The Madoc Thrift Store is a place I like. It’s a vast emporium: two stories high, it sits proudly on Durham Street, the main drag in Madoc. Push open the heavy wood-framed, glass front door and you enter a railroad-car shaped shop, that runs way down from the glassware and china at the front, through to the clothing at the back. Upstairs is more stuff. I always check out the cassette section, next to the board games/puzzles section and hard by the book/CD shelves. I’ve found Elton John and Wham! and the soundtrack of Pretty in Pink. Cassettes cost 50¢. I also equipped myself for cross-country skiing, with skis, bindings, poles and boots, for $10. One time a woman named Shirley, who sits sometimes at a desk upstairs, scrawled down my name and phone number on a rumpled piece of paper and promised to call me when a teapot came in. And she did.
We always have lots of stuff to drop off at the thrift store. This makes me happy, because all the thrift store staff are volunteers, and all the profits from the place go to worthy local causes, such as victims of domestic abuse, the local food bank and a home for unwed mothers.
I walked in the other day with a bag full of coloured IKEA plastic plates we’d used when our kids were little. Randomly, I asked if they had any pencil sharpeners. Sherry, who seems to run the joint, said, “As a matter of fact, one just came in. I think it’s cracked.” She rummaged around in some boxes at the back of the place, which is a perpetual jumble piled high with crap where the donations get sorted. And she presented me with an old pink Midget brand pencil sharpener, of the kind one mounts on the wall, repaired with silver duct tape.
This pencil sharpener is, indeed, slightly unloved. Still, later that day I read a story in the weekend Globe and Mail titled, “The Life-Changing Magic of Making Do,” by Benjamin Leszcz, and I felt vindicated in my instinct to find a new life for this wonderful mechanical device. And so I used two screws to affix this pencil sharpener to a post in the sugar shack I am building, in the forest of our farm in Madoc.
The sugar shack is only half-done; speaking of making do, not long ago I found dozens of windows someone was throwing out on a street near our house in Toronto. I brought the windows to Madoc and began to install them in the sugar shack. Each window is different, so I have plenty of work to frame up the spaces in which the windows will sit. I want lots of views of the sumptuous forest. I need a sharp pencil to mark the cuts on the lumber. And now, while I may not own an evaporator, I do have a pencil sharpener. It’s actually pretty worn, and tends to slightly chew up the pencils as it sharpens them. Even so, I was able to hew a pencil to a perfect point.
What can I say? Obsolete technology makes me happy.