Susan Meeker-Lowry [07/22/2004]

By Susan Meeker-Lowry

It all started out innocently enough a few months ago when my youngest, Colin, climbing down from a trip into the attic declared, "Mom, we really should have a yard sale." I groaned. I know what's up there, I thought. I don't want to deal with it. And the garage...each fall it's a huge project just to create enough space to fit the car into when the snows come. We manage, barely.I've lived here for going on eight years. But my family has been here much longer. When I moved in, we cleared the living areas and my sister and I integrated our stuff. Since my furniture was mostly thrift shop and what was here had been in the family for generations, I didn't even bother to bring much of it. Still there was a lot of stuff. What we didn't want went - you guessed it - into the attic or the garage. We've cleaned out the garage twice in the past eight years. Major clean outs. The first time we got out all the cordwood Daddy had stacked in there. That was major and gave us so much more room for stuff! The second time was rearranging, dump runs, and giveaways to the kids no longer living at home. Stuff that we decided shouldn't be in the garage was added to - you guessed it - the attic, as well as to another strange storage space over the garage accessible only by a carefully-placed ladder, through a very small door, through flaps of fiberglass insulation. A very scary place only the kids have dared venture into.After spending a few weeks working with his brother on the farm in Vermont, Colin is home for a bit and decided now's the time. So last week he started the project. I came home from work one day to find the garage floor completely covered with stuff - pictures leaning in boxes, numerous small kitchen appliances, mugs, books, tools, skis of all types, a tennis racket, blankets, a pile of clothes, radios and CD players, and quite a collection of speakers. A couple of days later, I got up the courage and went through five huge plastic containers full of clothes Ill never wear again. I'd already given the best of them away to friends (second clean-out, got rid of eight containers), so these were really the dregs. I saved five things: a hippie dress I made when I was 20, made out of an Indian print bedspread, holes patched with velvet (remember those?), a blouse that had good memories, the satin nightgown and robe my mother wore on her wedding night, and two special T-shirts. In addition to the clothes, we dug out two fish aquariums, one complete with accessories, one larger tank Colin's iguana lived in (and accessories), antique bottles, the first issue of Country Journal (which we're saving), and stuff we have no idea what it is. One antique trunk revealed Christmas stuff from my childhood, including a sprig my mother had saved from my first Christmas tree - amazing! Despite occasional forays into the past it didn't take too long to clear the floor, sort into piles of keep and sell, and bag the rest.Another day, I came home and Colin had gone through some of the weird space above the garage. He found a large Coleman cooler in great shape (I wish I'd known we had it!), a couple of space heaters that don't work, Daddy's first enlarger (a keeper), MaryJean's old Rossignol skis -- maroon fiberglass ones (remember those, too?), a camp stove, and a box of great children's books we'd shoved up there for lack of a better place after the move. Plus trash and lots of dust and there's still more up there.But for all practical purposes, only the attic remains. It's an unfinished space with flooring only down the middle. The rest is ceiling filled with insulation. It's extremely hot and stuffy and dusty. And it's filled with boxes of old photos, toys Daddy had when he was a boy (so they're actually antiques), 50 years worth of Daddy's weather journals, copies of the Sporting News, and even old Seventeen magazines from my teen years. Pots and pan, an old dresser mirror, boxes of glasses and platters and silverware and old nightgowns, and of course lots of holiday decorations but at least they are carefully packed and organized.Yesterday, I came home from work and Colin had made his first foray into the space. I saw two garbage bags full of trash in front of the garage and noticed the pile inside was larger. So later that night I went out to investigate. In the sell pile was a lamp made from a piece of varnished tree trunk. I'd put it up there because the electrical stuff needs to be replaced. It's what Colin calls a "warm fuzzy." This lamp used to be in the bunk house of Sunny Side Lodge (now - how it pains me to say this - the Spruce Moose Inn). It sat on a knotty pine built-in (the whole space was knotty pine) and behind it was a framed picture of the skimobile made out of cut pieces of felt. How I wish we had that picture now! Every time I see that lamp, I'm flooded with memories of the lodge. So out of the sell pile it comes.The second thing I notice is a round poster tube. I pull out the posters and find - treasures! I'd totally forgotten these relics from conferences I'd organized in Vermont. There was a RAIN poster brought back from my first trip out west (RAIN was based in Portland, Ore., and was one of the first organizations to promote and experiment with alternative living technologies), and an Earth-First Road Show poster. Obviously I can't sell these. In fact, maybe I should find a place for them in the house somewhere...I had no clue that getting ready for a yard sale would take so much time and energy. Or that it would bring back so many memories. So when is the yard sale? I'm hoping this weekend. But who knows? We still have most of the attic to go through... Susan Meeker-Lowry is a writer who lives in Fryeburg.