Some of the Port O’Connor Service Club members getting things ready for the annual Fall Garage Sale.
Community Connection
The POC Community Service Club Garage Sale was a stunning success! On October 10th from 8 am until 2 pm we sold every kind of knickknack, clothing, shoes, boating and fishing equipment, household goods, décor, books, DVDs and other items for bargain prices to raise money for our scholarship fund and other community service projects. This community sale provides an opportunity for people to recycle and reuse quality preowned items in a meaningful way. It helps our locals clean up and clean out regularly. It makes it possible for many to procure needed items at bargain prices. It raises a fair amount of money in a fairly short amount of time. It is a good thing. But, that is only part of the story.
Dozens and dozens of volunteer hours go into a successful community garage sale, and POC Community Service Club hosts one twice a year. Home and business owners contact club members to pick up and haul items to storage as much as six months before the sale. Club members pick up, sort, clean, repair and prepare sale items year around. Some members have a special skill or task. For example, Andy Westling repairs and refurbishes fishing gear for our sales; Susie Onishi is the master organizer of the stored sale items investing hours in labeling, sorting and preparation; Robbie and Marie Hawes use personal property and space as storage for overflow prior to sales. And that is just a taste of the work behind the scenes that goes on year around.
The week of the sale, the club members and a few faithful family recruits and volunteers haul, unpack, organize, display and price all of those generously donated items for your shopping pleasure. And face it, what better way to bond friends and develop that feeling of connectedness within a community than by working together. We always find items indescribable and without definition, (meaning we have no idea what they are or what they are used for) hilarious and hair raising objects, (meaning we wonder where in the world something came from or are icked out by its utter grossness),poignant and precious bits and pieces, (meaning we have had baby pictures donated and wedding albums tossed in the garage sale box, but have also found books inscribed by a dear departed friend and recipes cards from a cook who taught us well). We have laughed and cried, giggled and gossiped, sympathized and commiserated as we unpacked box after box and fold shirts and under things of many we never knew.
There is a sweet camaraderie in the work and a shared fun in the progress. We have amateur artists making signs and fliers. We have husbands and other volunteers who dig posts, make trips in personal vehicles, and take work time off to slave for the sale, cooks who cook, bakers who bake, and many more who go above and beyond to make the garage sale profitable. Then finally, it’s time for the sale, but it seems as if in just minutes it is over. In the first hour of the sale, by unofficial count, more than 163 people arrived to shop and browse.
The work is not finished though. Those same tired volunteers painstakingly box and bag and pack every leftover item and the club donates it all to the House of Prayer Charity to serve those most in need. The tables get washed, the floors get swept, the equipment hauled and put away. The storage room is ready to go by the end of the day, because after all there is another sale just six short months away. Those tired volunteers go home satisfied and content knowing they have raised money for another year’s scholarship awards and enriched and blessed with a new friend or a deeper connection made over dirty boxes and shared effort. Those hardworking volunteers make all the difference. Without them there would be no sale, and no money for scholarships or other local projects, and there would be no treasures for all you shoppers to buy.
Yes, whether you bought a book, chose a cake at the bake sale, or selected a whole trailer of furniture and other stuff, you helped. Thanks for helping to make the Port O’Connor Community Service Club Biannual Garage Sale a thriving and, yes, even entertaining, community venture. Our success depends on you, too. We look forward to doing it all again….but not just yet. We are really tired. And besides, we have a Community Christmas Lunch to host. It is coming in early December. Check back for all the details. And now you know the rest of the story…
