It can be surreal walking into a place that evokes strong childhood memories. It is almost as if the memory has come to life. Being raised in this small town, I’d grown up with the sometimes pungent aroma of the grocery stores, the dime stores, and the hardware stores with their wooden floors, counters, and shelves. These places were filled with the smell of food, cloth, lubricants, iron, wood, and plants—a combination seemingly unique to each store, yet something that bound them together like cousins.
McCurry Hardware is just that kind of place. This store is the place you get the hard-to-find items that many people depend on the internet for nowadays. There are cords for percolators, cast iron pans, double choppers, sledge hammer heads, straw baskets, washboards, galvanized wash tubs, and cedar wood birdhouses. At McCurry’s there are bins of screws, bolts, and nails. There are metal scoops to scoop the nails out of the bins and scales to weigh them. Here, you buy nails by the bag, not by the box.
The McCurry’s building is an old Dodge dealership that was converted to a hardware store in the 1970’s when Bob McCurry decided to stop selling car parts on the road and stay in one town. There are a few fragments left that give a hint of the building’s past and age. The most obvious are the outlines of bricked over doors large enough for a car to drive through. If you look up you will see stamped tin ceiling panels. If you look down, you’ll notice evidence in the floor where car lifts stood or where walls divided the building’s interior into offices.
McCurry’s is worth a visit just for the nostalgia. Bob McCurry is usually behind the counter, a slight stoop in his posture, and as likely to make change from his pocket as from the cash register. If you need seeds for vegetables, he’ll meet you at the seed counter. It is a beautiful cabinet with rows of drawers, each marked with a name and picture of its contents---or at least a picture of what it is destined to be. Bob will weigh your purchase on an old balance scale. If you need a sack of fertilizer taken to your car, Leroy his jack-of-all trades will be glad to do so. Leroy will also cut glass or PVC pipe to your specifications, as you watch and wonder how he lost several fingers on one hand.
And, if you really, really like McCurry Hardware, you can walk up to the counter and inquire about buying everything---McCurry Hardware is for sale. After decades of advising customers about which plant works best in the local soil, or helping solve a customer’s complicated problem with a very simple solution, Bob has decided it is time to retire. This isn’t a hardware store that markets itself as part of the past. This is the real deal. Visit before it is too late.
For photos of McCurry Hardware feel free to visit the gallery---just click on the JWCurry Photography Gallery tab at the top.