Hardware Stores

I love hardware stores.
Seriously, they are up there towards the top of my 'Favorite Things in Life' list.   I am happier than a dog being invited to go along on a car ride, the day you invite me to tag along with you to a hardware store!

Home Depot, Lowes, Menards, FLEET FARM, Ace Hardware.......you name it.  A wave of excitement always comes over me when I get to step inside one of these Handy Andy stores.

If a normal woman gets excited about looking at the new seasonal lineup of Coach purses....well, take that eagerness and inject it into me wanting to go pick out cool new tools!  Pliers, drills, a really nice impact set, wrenches, socket sets....so much potential, so much strength.

I got a $25 gift card to Sears as a Christmas gift last Christmas, and while I have yet to use it....I am grinning from ear to ear with what it promises.  I am going to use it to buy Craftsman tools for myself.  Someday, I will build my own tool bag.  And I vow to know how to use every tool in that bag.


High school.....Bay Port Theater and Stage Crew.....I'd say that some of the more prominent memories from my days then were the trips I'd get to run to Kimp's Ace Hardware, probably with Greg, to run in and grab some more goodies and supplies for the team back at the school to finish building their contraptions.

These errands were always great, because that guy was always on a mission!  He knew exactly what he was looking for, each trip.  Try and keep up with him in the store, and he'd bee-bop from aisle to aisle, making a beeline.  I was hooked, following him and watching him.  Trying to guess his next move ahead of him.  If he'd actually come to a stop at a display and start scanning it for what he wanted, well then, that would be your chance to stand back and just watch him at work.  I felt so special to be standing there, almost seeing the wheels turn inside his head.  He was building something in his mind, already orchestrating his order of assembly.  Even at the end of our trip in the cashier lane, he'd be talkative and genuine with the cashier.  Firing on all cylinders.  And I admired that confidence in him, I admired how he could be so skilled and hands on, in one instant!

I digress -- Greg is one subject I will always protect, and I promised myself I'd never write about said subject.  I guess it serves as some sort of twisted poetic justice that nowadays I happen to live in an apartment complex that butts up to the backyard of the Ace Hardware here in Marysville.

And yes, quick trips to this Ace has saved MY ace on more than one occasion.



Anyway, I think my desire to be more confident in hardware stores myself, became rooted in these memories.  I aspire to be just as resourceful and crafty.  I dream that my basic mechanical aptitude would just come as a second nature.  And I expected that maybe, just maybe, the more I would handle a hardware store, the more that aptitude would come to me.

So each time I step inside a hardware store (and I do prefer the small-town hardware stores instead of the Build It Bigger megastores), I am taken back to those days.  And I am happy.  Warm and fuzzy.  For the duration of my whole visit to the hardware store, perusing up and down the aisles, daydreaming, getting ideas, imagining all the potential of the Cool Shit I could build and actually USE...I am happy.


Oh, but don't worry -- I still screw up righty-tighty, lefty-loosey to this day!
(Sorry, Honda.  I am getting better.  And more badass.)  :-)


Kudos to hardware stores and all of their endless, enticing potential.