It’s a wonderful life.
This man started working at a hardware store right after WWII and has never had to fill out another job application.
He’s like family to the owners.
Big box stores hover like a predator over Nicholson’s, but they’ve managed to carve out their own niche with hands-on customer service.
Do you have a project that you need help with? Nicholson’s will sit you down and talk you through it.
ht/ rob e.
Locally owned hardware stores are a national treasure.
How cool is that?!
Try to get anyone to acknowledge your existence in a big box hardware store, let alone give you any help or advice. There is a little, family-owned hardware near my home and I LOVE it for the friendly and helpful service.
My favorite one was in Placerville, Ca. The old wooden floors would creak when you walked on them. If they didn’t have what you were looking for, you just didn’t look in the right place! I swear they still had inventory from the Gold Rush era.
My family had two, each in adjacent farming towns of 500 or so people. Also they were John Deere dealerships.
Brick buildings with large plate glass display windows, oiled wood floors, tin ceilings, oak bins and racks with nearly everything you needed. Washers & dryers, shotguns, lawn mowers, Wrangler jeans, Justin boots, bolts, nails stock whips, submersible well pumps, rubber golashes, cattle prods……..
Remember when you could buy .22 caliber rounds from a
20 gallon wooden barrel for a penny a piece?
Yep, they ruined that.
Miller’s Hardware on the South hill in Spokane is still one of the oldest and best hardware stores around. It’s located right across the street from where my Dad’s Shell gas station was back in the 60’s to early 80’s (it’s now a McBozo’s) and is still going strong. It was there when I was a kid and I expect it to be there hopefully forever.
Great story. I sent it to my 87 yo Dad whose first job was at Garver Bros. general store in Strasburg Ohio. It burned down several years ago and it broke his heart. This will put a smile on his face and hopefully trigger an email to me with a few tales from his time there. 😊💕
May the Good Lord Bless him with 30 more years there!
I’ve been there many times over the years. My dad, about ten, traded a few months working there for a self propelled reel mower from the thirties. He and his buddies put it on a wagon and drove all over Rockford. The police escorted them back home. It made the local newspaper, the Registar Republic (now the Register Star). That’s not all they did. Half the laws on the books are there because of them. Think about tha the next time you get pulled over in a drop tank powered by a surplus WWI Harley.
yeah Lowes and Home Despot ruined many small town hardware stores. My town has a Lowes but also has 2 hardware stores, they still are surviving somehow. Probably by having better service and better parts.
The plumbing fittings, in general, that you find at Lowes are absolute trash sometimes.
That said, there are some department heads at my Lowes who have real world experience, as in, they used to be contractors and know about plumbing or electrical.
Give that man a hand! I just celebrated fifty years with the same hair and teeth which took some doing!
Wish him “have a good day” and his reflex response will be a smile that says, ‘of course, that’s what life is, a string of good days’. God blessed him.
“Man celebrates 70 years at the same hardware store”
and his wife never came looking for him? for 70 years?
what a croc!
I love the smell and sounds of an old hardware store,and you’re sure to find a treasure there you won’t find anywhere else, like this happy gentleman.
Maybe his wife thought it was a blessing he stayed there for 70 years. Kept him outta the house.
Burner: She never had to worry. That is one very, very faithful man! 😉