The Player's Punch

The Peterborough Players had its annual auction gala last week. My wife, Marcia, works for the Players—her retirement job from innkeeping—and I sit on one of the Board committees, which means we were there, bartending, serving cocktails and Players Punch, the signature drink of the evening, a limey, frothy, pineapple concoction with cherry and umbrella. People mingled cheerfully, waiting for the doors to open to the main event, enjoying the warm temperatures and passed hors d’oeuvres (from Sunflowers Catering and the Optimist Café). There were enough of us under a tent behind the rehearsal hall to stretch the attacking lines of black flies and blunt their advances.

Auctions are oxygen to many non-profit organizations—theatres, churches, community social clubs—and the people that organize them, soliciting, collecting and promoting donations, should be granted sainthood and go straight to Heaven when the time comes. The dust will not have settled for long behind this year’s Player’s auction before a committee of volunteers will have to start meeting to consider next year’s auction.

In pastoral places like Monadnock, assembling auction items demands creativity. The number of residents with Nantucket beach houses that might tempt a bidder under the spell of a pineapple umbrella drink is not high. Why would it be? They live here. They own lake houses. And the person that can afford to take a flyer bidding on a beautiful lake house for a weekend has their own next door.

So, our auctions feature a full day of tree work, fine furniture by local craftspeople, culinary experiences donated by area restaurants and chefs, curated collections of wines unavailable through the state store. Red Sox tickets (which is like winning a trip to the big city).

Sit through any community auction, and you will learn something about its people. It occurs to me at this moment how it might have been a good idea to encourage people who were staying at the Hancock Inn while we were its custodians to attend a local auction if they were interested in learning more about the region as a place to live. We got dozens of those visitors every year: candidates for jobs, applicants to schools, relations from elsewhere considering a move to Monadnock to be closer to family. They always had one question at breakfast that no one could really be trusted to answer objectively: what was it like to live here?

We should have thought of referring them to the Player’s auction, where they might have experienced some of the camaraderie, the restaurants, a few of the artisans, the duel over a day of tree work (trees are to us as ice is to Eskimos), even the Red Sox (yes, this is Red Sox nation). A perfect cultural snapshot. And, of course, the narrow road down to the Player’s gray barn, home to professional theatre for ninety years.

The Monadnock region has seen better days of higher enrollments. Right now, employers need workers, hospitals need doctors and nurses, schools need teachers and students. Restaurants need diners. Inns need guests. Local stores and markets need shoppers. Only more people, of one sort or another, will do anything to fulfill those demands. But only the answer to the question, “What is it like to live here?” will do anything to bring more people.

We have our answer, and it is a good one. It is worth bidding on wherever you go, however you can. Early and often.

This column appeared in the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript, May 23, 2023