Holmdel First Aid, Report To Your Station for a Clean-Up

In June, the Holmdel First Aid squad held a monster garage sale at the Crawfords Corner Station, with thousands of eclectic items donated by residents. It was a huge, festive success that netted the squad $8,000 in a single day. 

Anything that was not bought or donated to charities was carted over to the township's Large Item Dropoff. The First Aid shelled out $900 of its gross profit from the day to pay the carting fees, said squad President Mike Nikolis.

But still -- months later -- souvenirs of the sale still haunt the building. Everywhere the volunteers look, they were finding odd items squirreled away, presumably by somebody who promised to come pick it up later.

A wooden rubberband gun. A vintage voltage regulator. A plastic protractor, still in its packaging. The clutter was making everyone a little crazy, so on Thursday 15 volunteers gathered to do a thorough weeding at the First Aid building. They fanned out through the truck bays, meeting rooms and offices, digging out more weird stuff that could be traced to June 12, 2011.

Parting with the junk was not so easy, after all. Lourdes Alcaraz pronounced the old vacuum cleaner worth keeping, and wheeled it out of the pile. Sheng Chi Wu was persuaded by the squad's First Lt. Paul Fellingham to hang onto the used work gloves. Lisa Ching hesitated to throw out the faux poinsettia, since, you know, the holidays would soon be here.

I felt compelled to save the protractor from the rubbish pile and offered to take it home. Because one day my kids might need to draw perfect circles and then I'd have one, you see...