Parting with possessions at the firemen's auction

Come auction time, parting with some possessions is easier than it is for others

By Pam Mansell
Herald Writer

I F YOU'VE NEVER been to the New Wilmington volunteer fire department's annual flea market and auction, you should give it a try, assuming you like great bargains and enjoy a festive atmosphere.

The big day is Saturday, and the fire department, with a little help from local residents, has been collecting items for months, moving trucks outside as the piles of goods gradually took over more and more of the fire hall.

Like most other New Wilmington households, my family contributes its fair share to the auction, and for me, the event has become much more than an enjoyable fund-raiser for an important community function. It also provides an easy way to take an annual look at my life and its accumulations, and decide what is still important _ and what has become excess baggage.

That was an easy decision with the exercise bike. My husband Charley and I bought that about seven years ago when we started worrying about middle-age spread and were sure that we'd stick to a regimen of bicycle workouts every day. And we did _ for a few months. Then we used it occasionally, then sporadically, and finally not at all. Then it became a receptacle for shirts and jeans when we didn't want to take time to hang them up, until the silent reproach of the thing made us feel so guilty we banished the bike from our bedroom.

Until we gave it to the firefighters this year, it had languished behind a door in the guest bedroom gathering dust, and every time I saw it I felt guilty all over again.

The sewing machine was another story, because that had been an integral part of my life for a long, long time. It traveled from Boardman, Ohio, to Charleston, S.C., to Guam to Pittsburgh to New Wilmington, covering all the spots in Charley's Navy and school years. During most of those years I was sort of a ``Becky Home Ec-y,'' as one of my friends describes it, making a lot of my own clothes and sewing curtains for our various apartments.

When our daughter Cate was born, I made all sorts of little toddler outfits. When she and her younger brother Jeff were flower girl and ringbearer in a cousin's wedding, I made both Cate's dress and Jeff's suit. Then there were the years of Halloween costumes, play costumes and all the other extra activities that required bolts of material and a mom to transform them into something.

And then life changed, and as hard as I try, I can't remember exactly when or how that happened.

Maybe it was the kids getting older, turning me into more of a soccer- tennis-baseball-softball-gymnastics-piano-ballet mom than a sewing one. Maybe it was a shortening of patience and energy, leaving no inclination to cut along patterns and pin material. Maybe it was longer work hours, giving me a good excuse to find a seamstress to shorten hems rather than do it myself. Maybe it was just the passing of time, and moving on to a new stage and new interests.

Whatever, the unused sewing machine gradually became, like the exercise bike, a repository for things we didn't want to deal with right away. This year I reluctantly decided it deserved better treatment than that, even though it was tough admitting to myself that I was never going to go back to a hobby that had once been so dear to me.

So, if you go to the firemen's auction, and if you happen to walk away with a White sewing machine in a lovely wood cabinet, would you give it a good home, please?

As for the exercise bike _ well, the firemen can use the money, and eventually it will make a great clothes hook.

Pam Mansell covers New Wilmington for The Herald.