Ah, hardware stores

I love hardware stores. I mean that totally sincerely. I like Home Depot least of all, but I could, if I had nothing else to do, wander around the aisles there for hours. I like the geegaws, I like the cleaning supplies, I like the ideas I gather for projects. I like paint samples. I like latches. I like the chain you can cut off the roll. I like big bins of nails.

Anyway, I have always had a favorite hardware store. As a kid, I liked to go to the one on Stockton Blvd. by Fruitridge. They had a lot of little flashlights and knives by the counter. When I lived downtown, I loved P&M, the one on Broadway with the Jack Nicholson picture in the window that also had a canoe hanging outside for a while. Not only did that one have good tools, they had a ton of weird extraneous things like dental tools.

When I actually moved closer to them, I found myself going to the hardware store around 17th and Broadway. They never made a key that didn't work.

When I moved back to the neighborhood closest to the Fruitridge one, I actually went to Home Depot more often, mainly because we were doing a lot of big projects to the house. But I still went to that Ace, and the bonus was that next door, Manor Drugs was a funky little drugstore.

Now that I'm in East Sac, I go primarily to East Sac Hardware. Forget what you've been told about them being unhelpful: they're grizzled and abrupt, but they help. And they also have a bunch of cool kitchen gadgets and now, stationery! Seriously, what's the way to my heart? Kitchen gadgets and stationery. I like them as much as I like hardware stores, so the combination is really appealing.

But throughout all these years, or at least since I have lived on my own, I have heard that there's an Ace hardware downtown. I'd complain about not being able to find something, and someone would recommend Ace. Unfortunately, there's some sort of Bermuda triangle effect on people's memory about the location. I'd ask where it was, and I was always given vague answers. Literally no one could ever give me cross-streets. I believe I even looked in the phone book once under "Ace," and couldn't find it (it's apparently called Capitol Ace). People would also often include a comment like "if it's still there." I wrote the place off as mythical and never went.

Today I went to East Sac to find a peg to hold up a kitchen shelf. We have no idea how it got lost or where it is, but the effect is that the shelf has been held up by two stacked cans for months. One can is beef broth, which I'll never use, but I keep having to rotate out the second can because I want to use it.

Anyway, the shelf peg I need is called a "KV shelf clip," and they didn't have them at East Sac. But Home Depot's advantage is that they have SO MUCH shelf space. Surely they'd have them. I mean, I've seen similar clips elsewhere, so it must be pretty standard. Nope. I even asked for help, and the girl suggested I try the internet.

I did. They are available, but a bag costs $4 and the shipping is $7. Now, I'm a sucker, but not a one-peg-for-$11 sucker. Leave that for the government. Anyway, I thought I'd call Emigh, which is far but is a cool store. Then I remembered the mythical Ace. With the power of the internet, I found it quickly and called. Not only did they have them, they had them in four different colors. I drove down. Even though it's on "the grid," there was ample free parking. And the place is AWESOME!! They had tools, paint, kitchen gadgets, fancy cleaning products, canning supplies, bicycle parts... I want to go back and just wander the aisles. I ended up buying not just my pegs, but also a Charlie Brown Christmas window cling and a Mrs. Meyer's hand soap.

Ah, well there you go. You knew I was a nerd, but not a hardware store nerd, right? I actually had to explain to Zadie today that in some households, it's the daddies who like to fix stuff! LOL. No offense, Sweetie!