ORONO, Maine — If you are planning to go to opening day of Orono’s famous Kiwanis Auction on Thursday, July 21, die-hard attendees suggest you bring a few things with you. Those things include bug repellent, cash, a capacious bag to stash your treasures, a sunhat and — perhaps most importantly — comfortable shoes.
The shoes will be strategic, because Larry Wade, a longtime Kiwanian and a retired commodore with the United States Maritime Service, is readying his small saluting cannon to mark the Thursday afternoon opening. At the sound of the blast, the gathered crowd of people — among them eager locals, impoverished graduate students, bargain-hunting Amish families and more — will surge forward in a rush to locate the very best treasures in the Kiwanis barns.
“It’s thrilling,” Mark Bilyk, who has volunteered with the Orono-Old Town branch of the international service organization since 1992, said of the human stampede that opens the auction every year. “It you’re not expecting this cannon, it’s a surprise. It goes off, and they storm the area, heading towards their favorite places to go.”
This summer marks the 70th year the local Kiwanians have held their auction and yard sale event, which raises funds for local charities and scholarships. Last year, the event raised nearly $50,000 for charity.
Bilyk, who took a break from the pre-auction labors of unpacking, sorting and arranging donated items, said that for many people in the area, coming to the auction is a July tradition they look forward to for months. Some can lose themselves for hours in the book barn, where mass market paperback thrillers and romances rub shoulders with more serious or even academic literature. Others veer to the so-called trash barn, jammed with the castoff detritus of other people’s lives, and where it is possible to outfit an entire kitchen on a tight budget. Many make a beeline for the treasures barn, the home of many a donated record collection. And there’s always the long, crowded furniture barn, where the Orono man works.
“We get lots of students trying to furnish their apartments here,” he said. “We have some wonderful bargains this year, as we do every year.”
But many of the best bargains can be had on the auction block, where the best of the donated items wind up. Even Kiwanians are sometimes surprised at the high quality of some of the donated objects.
“Sometimes it’s shockingly amazing. You’re giving us this?” Bilyk said, adding that several years ago, an antique chair table in immaculate condition wound up on the auction block and sold for much less than its true value. “Beautiful desks and tables and dressers will go for $30 to $50. At normal auctions, people are going to advertise what they have for sale. You don’t do that here. It’s a complete surprise to everybody, and that’s part of the allure.”
The auction provides a local service beyond a place to score a bargain, according to locals like Lois and Bill Soule, who are moving out and downsizing after spending a half century at their home on College Avenue in Orono. In addition to their own furniture and kitchenware, Lois Soule said that over the years her family received three major inheritances of stuff, much of which will be available for sale at the Kiwanis Auction.
“What didn’t we bring?” Helen Soule, the couple’s daughter, asked rhetorically, then began listing some of what they did lug to the auction barns. “Books, glasses, china, old phonograph records, even 50 years of the Smithsonian magazine.”
Lois Soule said that coming to the auction as shoppers is a longtime tradition in her family, and being able to help support that tradition feels important to her.
“It’s a great thing for the community,” she said of the auction.
Terry LaCombe, who has been a Kiwanian for 12 years and whose domain is the trash barn, said that in the past, there were as many as 85 active members of the service group. That number has dwindled substantially, with a nucleus of 25 or so volunteers — many in their 60s and 70s — now doing the work to make the auction happen.
“I have to be perfectly honest — I like new merchandise,” she said. “But somebody has to do it. It’s been my whole July, worrying about this trash barn. But I’m so glad to be able to give back to the community.”
Roberta Fowler, a retired teacher from Old Town, was the first woman to join Kiwanis when she signed up in 1990.
“I broke the glass ceiling,” she said, smiling, as she worked in the toy barn on a breathlessly hot July evening. “And now, I don’t know what they’d do without the women, to be honest with you.”
She said she looks forward to the people watching and the hot dogs, which are served hot off the griddle with or without a generous helping of fried onions.
“The hot dogs are really good,” Fowler said.
She also enjoys watching the kids come into the toy barn, which features towering piles of board games, elegantly dressed dolls and hundreds of small toys that can be bought for a nickel apiece.
“They come in like it’s fairyland,” she said. “They spend hours in here. You’ll see kids come in with a penny or a nickel and ask how much something is. We’ll say, ‘Well, that will cost you a penny.’ We just try to make it affordable.”
Gates open at 5 p.m. every night and the auction begins at 7 p.m. during the 70th annual Orono-Old Town Kiwanis Auction, which will be held Thursday, July 21, Friday, July 22, and Saturday, July 23. The auction site is on Forest Avenue in Orono, located east of Interstate 95.