Time Travel...

I went for a ride yesterday. Well, maybe more than a ride. I was on a mission: to find a towel holder for my kitchen. Unfortunately, I know exactly what I want....and I can't find it.

So, I drove ten miles east, looking in the next little town. I was sure I would find it: they are ten miles away and more than fifty years “behind the times.” It was like crossing the time/space continuum, somehow.

I already looked at the local big box stores. No luck. I want the chrome (remember chrome?) that mounts on the wall and has two or three posts that stick out. They move, side to side, and each is long enough to hold a regular kitchen towel.

It's fallout from moving my refrigerator. I used to just loop a kitchen towel through the handle and I would wash my hands, then take two steps and dry them. Alas, the fridge is clear across the room now. The plan doesn't work anymore.

And so, the jaunt east, to another town and another time. The store is an old-fashioned hardware store, but it's not called a hardware store. It's a “mercantile”.....isn't that a great name? I wish we had one here in Podunk: Podunk Mercantile. It just has a good ring to it, I think.

But I digress....

I walked through the front door, with the sign that tells their store hours (closed on Sundays), and into the slightly darkened atmosphere of a real hardware store. From the old brick facade, to the rows and rows of shelves, it is a true denizen of hardware stores past.

Shelves and bins. No blister packs. No boxes. If you want to buy one ten-penny nail, you can. You don't have to buy a box of a thousand. Unless you want to, of course. And row after row of light bulbs, toilet gaskets, wrenches, and other ephemera that makes a hardware store what it is. Or was. Or should be.

Walking up and down the aisles, the wooden floor creaked beneath my steps. I love that, too. And being able to pick something up and see how it works. And not just wonder, through the blister pack, if the size is right. Or not.

Although the store has been there for more than seventy years, they did add a “new” section about fifty years ago. There is a wide opening between the part of the store that displays all the accoutrements of farming, ranching, and home repair, and “the other side” as it is known.

No, it's not Heaven, as in dying and going to “the other side.” But it's practically the same: there are beautiful dishes, fancy cookware, home decorations and tablecloths. That's Heaven in the Mercantile, I think.

Somebody, back then, was very smart. If HE was coming to town to go to the Mercantile, why not entice him to bring HER along? After all, they grew their own food, and she made her own clothes, and his clothing came from the Mercantile. What could they possibly need that they didn't make for themselves? Ah, dishes and pots and pans, of course.

Expensive things, at that. But there is something else about Podunk's neighbor to the east: they have the highest number of millionaires, per capita, of any place in the central valley. Not showy people, just hardworking people who have money. Lots of money. So, the HER side of the Mercantile does quiet well, too.

Alas, the Mercantile did not have what I wanted. I will have to look online for a site that specializes in stuff from the Fifties. I hope to find something that has been recycled, and not a reproduction that was made in.....China.

All in all, it was a fun trip. Going east, and going back in time....