The old brown coat

It was 7:30 a.m. on a Friday morning when the woman walked into my in-laws' garage.

The bonnet on her head and her long, plain-looking dress let observers know she was a member of the plain folk. She might have been Mennonite, or a sub-sect of the Brethren In Christ or another religious order with roots in the Anabaptists.

But she arrived in a car she drove, so she was not Amish.

Regardless, she wandered the tables set up with our family's brick-a-brack and clothing and toys. We decided to put most of the yard sale items inside the three-car garage because rain was predicted.

She made it to the last table, then stopped.

She picked up my old brown coat.

I bought it at Wal-Mart or Meijer or some similar store while I was living in Michigan, circa 2004. I needed a warm coat to withstand the frozen tundra, and this coat — a Carhartt knockoff — fit the bill.

It was warm and rugged. It looked more like the kind of coat you'd see a farmer wear. The brown was the color of milk chocolate, and the fabric was like canvas, but softer.

As time wore on, that coat and I went on many an assignment together. Fires. Car crashes. Standoffs. It did the job as I hustled to and from my car in the biting bluster blowing off Lake Huron.

I continued to wear it when I moved back to Pennsylvania in 2005, but stopped around 2008 because I was gifted a new winter coat that did a better job of protecting my neck (I had to wear a scarf with that old brown coat).

The coat then hung in a closet. Or in the basement. Or in the laundry room. It depended on where I was living.

I wanted to give it away to Coats for Kids, but for one reason or another, I always missed the collection.

Finally, as we prepared for the yard sale, I said that now was the time to get rid of the coat. I put a tag that read "$5" on it, but I would have taken less. I just wanted it to go to someone who could use it.

So I felt happy that the plain-dressed woman was eyeing it. She seemed like the type who would be the wife of one of Franklin County's many hardworking farmers. Maybe she thought that coat would work well for her husband, or son, who had to get up on very chilly mornings to tend to the dairy cows or make sure the tractor was running.

I had walked out of the garage for a minute, but walked back in just in time to see the woman handing a $5 bill to my father-in-law.

She handed over the coat hanger and said, "Thank you." Then she walked off quickly.

I wanted to tell her that I was glad it was going to a good home, or to wish the new wearer well for me.

Instead, I just smiled, then turned back to arranging items for sale on the table.