Newton North's trash could be your treasure
“No one uses this stuff anymore,” said Judy Close as she stood in a Newton North storage closet, surrounded by slide projectors, phonographs and headphones.
Close seemed wistful at the thought of so much material gathering dust after outliving its usefulness. But those and thousands of other items – from lacrosse jerseys to LPs to a full-size copy of the arcade game Asteroids – will have a chance to find new homes in a few weeks during the Great North Yard Sale.
The sale, which takes place in the school’s lower gym from 2 to 4 p.m. on June 5, is part of the weekend’s Bringing Down the House celebration. Close, who volunteered to organize the sale, has been going through the school’s storage areas, looking for things to save.
“There’s some cool retro things because people in the school system never throw anything away,” she said.
Because the property belongs to the city, it has to go through a surplus process, according to Bringing Down the House co-organizer Claudia Wu. The city will set prices for the items, and the proceeds from the sale will go back to Newton’s general fund.
Both the school and city purchasing departments have to make sure the items have no value to current students, either at North or at other schools.
“The idea is this is stuff that no other school in the system could find a use for,” Wu said.
But Close thinks it’s doubtful any school system could use the box of orange leotards that once belonged to the school gymnastics team, or a half-dozen overhead projectors. Or a tape deck or a microfiche projector. Or records of Arthur Fiedler and Aerosmith and a reading of “Jane Eyre.”
“I was really intrigued to see what people kept in the school,” Close said. “It’s amazing how much stuff is still there and not used on a daily basis.”
Some of the material has just accumulated naturally, like the LPs from the library’s record collection. Other items are more mysterious. The Theater Department is giving up a damaged Asteroids arcade game – the ship can’t move up or down – of unknown provenance. Students thought it may have been scavenged from the trash and used as a prop in a previous production.
Close estimated about 3,000 items will be sold, including 1,000 records and 1,000 books from the library. Some of the material would be good for any bargain hunter, such as cabinets and tables. But others will be more appealing to former North students, such as yearbooks, posters from past plays, hockey and lacrosse jerseys.
But some pieces of the past will remain there – such as the pile of used jockstraps in the athletic equipment storage area.
“They’re not for sale,” Close said.