Skip to content

Story prompts woman to offer lamps

All is not lost for Ruth Genereaux and her pink room.

All is not lost for Ruth Genereaux and her pink room.

The 80-plus-year-old owner of Ruthie’s Roost Bed and Breakfast in Mill Bay clashed with the manager at the Norcross Return-It depot last week over a lamp Genereaux wanted that had been dropped off for recycling by another patron.

Manager Jenn Crabbe refutes the wording and characterization of their exchange as conveyed by Genereaux, but does say the decision was made to withhold the lamp due to contractual obligations with its partners and liability concerns.

But it left a hole in the pink room at Genereaux’s bed and breakfast, which she says surely would have benefited by the presence of the pink and brass lamp.

But, another Valley senior has come out of the woodwork to offer an alternative lighting arrangement.

Eleanor Gray has offered two pink and brass lamps to Genereaux in place of the one she lost out on.

“I know they’re going to be headed to the thrift shop once I get through all of this stuff and I thought, well gee, maybe she’d like them,” Gray said.

A fellow recycling and thrift store enthusiast, the two women share a passion. That’s why Gray opted to reach out.

“I just noticed this and I thought, dear love her. I’ve got things and I’m always taking boxes of stuff to the thrift shop,” she said.

“I took these two pink lamps out of my bedroom about six months ago and they’re sitting downstairs and I know I’m never going to be using them again so I knew they’re going to the thrift shop and I thought, oh, maybe this is why I’ve been hanging on to them so long.”

While agreeing it was a kind gesture indeed, Genereaux has decided not to accept the lamps.

“I’m going to phone her and I will thank her and if she doesn’t have a home for them I have a list of people who are needy and I’m sure one of them would love them,” she said. “It’s not that I needed a lamp, but it was a beautiful lamp, about 24 inches tall and antique-looking,” she noted of the Return-It fixture.

She maintains that lamp should have gone home with her.

“It’s just a crime that some people are needing things and other people are smashing them,” she said.



Sarah Simpson

About the Author: Sarah Simpson

I started my time with Black Press Media as an intern, before joining the Citizen in the summer of 2004.
Read more