LISBON — The for-sale sign is up. Buyers are looking. And the old hall’s pool table will sell if someone offers enough money.

Yet, William Thomas — commander of the Raymond J. Lavigne Post 9459 of the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Lisbon — isn’t ready to quit on the hall where a generation of ex-soldiers, sailors and Marines gathered with their wives.

“We’re doing so much to stay open and try and stay here,” Thomas said. They’ve held Wednesday chicken wing sales and lots of Friday night suppers.

But they’re losing. The post has about $6,000 in debt. Most of it is for heating oil. Last winter, they were billed for $1,000 every three or four weeks. And winter is coming.

“It’s a never-ending battle,” Thomas said.

Formally, the building is poised to sell. The tall, wooden for-sale sign beside Route 196 is genuine.

The post leadership voted two months ago to sell. The asking price is $90,000.

“It was a very difficult decision; lots of tears,” said Thomas’s wife, Carole, who leads the auxiliary.

The post has been declining since the mid-1990s.

In 1982, when William Thomas joined, the place was a town hub on a Saturday night. There were more than 500 members. They’d fill the place with 180 people. There were dances and suppers and so many wedding receptions.

By the mid-1990s, the World War II generation slowed. Many died. And the Vietnam generation — often pushed away by society during their war — never filled the gap.

Today, the post has about 200 members, Thomas said. About 15 people remain active. Often, they pay the bills, they serve the drinks at the bar and they make the food for the public suppers.

“They’re $6 for all you can eat,” Thomas said. “It’s a pretty good deal. Right now, that’s all that’s keeping us going.”

Today, the post is open only two or three days a week: Wednesday and Friday every week and Thursdays on the first and third weeks of the month.

It will be difficult to maintain as the weather turns cold.

“I’m guessing, once it gets to deep winter, we’re not going to be able to stay open,” Thomas said.

If that happens, the post plans to use the proceeds of the sale to buy or rent a new space. Until then, they’d meet somewhere else and maintain their charter.

Only a donor with deep pockets could save the hall.

Lisa Boulley, an auxiliary member from Lewiston, hopes someone might come forward as word of the closure spreads.

“I’d throw a party to burn the (for sale) sign,” she said.

Boulley, who often donates her time as bartender, said she knows the veterans who attend get something deeper than a glass of beer out of a visit.

“One veterans says to another, ‘I know what you mean. I’ve been there,'” she said. New veterans would feel instantly comfortable and able to talk, she said. “That’s the best thing about the VFW.”

Thomas believs the community will miss lots of little things if the hall goes away.

“There’s so much that a VFW does that’s never seen, that nobody knows about.” he said. One of those jobs is helping new veterans get the benefits they’ve earned, from medical care to college tuition.

The camaraderie in the hall is a bonus.

“We’re living on a shoestring,” Thomas said. “As long as we can go, we will.”

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