Rochester Writers

Of course, by the time I make it back the next week, the pickin’s are even slimmer, and I totally blew my ONE CHANCE to get myself a decent quick-clamp at a sub-$10 price.

Just like the aforementioned quick-clamp, it’s sad to see the staff go…hopefully they will be successfully absorbed into the local workforce in a capacity that suits their hardware-oriented expertise. I wouldn’t go so far as saying I actually befriended any of these people, but I’ve spent enough time in that store since purchasing my first home two years ago that I’d recognize any of them were I to see them on the street. (As I write this, it occurs to me that my sadness about the closing of the Chase-Pitkin stores would be magnified astronomically if I would ever actually see one of these people on the street: "WILL GIVE PLUMBING ADVICE FOR FOOD.")  One employee in particular really amazed me with her encyclopedic knowledge of all things garden. She certainly knew her shit (fertilizer-themed pun unintended) and was eager to share her knowledge, even to the point of belittling me:

Me: “I wish you would have been here last week…there was a kid here who couldn’t really help me out.”

Her: “Well, you can’t expect a kid who’s paying his way through MCC to be able to compensate for your inability to do a little research on what you’re planting in your backyard.”

On lamenting the loss of Chase-Pitkin, I stop and pause for a moment, and then realize: “I’m getting sentimental over a smallish chain of hardware stores being run out of business by a couple of larger chains of hardware stores.” Since I am a fan and supporter of smallish mom-and-pop operations, this strikes me as odd. Did I come to realize the value and importance of independently-run, locally-owned businesses too late for my shopping habits to have any sort of impact on the hardware store scene? And when I ask that, what I’m really asking is this: when was the last time I shopped – or even had the opportunity to shop – at a hardware store that wasn’t part of a chain?

I have to go back at least a decade to when I was still in college. In the one-stoplight town whose population of 16,000 was cut in half from mid-May to mid-August, the local hardware store was the only game in town. It was called Zindel’s, and that name always had such a great ring to it… “Zindel” sounds just about right if you were trying to think of the name of that Amish family that lived ‘round the bend; it also sounded about right if you were trying to come up with a name for your sixth level cleric. Either way, it sounds like a good name for a place that time forgot.

Zindel’s was MAGICAL. The well-worn wooden floors creaked with every step, as you worked your way through the labyrinthine aisles from one end of the store to the other. If it weren’t for the aerosol cans and plastic jugs with child-resistant caps, you’d think you just walked into some turn-of-the-century apothecary or dry goods shop. The 80-something Zindel patriarch looked as though he just stepped out of a Daguerreotype, tending the counter day in and day out in the same pair of worn denim overalls.

Even ten years ago, though, Zindel’s was an anomaly. Every other store of its kind in my hometown had closed shop at least ten years before that, having been run out business by some then-new mega-shops. Thinking of those shops, then, I have to laugh… everyone (my old man included) made such a big deal when Grossman’s and the Valu Home Centers set up shop in the mid-80s. They were enormous, gargantuan beasts! But now, less than two decades later, they are all but gone as well. Valu Home Centers are still clinging to life in my home town, but they have fallen into the same kind of role Chase-Pitkin serves/served in Rochester: you know, the “oh-shit-I’m-in-the-middle-of-a-project-and-I-really-need-a-new-blade-for-my-circular-saw-and-I-don’t-feel-like-driving-all-the-way-out-to-the-goddamn-suburbs-to-get-it” kind of place. Their stores don’t seem so mammoth anymore, and they’re kind of on the icky side. In fact, the only thing halfway notable about Valu Home Centers is their advertising campaign, in which a 40-something dude in a flattop and Valu Home Center uniform always, for some inexplicable reason, ends up doing the cabbage patch to the Valu Home Center jingle.

Grossman’s, on the other hand, is gone for good from my hometown. The “Grossman’s of Biblical Proportions” up by the freeway hasn’t sold hardware for well over a decade now, its building now being occupied by the Salvation Army. In an interesting display of hardware evolution in progress, this now depressed-looking Salvation Army thrift store now sits in the shadows of both a Lowe’s and a Home Depot. 

So why then should I even care? If this is the natural progression of things, why even mourn the loss of the weaker of species? I don’t know, man… but we’re talking about tools here! One of the very things that make humans human! One of the things that separate us from our hirsute, dookie-throwin’ cousins! Surely that must strike a primordial chord within us all. It’s as if UGGO, from my tribe, creator of many fine clubs, has just been run out of town by BORGO, from the southlands. Turns out that if I go to BORGO’S GIGANTO CAVE, I can get A DOZEN clubs for the price of THREE of UGGO’S. Well, no offense, BORGO, but I just like this UGGO dude and his cave of respectable size. And besides, I don’t feel like driving all the way out to the goddamn suburbs.