Hardware - Sunday 1/18/2009

I like hardware stores. I just liked the way these hammers looked hanging here together, but in other aisles of hardware stores, I always come across things that surprise or interest me.

Hmmm. To someone, all these things are so familiar. Maybe one of them will help me.

I found some screen repair tape, which I bought. Also some inexpensive wheel covers that look like they might be vastly easier to put on and take off our trailer tires (to protect them from the e-vile life-shortening sun) and a $2.99 knife sharpener.

Hydra bought a wheel for measuring distances that he wants to use to measure our hikes around the peaks surrounding our neighborhood. For $10.00! Which is cheaper than the three or four pedometers I have purchased over the past decade, none of which I have been able to get to work.

He wants to measure our hikes. Hee. See why we are a good match?


There is also a lot about a hardware store that is very familiar and comforting to me. The smell of oiled tools reminds me of my dad's service station, and especially of going to parts stores with him to pick up things he needed. It always felt important to walk in with him because they'd have his order, and the men would joke around while I poked at the gloves and shrink-wrapped washers hanging on little rods.

I always loved these red shop rags, too. One often hung from my dad's back pants pocket, smeared with dark oil.

These things break open a whole host of memories about The Station.

One of my favorite things was walking in--after asking permission, of course--and grabbing an individually wrapped beef jerky or Slim Jim from the display on the counter. Confirming my Very Special Girl status.

The room with the cash register counter, pin ball machine, vending machines and a card table around which men sat playing pinochle and talking would go quiet. I thought perhaps in awe of the powerful beef-pilfering child-insider. Now I think they were just taking care not to let fly with any of the comfortable profanities they were used to punctuating their stories with.

There's a lot to say now about the politics of language, and how I learned to toss around curse words like a pro when working in the theater, and how really liberating that felt as a woman coming of age in the early 80s in the Midwest. But man, it's the end of the weekend and the cold is hanging on in little aggravating ways, and I'm supposed to be in bed by this time of night.