This is the story of a fan. With metal blades spinning behind a faceplate that seems oddly transparent as soon as you imagine a hand anywhere near it, it is old and not like most fans you see these days. Emily Szeliga and her husband, Bryan, bought the fan at a yard sale in Portland, Oregon about five years ago. Since then it has traveled with them across the country until it reached its final resting place in the home they bought in Fishtown. About a year and a half ago a bump into a shelf in the middle of the night sent the fan tumbling. Since then, it has sat in the Szeliga’s basement until finding its way here, facedown on this table.

By the time I walked up to the fan and heard its story, the back panels had been opened, tinkered with, and reassembled. The glue on the back was setting. Just a half hour for it to dry, and then they can take it home in working order. The Szeliga’s didn’t know to fix the problem with the fan but someone at the Repair Fair certainly did.

Saturday’s event, organized by the Philly Fixers Guild and hosted at the Philadelphia Sculpture Gym (1834 Frankford Ave.), was an educational event for the public. Anyone could show up with an item –anything that was not a weapon or a car– and a volunteer “fixer” would repair the item along side its owner.

“Everyone has a friend who everyone goes to for help fixing things,” Ben Davis, the founder of Philly Fixers Guild, said. “These are people who think of themselves as people who repair things.”

Davis, a Fishtown resident and an active member in local sustainability causes sees this as a potential learning experience for people. Oftentimes, he sees people simply drop things off to get repaired instead of seeing the process through. Davis and the Fixers Guild have a different vision.

“If we actually give the screwdriver to the guest and say ‘okay, take the bottom panel off that blender that doesn’t work and see what’s inside.’ We want to empower people to think in a repair; rather than replace mindset,” Davis said.

“You know, they’re not just having you drop [something] off. They’re teaching you how to fix things, showing you how things are put together, how things are made and how they can be fixed. It’s self sufficiency. It’s both empowering and you’re apart of a community,” said Darla Jackson, owner of the Sculpture Gym.

The Sculpture Gym operates, not surprisingly, on the same model as a gym. A monthly membership grants members access to a wood shop, metal shop, jewelry shop, forging area, ceramics area and a mold-making and casting area.

Jackson’s efforts at the gym have done a great deal to facilitate a community of ‘making’ in the neighborhood. Given the Gym’s support of the Fixers Guild it seems that, to the people involved, it is important not only to have the ability to make new things but also to sustain the things one already has. Not everyone can be a repairman but Saturday’s event seemed to provide people with a start.

“It’s giving people some sort of in between, so that people keep the stuff they have by learning to do the little fixes… and the serious stuff saving for the repair shops.” Jackson smiles when she talks about “giving people the ability to realize its possible to give what you have value.”

Everyone has things too precious to replace. The Szeliga’s have a fan that they bought on the other side of the country, and have had a long on the trip that is their life together. Events like the Repair Fair help show us that we can keep the stuff that we have and don’t want to throw out, and that fixing it isn’t as hard as we might have thought. There is value in that as well. You give a man a fish, you help him for a day. But if you teach a man to fix, you help him for a lifetime.