After generations of nostalgia, months of speculation and a sharp-tongued moment of contention, it all came down to just a minute or two of bidding.

Going once . . . going twice . . . sold! — to the gentleman in the yellow T-shirt for $5,000.

The Big Dipper, an icon of Northeast Ohio childhoods since 1925, was the crown jewel of an auction Tuesday intended to clear the defunct Geauga Lake amusement park of its contents.

It brought a price less than the blue book value of a 1995 Toyota Camry.

The high bidder kept a poker face after being declared the winner. His name is Tom Woosnam; he works for Apex Western Machinery Movers in Akron. But he represents someone else, someone whose name he wasn't at liberty to reveal Tuesday. All he could say is that the Big Dipper will be re-erected — but not where — that it will not operate as a working ride, but that it will be preserved for its historical value.

Experts have said moving and reconstructing the old wooden coaster could cost $1 million. The sale is subject to approval by the park's owners, Cedar Fair Entertainment.

A woman pushed forward from the crowd and reached for Woosnam's hand.

''Thank you very much for buying it and wanting to preserve it,'' she said.

She's Toni Gras of Aurora; her family had Geauga Lake season passes for more than 15 years.

Somewhat less pleased were representatives of American Coaster Enthusiasts, a group that has campaigned vigorously to keep the historic coaster on the site, incorporated into whatever the 400 acres of former amusement is to become.

Auction disrupted

In a recent dispute, Cedar Fair Entertainment has said it offered the Big Dipper to ACE. The group denies any such offer was made, and one of its members briefly interrupted the bidding process Tuesday, prompting a sharp retort from the auctioneer, who called for security to remove the woman. (The tension quickly passed and she was allowed to stay.)

Considering the tone and scope of the auction, the Big Dipper could just as easily have been bought for scrap. Or for a backyard novelty. Or to be shipped off to some faraway park.

With nearly 300 lots to move, the auctioneer and his entourage hardly paused long enough for speculation, already rolling forward and taking bids on an orphaned food cart, the amplified chatter echoing toward a horizon where arching coaster tracks hung like dinosaur bones.

Everything from metal fences to live shrubbery to historic amusements was on the block, as a crowd of hundreds followed a slow-moving pickup truck through the shuttered amusement park. Standing in the truck's bed was an auctioneer in a red blazer with a microphone headset, scanning the throng for the flash of a bidder's card.

Three! Three! Three! Two-and-a-half — hibbida, hibbida — three hun-dred

Following behind was a crowd that looked uncannily like what might have filled these midways on any other June day in any other year, men in shorts and Browns sweat shirts, some occasionally stopping for a smoke; women shading their eyes as they gazed down the long walkways; a few small children in strollers.

It appeared that nostalgia seekers far outnumbered registered bidders. In many cases, the emotion of seeing childhood memories picked to the bone rose like a lump in the throat.

Ex-worker reminisces

Keitha Silhavy of Stow hung near the rear of the crowd, both hands clutching a Styrofoam coffee cup, watching the auction through dark sunglasses.

Silhavy, 34, worked here full-time for a decade, beginning in 1995. Her father worked here before her.

Her voice caught and she found herself suddenly pinching back tears as she tried to describe what she was seeing, and what she remembered seeing here for all those years.

''The atmosphere, the people — just the experience and the memories that you had.''

She worked the controls of the Big Dipper, and couldn't get past the irony that it drew the same high bid as the auction of 700 trash cans.

She came to claim something far different than the bargain hunters.

''Closure,'' she said. ''To say goodbye.''

She got what she wanted, but then again, so did those bargain hunters.

Ralph Plumpton of Akron's RP Motors scored the Space Tower for $12,500.

The 195-foot steel needle with the rotating enclosed observation deck has been a Geauga Park landmark since 1974.

The hint of a wry smile tightened at the corners of his mouth as Plumpton described his plans for the icon.

''We're going to scrap it or possibly sell it to Nigeria — I'm not sure,'' Plumpton said as he hurried off to the next lot of bidding.

All through the day it went like this.

A man who owns a water park in Texas, Jeff Schlitter, picked up the entire contents of the Kids Play Zone complex for $10,000, after the auctioneers tried to start bidding at $200,000.

Jason Goscinski, 26, of Parma, scored a pair of concrete benches from the midway for $225, and plans to put them in his backyard as conversation pieces.

A man in a striped mechanic's shirt and black jeans, Timothy Bragg of Cleveland, bought 28 go-carts for $4,500, explaining, ''I've got a lotta grandkids.''

And, like many, many others, Mark Fundak of Wellington walked away with a camera full of final glances. A professional photographer, he looked up from his viewfinder to reminisce about his childhood memories of Geauga Lake, and more recent memories of bringing his own kids here.

''It's sad,'' he said. ''I mean, what I'm looking at is recording this for 25 years from now when people go, 'Hey, what was here before it was a housing development?' ''