🔒The fix is in: South Portland troubleshooters repair dozens of objects at warp speed

They came on a sub-freezing Saturday bearing broken blenders and bracelets, night lights and necklaces, to the makeshift repair shop. Stationed at tables on the lower level of the South Portland Public Library with their own equipment and supplies, 16 volunteer fixers joined by a group of high school tech whizzes mended objects like a well-oiled workforce that some employers can only dream of. “I have come prepared to fix sweaters and knitted things,” says Kay Mishkin, a retired child care worker who learned to darn from her grandmother. “There was a big hole right here, and I darned it — darn it!” Friendly banter flowed all morning at the repair fair, which was organized by South Portland’s Office of Sustainability in collaboration with the city’s Waste Reduction Committee and library staff. The concept originated in the Netherlands in 2009, gaining popularity around the world as a way to promote social interaction and keep waste out of landfills. In Maine, most repair fairs are hosted by libraries, and this was the second edition in South Portland. Seated next to Mishkin with a Singer machine he bought in 2018, Julian Bencze stitches for a living at Sea Bags, which makes totes and other accessories from recycled sails.

“I go to work all day and then I come home and I keep sewing,” says Bencze, a part-time stagehand who makes costumes for comic conventions and lately also historical garments. Out of seven or eight garments he tackled in South Portland, the knottiest challenge was reattaching straps to an insulated grocery bag. Terry Morgan, a retired nurse putting in four hours a week during flu season, powered through a brief finger cramp to make a gold necklace whole again. For one visitor, she packed away a box of overstretched bracelets to work on at home and drop back off at the library’s front desk. Two fellows from the Portland Gear Hub didn’t get any takers for bike repairs that morning but kept busy enough on a demo model. At the other end of the room, there were long lines for lamps and appliances. “This has been sitting in my cupboard for a while and wasn’t working,” massage therapist SungHee Leahy of Scarborough says of her liquid-filled Vitamix blender. Turns out it did work, but not so the brand-new vibrating fitness plate she got from a friend. “I’m going to get a battery and I’m going to come back,” she giggles before dashing out. Meanwhile at the lamp station, Michael Hetzel revives all manner of strangely shaped lamps within seconds, including a Goodwill purchase with a seeded-glass tumbler of a base. Does the former boatyard worker repair lamps for a living? “Absolutely not,” he grumbles. “I do it because I am living.”

In the corner with classmates from South Portland High School’s Computer Science Honor Society and teacher Julie York, Sam West examines a camera that’s not working. “I have an interest in computer science and I like helping people,” the 11th-grader says.

Back at the sewing station, Mishkin makes Christopher Walton’s day by patching up a hole in a beloved woolen sweater he bought in Scotland over three decades ago. “There’s no other sweater that would have survived what I put this one through,” says Walton, a grocery store deli-counter employee and South Portland Waste Reduction Committee member who says he wore the sweater that day with the intent of getting it repaired. “I thought, ‘What if no one shows up? I’m going to need to give these vendors something to do.’” Mishkin had the same worry last year, only to be deluged with requests. “It was a community thing I felt really blessed to be taking part in — and I still feel that way,” she says. A total of 162 people and one dog attended the repair fair, whose official yield was 25 sewing and mending repairs, 21 electronics and small appliances, 19 lamps and 10 pieces of jewelry. That’s quite a feat for a three-hour unpaid shift.