumption to turn the Dodge's heavy steering wheel.

    High up in the switcher, the students kidhandled shifters, levers, whistle ropes and anything else that could be pulled and turned.

  • Agricultural exhibit level: A fully operational mill offered all kinds of moving parts - a Hanover-made, 1840-vintage Fitz water wheel, gears and grinding stones.

    ("Where's the water?" York County Heritage Trust curator Jennifer Hall flipped a switch. "Oh, there it is.")

    The most popular part was the three-story climb from Bradley Mill's base to its top.

    Next door, a farmers market stand with stuffed produce provided an opportunity to learn different fruits and vegetables - ("Here's an eggplant") - and a real scale to weigh the fake stuff.

  • We moved briskly through the cigar-making operation and its repugnant, pungent, hand-rolled smokes.

    The operational machine that shook out tobacco powder - an early insecticide - captured their attention. Too bad people in their day didn't figure out that if tobacco dust choked insects, smoking tobacco would do the same to humans.

  • The Dentsply exhibit showing the assembly of false teeth did not offer hands-on opportunities. But it did lead to telling the classes that fake teeth could be their fate if they didn't brush.

    ("My grandmother has them," a student proclaimed.)

  • The circa 1910 Automatic Telephone Exchange was set up for Jennifer to call several extensions, though the transfers malfunctioned.

    (She said she would try the school extension. "No!" the students said.)

    Upstairs, south wing: The second-graders were impressed with the weight of a vintage York Safe & Lock strongbox as each took their turn moving its heavy, hinged door.

    None could budge a nearby York Barbell weight set, though.

  • The students lined up to get into a York-made Pullman, a vintage 1917 model under restoration.

    And they watched the overhead shafts and wheels spin at the Susquehanna Pfaltzgraff exhibit.

    But it was the solitary York Casket, a hands-off exhibit, that drew intense interest.

    ("If you're lying in there," one student asked, "could you open the lid?")

    High-tech toys today often are not enjoyed as a group and offer no easy way to peer inside to see what makes these electronic and digital devices tick.

    The mechanical toys at AIM aren't so impaired. Everything is there to see, smell, hear and often touch.

    Let's just say there's indeed something to the box.