900 Aprons for the Honduras Water Mission

By James Weiss

Bric-a-Brac n. chachkas, gimcracks, whatnot, sundries, baubles, bibelots, curios, knickknacks.

With spring cleaning, donations of all kinds roll into the Barn: everything from brass knuckles to Wedgwood. The Barn at St. Thomas has evolved to have resident expertise in every department. One such expert up in Bric-a-Brac was our very own Betsy Ervin, who died on May 21st at the age of 90. Betsy served as our silver expert right up to the very end. During the pandemic, unable to be at the Barn, Betsy worked from home. Over the last couple years, Nancy Miller took the finer donations of sterling silver to Betsy for her critical assessment. Betsy cleaned, polished, weighed, and valued them. She wrote up concise reports about each piece. We will miss her quick wit and keen observations.

The Barn is not monolithic. We have twelve departments, and there are wild differences one department to the next. Up in Bric-a-Brac, 10,000 objects are cleaned, priced, and carefully shelved. By contrast, Furniture is the wild west. Who is even in charge back there? Nothing is priced. Everything is negotiable. On sale day, customers arrive long before any furniture salesperson. Right around 7:50am, the negotiations begin as the jumble of old kitchen chairs and side tables are removed from the precarious Jenga-pile. Variety is the spice of life.

Nancy Miller came to us through her friend Betsy Ervin. About ten years ago, Nancy was shopping in Bric-a-Brac, and she ran into Betsy, who encouraged her to join the volunteers. Nancy had recently retired, so the timing was just right.

By 2018 Nancy had stepped up as Head of Bric-a-Brac when it became too much for Betsy. Nancy recalls: “Lynn Engelbreth put it in a newsletter! It read: ‘Betsy Ervin and Nancy Miller are the heads of Bric-a-Brac.’ I didn’t sign up for that! Lynn just wrote it in there! And she’s a friend of mine! How dare she?!? Head of Bric-a-Brac?!? I remember Lynn laughing and saying: ‘Of course you are!’”

Nancy now leads a staff of 24 volunteers in Bric-a-Brac, many of whom have found their own niche. Nancy says: “Donna Pearce decorates the walls, and she’s really good at it. Anything to do with dolls, florals, and cutlery goes straight to Beth Bartle. Ann Bamford is in charge of the Bowling Alley and the beautiful center table decorations.” The May 2022 sale featured Ann’s creative display of cats from Neal Pratt’s collection.

Nancy recommends Adam Minter’s 2019 book Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage Sale, where the author discusses recycling used goods as a global phenomenon.

Minter balances statistics with anecdotes: “Between 1967 and 2017, the money that Americans spent annually on stuff—from sofas to cell phones—increased almost twentyfold.” So, capitalism has run amok. Minter also considers danshari, a three-character Japanese word that means: severing a relationship with unnecessary things (dan), purging clutter that overwhelms the home (sha), and achieving a sense of peace by separating the self from things (ri). Cleaning your home of clutter also cleanses your spirit. These two forces are at odds: the desire to acquire things; and the peace achieved by shedding things. It seems that hoarding is winning out. There are 50,000 storage unit sites in the United States, with roughly 1 in 11 Americans paying for space to store the overflow of their possessions. The Barn thrives on the fact that many Americans have too much stuff. Reading Minter, we can see the Barn as part of a global movement that is supplying people with used goods they want and need. Rather than simply throwing used things away, we can reuse or repurpose them.

Minter argues that traditional bonds, which once revolved around religion and civic participation, are disintegrating, and have been replaced by “industrialization, urbanization, and secularization.” Minter says that our very identities are now set by brands and objects, which project who we are.

At St. Thomas, we know that our spiritual bonds are not disintegrating; that we are, indeed, fulfilling our baptismal covenant when we serve others. We want to engage in episcopal evangelism (not an oxymoron Rev. Emily Richards assures me) by inviting Barn customers to become members of St. Thomas. But Episcopalians still do appreciate thrifting a Donna Crayon dress or a Pierre Cardboard shirt. Reuse is at the core of the book, with Minter examining global consumption patterns, and the history of tag sales. What looks like junk can often be repurposed by the creative shopper. For example, we get discarded fabric that can be turned into quilts by the skilled artisan.

Nancy looks up trying to recall the year: “I think it was sometime in 2014, and I remember it was a sale day, and Betsy pointed out Rob MacNamara, and she said ’They’re getting ready for their trip to Honduras, but they’re short aprons.’”

“Short aprons?,” Nancy asked, “What’s that mean?” Betsy explained that Rob Mac took aprons from the Barn as gifts to the women of the villages. Our partners in Honduras at APP (Agua Para el Pueblo) told us how many women lived in the village, so we knew we were short.

Instantly, Nancy knew what to do. She says: “My mother (nèe Elizabeth Kirschenheiter Gehrling) was a very crafty person and was a member of the Norfield Grange in Weston, CT. She made hand-sewn cotton aprons. They were like quilts. Her hands were always busy; she was always sewing or crocheting. My mother had died at the age of 98 the year before, so I had all of her aprons! I had 98 of them!”

Since that time, Nancy and her sister, Marilyn, have continued her mother’s work, and every year quietly and methodically produce dozens and dozens of handmade aprons for the Honduras Water Mission. They have made over 900 aprons in all. Nancy says: “Every apron is different: an apron has a body, a waistband, ties, and a pocket. They have contrasting fabrics. Contrasting patterns. Sometimes the waistbands and ties are different from the pockets; sometimes the waistbands and the ties are different, and the pocket is the same as one of those two. It’s a quilting aesthetic.”

Rob was raving about the Honduran coffee, so Nancy made a few aprons with coffee cup imagery on the fabric. “About 12% of the population is left-handed,” she says with authority, “so we made that many aprons with left-handed pockets.” This year at the end of April we returned to the village of El Rabinal—the very first village that Rob visited back in 2001. They had tripled in size to over 80 families, so they needed a new water system, which we helped to provide by purchasing the PVC pipe and cement for the project. Our team of seven worked side by side with the villagers digging the trench for the pipe. And we took 85 aprons with us to El Rabinal.

We also visited the small village of Los Cerritos, where we delivered 28 aprons. The people there welcomed us with a celebration for the gravity-fed water system provided by this mission in 2021. There were speeches and prayers of thanksgiving, a delicious meal, and the children performed songs and dances. The people of Los Cerritos are truly deeply appreciative to have clean water.

Come visit us in Bric-a-Brac, and when you do, remember Betsy Ervin and Neal Pratt. And join all the good people of St. Thomas, who are volunteering as a part of the global industry of used goods with the purpose of doing good in the world--both environmentally and spiritually. Proceeds from our Barn Sales go to worthy organizations near and far. If you see Adam Minter, invite him to a Barn Sale. I’ll treat him to an egg sandwich and a coffee and let him feel the Holy Spirit moving at St. Thomas Church.