Are these seats taken?

Buy a bit of history Tuesday and help fund the renovation of the Whitefish Central School auditorium

Whitefish Central School boosters and memorabilia buffs, Tuesday's your chance to claim your seat in history.

It costs just $10 a pop, and you get to keep the petrified gum on the bottom and the initials carved on the back.

In a one-day blowout sale June 20, the 1938-vintage wooden folding seats in the 540-capacity historic Central School auditorium will be offered to the public at a bargain-basement price. It's part of the major re-do under way at the auditorium.

"You snooze, you lose," said school counselor and Central School Auditorium Renovation Committee worker Kelly Talsma.

"Don't plan to come and get them on Wednesday. They're going to be gone," she promised. "People want them."

Call the school at 862-8650 to reserve a time for your own personal salvage party.

Slots are available from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.

It's first-come, first-served, and each person can claim all the seats from any spot.

Maybe you have your own special seat that still bears the marks of your adolescent artistry.

Maybe you appreciate the workmanship of days gone by.

Bring your cash, your own wrenches and screwdrivers and ways to haul off your treasure before the end of the day - the auditorium is turned over to Swank Enterprises for demolition Wednesday.

Why would you want one of these seats?

"It's a bit of memorabilia if you went to school there," fundraising committee Chairman Ross Anderson said. "If not, they're built really well. They've got cast-iron decorative ends on them, and there's the really nice wood grain on the seat and back, even if they are plywood."

Besides, Talsma said, they're functional.

A budding North Fork church is interested, she said. Or on the home front, think of them in children's rooms, on porches, around the fire pit, in the garden, as a piece of art.

"You could carve your own names in it," she added. "With reunions in Whitefish, they would be fun to have. You could have them for your own mock theater in the basement."

A while back, the committee had offered the seats for $100 each. There were a few takers, such as the Whitefish Education Association's purchase of a pair of seats for teacher Joyce Murphy's retirement.

But a lot are left.

The $5,000 or so raised from the $10 donation per seat, if all are sold, would be a drop in the bucket toward the $3.5 million project cost. But it's an important drop that would add to the $2.1 million raised.

It also will save the demolition charges for tearing them out, another important consideration as the fundraising group forges ahead toward completion of the community-based project.

The next step in the project is breaking out and redesigning the floor to give steep-grade auditorium-style seating, reclaim the balcony that had been given over to the central administrative suite in recent years, and expand the lobby.

Seating capacity in the renovated facility is a moving target, but right now Anderson said it stands at about 475.

Everything will be modern and handicap-accessible while it retains the grace and charm of an earlier era.

"We're looking at 10 to 12 months out," Talsma said. "We want to be ready for the Alpine Theatre Project to do all their productions there next summer."

Although the construction is a volunteer-led, privately funded effort - undertaken along with the overall Central School expansion and renovation that will begin its final phase this fall - School District 44 will retain ownership.

"They will lease it out to Alpine in the summer, but it will unequivocally be a public facility," leased out to a wide range of groups, Talsma said. "It will be a real asset to the community."

And it will be a good complement to the O'Shaughnessy Center just a block or two away.

"The O'Shaughnessy has benefited our students by leaps and bounds," she said of the facility that can accommodate as many as 380. "But it's limited by its size."

The renovated Central auditorium will be able to host "bigger shows, bigger names, bigger productions," she said.

Tuesday's one-day seat sale will help make room for that bigger future.

"It's a part of history, like taking Central School out in pieces," Talsma added, harkening back to the rush on blackboards, lockers and other classroom fundamentals last year when the community enthusiastically disassembled their old school before it met the wrecking ball.

"We want to recycle anything we can, and they're nice seats. Salvaging is a good thing, and we might as well open it up to the public. We'll get something out of it [financially], so we're coming along on our goal," she said. "And it can be for the whole valley."

The committee making this all happen, including the salvage-a-seat initiative, is an ever-expanding group of people.

"More people are excited about it, they want to invest in our community and our youth," she said. "This is something that touches everyone."

Reporter Nancy Kimball can be reached at 758-4483 or by e-mail at nkimball@dailyinterlake.com