SKOWHEGAN — Hugh Breingan putters around outside a small wooden shed that is shaded in the summer by a blue tarpaulin.

He’s got tires and tubes and wrenches and bicycle chains.

And he’s got bicycles, lots of bicycles.

Breingan, 70, known to his friends as Tiny, rescues old bikes, fixes them up and gives them all away to children who need them, he said recently from his backyard on Hanover Street near the Skowhegan state fairgrounds. So far this summer he has salvaged, repaired and given away about 80 bikes to kids from his neighborhood and elsewhere.

“I’ve got people that save these bikes for me — one is the Skowhegan landfill and Skowhegan metal recycling off of Waye Street,” Breingan said. “We’ve given some to daycare centers; we brought bikes to the homeless shelter at the Trinity church and to every kid in the neighborhood. We took nine up to the (mobile home park) in Madison the other day.”

Breingan said he started collecting scrap bicycles last year when he noticed some had been thrown away at the town solid waste and recycling center on Transfer Station Drive. He refurbished 25 or 30 last year, he said.

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Putting new life in the old bikes is a great idea, according to Randy Gray, Skowhegan’s solid waste management supervisor and code enforcement officer.

“It’s part of our reuse program — we’re supposed to do things like that,” Gray, who also is Breingan’s nephew, said. “Whenever we can reuse things, that’s a big part of recycling. That’s what we’re supposed to do in recycling.”

Gray said he was asked by workers at the transfer station if they could give the old bikes to Breingan. He said Breingan gets the bikes that are thrown away, not ones that are abandoned or stolen and picked up by the police department. Those bikes are sold by the town as town-owned property.

“Anything that we find useful ourselves, we resell ourselves and it goes back into general fund,” Gray said. “It’s is a reuse program — we sell a ton of stuff up there.”

Ila Libby, who lives near Breingan on Hanover and volunteers at the homeless shelter at Trinity Evangelical Free Church on McClellan Street, said she recommended him to Richard Berry, senior pastor at the church. A pickup truck load of bikes was donated to the shelter, Berry said.

“He gives them to all the kids in the neighborhood,” she said. “I have a couple of foster kids and my granddaughter who he gave them to.”

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Breingan is a retired outboard motor repair man and small engine mechanic.

“I get a kick out of it — when the kids come up here, some of them, you wouldn’t believe their faces when they get a bike,” he said. “I get boys’ bikes and girls’ bikes, little ones, big ones, right up through. I wanted something to do and this makes kids happy.”

He said he is assisted by his longtime girlfriend Marylee Cluckey, who keeps a list of the first names of all the bike recipients in a little book.

“When he gives them to people like at the homeless shelter, they’re just so happy,” Cluckey. “It was really, really cute; they say ‘How much does they cost, anyway?’ and Tiny says ‘They’re free’ and they’re amazed by that. They’d try to pay him in pennies.”

Breingan, a father of six, said he has invested only about $60 this summer, mostly on tires, tubes and bicycle chains.

“All the kids come back if they get a flat tire or if they need a chain fixed or to put their seat up or put their seat down, anything,” he said. “We also give them a freeze pop every Monday night; Marylee passes them out to all the kids in the neighborhood. We have eight, 10, sometimes 15, you never know.”

Doug Harlow — 612-2367

dharlow@centralmaine.com


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