Knowing when it’s time to let go

The garage sale signs were posted on each side of the driveway, so I knew we were expected and welcome, but I still had mixed feelings. An older gentleman in Slana had sold his home and moved to Tok. His lifetime accumulation of personal belongings needed to be removed from the property.

A Norwegian immigrant, he moved to Alaska in 1966, making his living as a commercial fisherman, a trapper and a carpenter. He embraced the homesteader lifestyle. Beside the house, he had the usual assortment of outbuildings: outhouse, generator shed, workshop, garage, storage building, etc.

When Gary and I arrived, I recognized neighbors and friends and soon met the gentleman’s daughter, who lives 350 miles to the south. She explained the procedure for this sale: “Half the bedroom is blocked off and not for sale; otherwise, wander around the whole house and take a look.”

She also said that we were free to poke around in the boxes in the nearby storage building, but that she hadn’t been able to sort through everything, so some items might not be for sale.

“Also, nothing is priced,” she said. “That’s impossible.” She suggested we put things in which we were interested in a pile and then she would price each lot individually.

I had known this homesteader’s wife, a lovely woman who had passed away several years earlier. I was drawn to this sale particularly to pick up something to remember her by. I couldn’t pass over her books. I ended up looking at her great assortment of books on Alaska, religion, politics, history, etc., title by title.

As I slowly made my way through the living room piled high with belongings, a pair of touristy Alaska forget-me-not salt-and-peppershakers caught my eye. Nice and small, I decided on this memento, but before I left I wanted to check out the storage building. Outside in the yard, my husband was ready to leave, but he was also content to visit with neighbors while I scouted the 15- by 20-foot storage shed, filled from floor to ceiling.

I poked around for a bit, but soon was overwhelmed and walked away with nothing. Although we didn’t have a garage sale, these personal belongings could just as easily have been my dad and mother’s stuff that my three siblings and I had sorted through the previous summer.

We gathered at three locations around Alaska and opened boxes, many times looking at things we had never before seen. We completely cleaned out one house to get it ready to rent, but otherwise did not finish our difficult task. And this summer, no one had the time, energy or motivation to continue the project.

At times last summer, sorting through our parents’ lifetime of personal belongings seemed like an impossible, monumental task — especially because they grew up in the Great Depression and never threw anything away.

But at other times, I was so thrilled to discover a family history treasure in our sorting and looking. I learned more about my paternal grandmother, who died years before I was born. I found some remnants of her quilt-making in a box that hadn’t seen the light of day since 1947 and discovered and read a few of her letters to my dad from the 1940s, which gave me a little more insight into this grandmother.

Eventually, I decided to view the process as a treasure hunt and was ultimately thankful that we kids still had the opportunity of discovering treasure. I had heard sad stories of the opposite extreme.

While looking for the daughter to ask for a price on my pile of treasures, I noticed the old homesteader observing friends, neighbors and a few strangers sifting through his personal belongings. He wore a pained expression most of the time, but his face broke into a smile when one of his young great-granddaughters asked a question.

I was reminded of Dad again when a man at the sale asked him if a certain unique item had a story behind.

“Everything here has a story to it,” he replied in a familiar Norwegian accent.

My folks never had a sale and Dad told me once that he’d never even been to a garage sale. I couldn’t picture my parents in the same situation. In fact, once someone told Dad a lot of the items in his living room should be in a museum.

“Why would I want to give my things away to a museum? I enjoy looking at them!” he replied.

I came home with more than one memento and several more items that were just too great to pass up at garage sale prices. I also came away with a sense of admiration for this gentleman and his daughter, knowing how difficult letting go must have been for both of them. And I’m sure most of the other buyers felt the same way.

Maraley McMichael is a longtime Valley writer and resident.