My Shame: Part 1

My father owned a hardware store in Courtland, Alabama, from the mid-60s to about four years ago when he decided to sell his interest and retire. The majority of my memories from the store are excellent ones.

It was (and is) and old school hardware store. It had just about everything you could ever possibly want. From lumber to combinets to kerosene to Afro-Sheen. The store had it all plus it had something that is simply hard to find anymore – clerks who could actually help, answer questions and provide instruction.

I began working there about the time I could walk and talk. For a young boy living in a small town, the hardware store was a never-ending cornucopia of playthings for young boys looking for something – anything – to do on any given day during the summer in a town with fewer than 1,000 people.

Plus, it had the added value of providing no end of boy-like giggles when grown men would come in the store and ask for “4-inch nipples” or “the male end of a hose-pipe” or “a female adapter.”

Of course, as I got old enough, I began helping customers by answering questions, bagging nails, mixing paint, and tracking down the occasional odd or end.

Of course, there were rites of passage.

More than one person came in looking for a left-handed crescent wrench. I scoured the store looking for the elusive item and would find myself at the very back of the store’s nether-regions, as directed by my father, looking for this important tool while watching for black widows, brown recluses and all other manner of creepy crawlies that could bite me and leave me convulsing, foaming at the mouth, and dying in a completely undignified manner.

Of course, when I would return to the front of the store, they were all there laughing with tears streaming down their faces and then would ask me to go fetch the ever-popular “sky hook.”

When people hear that my father owned a hardware store and that I worked there, they naturally assume that I am handy. That I have some natural sense of how to replace a “J” bend or re-wire an electrical socket.

It is here that I reveal one of my greatest secrets. I carry it like an albatross. Like a scarlet letter. Like a mark upon my forehead.

Yes, it’s true, I admit. . .I am simply not handy.

I may possibly be the “anti-handyman.”

Plumbing? I break pipes, ruin faucets, scar walls, spray water on sheetrock.

Electrical? I’ve touched hot wires, crossed up grounds.

Grouting? I spent an entire Saturday grouting the bottom of my shower only to watch it all wash down the drain when I didn’t let it cure long enough.

Woodwork? Please. I’m a big fan of “rounding off” when I measure, which can lead to trouble and I always get confused by 1/8ths versus 1/16ths.

At parties, invariably, the conversation will turn to some sort of home improvement project usually being done by the men themselves. We’re all married now so, of course, we don’t talk about sex or “going out” anymore. It’s all about home improvement and sports.

When the subject turns to home improvement projects, I find myself nodding and smiling like someone hearing impaired who is covering because they are only picking up every other word.

And, so there it is.

My father has never said anything out loud. He doesn’t have to.

I could see the look in his face when he would ask me to run to the back of the store to get some innocuous hardware-type item that any first grader would recognize and I would return with the complete opposite item.

Now that I’m older, I have come to terms – somewhat – with my secret. My shame. I keep true handymen on speed dial. I love to regale my father with some new massive handyman failure.

Because like many people who don’t do something particularly well, I spend a great deal of time going out of my way to prove that exact point.