Before the heady days of internet shopping, we had Bryant Hardware. You got some impossible to find esoteric gizmo, you could probably find it down at Bryants. Or at least Ma Bryant could. If she couldn\u2019t, trust me, Joe Google couldn\u2019t either. And if Joe couldn\u2019t find it, trust me again, you\u2019d pay Top Dollar for one when you discovered it in an antique store.<\/p>\n
My piston driven well pump quit pumping water about 6 months after I bought my palace. My water was down over 100 feet in a hand dug hole 3 feet in diameter. The pump ran fine, it just didn\u2019t pull up the water. Down the hole 105 feet away from quenching my thirst, a foot valve had given out so we had to pull up the oak rods in 10 foot sections. Which meant cutting a hole in the wellhouse roof so we could hoist each of 10 sections high enough to unscrew the upper one from the next one below. It was nerve racking work, but then \u2026 most of life on the South End was nerve wracking back then.<\/p>\n
When we got to the end we found the old \u2018leather\u2019 was blown out. My neighbor — who\u2019d identified our problem in the first place — said we needed to go to town to buy another. \u201cAnother?\u201d I asked, incredulous. \u201cWho in holy hell is going to carry a \u2018leather\u2019 for a 1930\u2019s well pump system?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMa,\u201d he answered. \u201cMa\u2019ll have one.\u201d<\/p>\n
We drove to Stanwoodopolis, walked into Bryants and asked the owlish woman behind the register if she had our \u2018leather\u2019. She peered at the ruined one, then peered at us. Finally she got up with a heave and we followed her into the back section with the 20 foot ceiling of stamped tin, what\u2019s now the food bank, down the aisle of 1950, over to the shelf of 1940 and up to some dusty boxes near the top that was all that remained of the Great Depression. She climbed up on a rickety step ladder, pushed aside a Kitty Hawk propeller and a Model T crank, rummaged through Victrola parts, muttered once or twice, then finally came up with the last two \u2018leathers\u2019 in America. \u201cI thought I had a couple,\u201d she said. I couldn\u2019t believe it. \u201cTwo dollars,\u201d she told me, probably the price back in 1928.<\/p>\n
You folks who buy your hardware in plastic wrapping and expect the part you want has long been obsolete, well, that may be the modern condition, but for a long time on the South End, time meant nothing in Bryants. Ma finally died a decade ago and we lost the 20th Century overnight. Needless to say, I have a modern pump now that I can\u2019t get replacement parts for my old one. And you know, I\u2019m sure, when it malfunctions, it can\u2019t be repaired.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Before the heady days of internet shopping, we had Bryant Hardware. You got some impossible to find esoteric gizmo, you could probably find it down at Bryants. Or at least Ma Bryant could. If she couldn\u2019t, trust me, Joe Google couldn\u2019t either. And if Joe couldn\u2019t find it, trust me again, you\u2019d pay Top Dollar […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[6773,5558,6772],"class_list":["post-18174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rantings-and-ravings","tag-hard-to-find-hardware","tag-old-time-hardware-store","tag-stanwood-hardware-store"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18174"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18174\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18175,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18174\/revisions\/18175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}