Auction Lights Up Valley Christian School
It was dark and rainy outside, but retina-burning bright inside Valley Christian School’s multi-purpose room.
The room was draped with nets overflowing with catches of fake fish. Volunteers wandered around dressed in floral print shirts, and plastic parrots were stuffed slam-dunk style in basketball hoops.
Saturday night’s Caribbean Sun auction brought with it hundreds of folks to bask in artificial incandescence, all hoping to snag that must-have item and give money to a good cause in the process.
The school was trying to raise money to build a $350,000 addition to the multi-purpose room. It would contain five classrooms. Organizers were psyched to move $45,000 worth of donated stuff.
And what stuff it was.
Browsers could choose to make silent bids on anything from a canoe to a visit from a ventriloquist to our personal favorite, a book titled “Peptic Ulcer Disease.”
The auction had bird sculptures, water ski gear, home electronics equipment and more.
Kathy Wolrehammer knew exactly what she wanted. “I want to be queen for a day!” she announced, husband John Wolrehammer pretending not to hear at first. “… and my husband is going to pay for it!”
That package included babysitting, a massage, facial, haircut and housecleaning. John, casting his own variety of decidely untropical brightness thanks to an American-flag print Western shirt, shook his head. “If she’s lucky,” he said from beneath his big black cowboy hat.
People squeezed through narrow aisles between display tables, the flow occasionally halting behind folks pointing at Mother’s Day gift baskets.
After much of that, you need relief. Cynthia and Damon McCanley were trying their best to provide it in the form of cups of espresso. The coffee stop was busy, and the two had a Laurel and Hardy routine going.
“You’re taking too long,” he said.
“You’re the one who’s too slow,” she said. Cynthia stopped for a second and smiled at those in line. “What else are you gonna do on a Saturday night?”
Damon, dressed in a tuxedo-print apron complete with red bow tie, laughed at that. “We have no life!”
The PA system interrupted the taped steel drum music. The silent auction was winding down. Hearing other goods would be sold via loud auction, the crowd oozed through the spaces between the 450 folding brown and Brady Bunch-era green chairs and sat down.
Their job now over, VC students Amy Tobin and Jill Smith could finally relax and just hang out. Standing by the entrance, they had grinned and said “Welcome to the auction!” hundreds of times. They looked all smiled-out. But now they could bid on things, right?
“We’re teenagers,” Amy said, rolling her eyes. “We don’t have any money.”
, DataTimes