Saturday evening, April 23, 1988
“J & E Hardware is a flourishing business these days, if I do say so myself,” thought Ellison Jones. “This sure turned out to be a good investment.”
He was reluctant to lock the front door, even though it was 6:00 PM Saturday. Officially the store closed at 5:00 but there was always someone hurrying in at the last minute looking for nails, or paint, or plumbing supplies, something they just had to have over the weekend.
The gate was closed to the lawn and garden shop beside the main store, the sprinklers off, the yard tools and wheelbarrows back inside the store. Of course, there was still trash to empty and the floors needed sweeping, but he’d tend to those himself.
Elly was a ‘medium’ man, at least that’s how he usually thought of himself. Medium height, medium build, medium brown hair generously threaded with gray.
But his heart was big, and thoughtful, and courteous, so when elderly Minnie Hamilton, needing just the right washer for her kitchen sink came in just before closing time, he’d been glad to help her.
Actually, Miss Minnie didn’t need a washer, she needed a whole new sink, new faucets and a plumber to install them, but she couldn’t afford it. He and Dot would drop by and help her put in her new washer after church Sunday afternoon, he promised. She was thrilled. She was lonely, and friendship was her primary need.
The washer was just the latest in a long list of last-minute shopping items for Miss Minnie. Dot would contribute some of her left-over pot roast and they would stay for a while to visit. Elly smiled he thought about their customers. Good people, he thought. Best in the world. He was so glad they’d taken this step.
Ellison and Dorothy Jones had already retired from one career, he from a local textile plant after twenty-five years, and she from teaching geography to elementary schoolers. They had initially planned to stay busy with their grandchildren and hobbies, puttering around their house and yard.
After only a few months, their daughter Julianne and her husband announced a move to Alabama, a good offer for Bob with better pay, better position, all that stuff. Within several weeks they were gone to Birmingham, taking their two sons with them. Bobby Jr. and Stevie were only ten and twelve, and excited about moving to a house with a real yard, close to a park with a real pool, in a real city.
Their eagerness was a little disappointing to the grandparents, who hugged them tight, gave them some spending money ‘for the road,’ and waved a tearful goodbye.
Suddenly retirement didn’t look quite so attractive. Oh, they could afford to travel to Birmingham several times a year, and the kids promised to come visit in the summers. Still, when the hardware store came up for sale, Elly was interested almost immediately.
Ellison Jones had been a good department head at the mill. He’d learned the textile plant business from the ground floor up, regularly being promoted. He knew how to run a ‘tight ship’ when it came to profit and loss, managing people, all those things that easily transferred to a sole proprietorship.
After a long discussion about finances and taxes, a trip to the bank and a visit to the hardware store accompanied by Wilbur, Elly and Dot had closed the deal.
The name had been J & E Hardware as long as anyone could remember. They kept the name. Gradually they increased the inventory to include small household appliances, and within a year, the lawn and garden shop.
Most days Dot worked in the afternoons, doing the bookkeeping and waiting on some of the customers during busy times. Elly and the part-time staff kept up with the inventory, helped customers with their purchases, carried items to cars or trucks, and cleaned up the premises. Except for the back room…
Whit Elliott’s storeroom, repair room, junk room, break room, back room was a mess. Wilbur hadn’t even tried to do anything with it after Whit died. Anything that wasn’t sold in a reasonable time found a spot in that room. Several times a year they would have a ‘junk sale,’ but many things were just too old, too rusty, and too inaccessible among the crates and boxes, the broken machinery and just plain junk.
The center section of the store had originally been one of the old Elliott Plantation buildings, a combination work house, mill store, and storage building.
Some of the lumber came from pine trees grown nearby several hundred years ago. Those rafters and beams would probably go up in a flash if a fire broke out, which was why Elly had taken the trouble and expense of having a sprinkler system installed. The exposed pipes overhead added to the cluttered look.
Some things in that room had been there since the original building was constructed in the 1800′s, folks said. There were fittings for wagons, harnesses for plow mules, and rusty blades for scythes.
There were handles for various implements, lengths of leather cords, and boxes full of nails, screws, washers and other small odds and ends used around a farm — none of which had been sold in many years. They were just too much trouble to throw away. There were wooden boxes of varied sizes and shapes, cardboard boxes, empty and half-full crates. No-one remembered what they contained.
Elly glanced down the pathway through the store-room to be sure he had bolted the back door, turned out the last light and pulled the main door closed behind him. He was tired, but it had been a good day. “A good, satisfying day,” he thought as he made his way home to Dot and his easy chair.
