My hardware store friends keep me looking good

The friendly guys at the local hardware stores have provided help and good fortune for me since my early days of painting in college in New Mexico. You might even say they helped start my painting legend! Instead of hanging out with other students, I hung out with businessmen at the local coffee shop called the Spic and Span in downtown Las Vegas, N.M., and learned more there than any classroom could offer. It was a smoky place with coffee pots constantly being refilled and cases of bear claw buns as a backdrop. I had my very first art show in the Spic and Span.

It caught the eye of a local hardware store owner down the street who asked if I wanted to show my artwork in his storefront window. His name was Jess Price. I leapt at this opportunity, even though it meant being featured next to cans of bug spray and shellac. It turned out to be a good deal, since this small town included a train depot where the Santa Fe Chief stopped and brought new strangers to town once a day on that modern stagecoach, much like the small town of North Fork in the old TV show, "The Rifleman."

Jess asked for nothing except the pleasure of being a sort of art gallery for an entrepreneurial student, and I think my artwork brought people into the store. It also attracted many people from the town and made me well known there. I have traveled back two or three times since I graduated from college to see him again and revisit the old El Fidel Hotel where I lived instead of in a traditional dorm. The front desk was riddled with bullet holes from Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders, and there were always train men staying there.

The Ben Franklin establishment in Lewes was my next hardware store after I moved back home from Las Vegas. They cut glass and even framed my paintings, cheerfully dealing with compressing everything from ball fringe to rickrack under glass.

Speaking of hardware store products, you don't usually think of root killer as a romantic elixir, but I sort of used it to capture my future husband Jeff. Before I was married, I lived in a smokehouse on Pilottown Road. I wanted an excuse to visit Jeff for a few days’ vacation in Wilmington, so I told him I had roots in my toilet, which had actually occurred a few previous times. I told him I had used a root killer product I bought at a hardware store, but it didn't work, which was truthfully a white lie! "Why don't you go stay with your mother?" said the ever-practical Jeff. I would never do that, so he relented and fell under my spell in a short time. We married soon after, and I left Lewes and lived in Wilmington for more than 30 years.

The hardware guys at a local True Value near where we lived once again became helpful allies. The back room, which had an "Employees Only" sign, became my clubhouse. It had another useful sign that I made my kids memorize; it went something like this: "Always be helpful, the customer is always right, don't just stand around, etc." and I might add, "Don't be afraid to cut glass."

If I worked in a hardware store, I would be afraid of cutting glass for sure, but the brave men at the stores that I've had the pleasure of doing business with always come through! I learned that you have to be at least 18 years old to cut glass, so the younger lads luck out, but there are always seasoned older men who come to my rescue.

I visited my local Ace Hardware in Milton this past week. Part of my mission was to check out the Muk Luks Nordic-style socks from Wisconsin. They were on sale, and I almost cleared the shelf. They're warm and have good padding for stepping on the beads and rhinestones that cover my floor, like a glitter bank of sorts.

Anyhow, I wanted to honor the hardware store guys who help make my life easier and are helpmates to my creativity, cheerfully reaching packets of nails that are too high up, as well as recommending primer and spackle. Once I had the problem of a hawk in my yard terrorizing my cat, Rusty Rustbelt, and they guided me to a lifelike plastic owl that scared it away.

But best of all, they still cut glass, and I can sit on the bags of birdseed munching on free popcorn from their old-fashioned popcorn cart and rest assured that another painting will sparkle safely under glass thanks to them.