Taking care of business with a button

“Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.”
― Pablo Picasso

Merton believed in technology, he just didn't like to deal with it.

 

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

Years ago, you couldn't talk to Merton Taylor on Monday afternoons.
He would hole himself up, back at the check-in stand, working on an order for Amarillo Hardware's truck coming in on Thursdays. Mostly, he would cuss the state of the nation, slur half the people in that nation, and then start in on the other half.
But the biggest problem with the world at that time, according to him, was technology.
Having experienced the turmoil he went through dealing with a microfiche reader, I can't imagine what kind of cussing would have went on — if he had to deal with the Internet.
Merton believed in technology. He just didn't like to deal with it.
Those were different days.
The Post Office and the Bank were on opposing corners of the center block of Sixth Street, and business was still a face-to-face affair in our little town. Every day, at 11 a.m. and 4:30 p.m., the entire population would converge between the two landmarks and do that business.
Though, Merton often sent a 'red dog' representative to conduct his.
Which means, one of his Irish Setters took the bank bag down and dropped it off with a teller, (slobber and all) with someone following to take care of the paper work.
But, back to the technology.
World War II was the last time any of this technology crap made sense, he said.
And to prove it, he would have you mark every one of any of the 40,000 common retail hardware items in Taylor Hardware, via black or red grease pencil, with his own secret cost code, that took employees about seven years to learn how to read.
That code had all kinds of blind alleys and blocks, repeaters and switches in it. It was similar to the one he used during the war, in the Philippines.
When I first worked there, the Amarillo Hardware salesman, carrying two leather-bound, foot-thick, catalogs (one in each hand suspended by tooled leather handles) into the store once a month, to take care of "problems."
Seems like there was always a "problem" or two to resolve.
The rest of the time, (weeks without a salesman) on Monday, Merton, after gathering up the seven or eight 'Want Books' off of counters throughout the store, creating a list, then would painstakingly look up and transpose numbers out of the microfiche cards.
Which was all well and good, as long as the 'fiche bulb didn't burn out. Or, the numbers matched up, or the quantities were acceptable, or the illustration correctly identified an item. All of whch, almost never happened.
But at least, at the end of the day, all five of the red dogs, and grey one, or perhaps a black one, would lumber out the side door after 5:30 p.m., load up in the old International Scout, frailest to most agile by order, and head home at the end of the day.
Ready to come back and do the same thing tomorrow.
Still, it is sort of like that today, with the use of computers, the Internet, and all business taken care of with a button. Maybe we haven't learned a thing in 40 years.
It is in this environment that I've have heard the common discussion among writers, and customers, sources, and co-workers, etc... the common discussion that goes something like this.
"You can't talk to Rob Carrigan on Monday afternoons. He'll cuss the state of the nation, slur half the people in that nation ... then start in on the other half.
The biggest problem in the world today is technology.
I have the answers.  What we really need ...  the questions.

Christmas at Taylor Hardware

The store caught fire and burned to ground on the day after Christmas in 1984

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

Christmas today carries texture and color from our childhood. It is always enhanced by our memories from the past.
For seven years, beginning in 1978, the holiday season was represented for me by the warmth and the sounds, the comings and goings of a small-town hardware store.
Starting the Friday after Thanksgiving, right after we got the hardwood floors mopped, the season began. Taylor Hardware (the Red Dog Hardware) signaled the start by asking the hired help (a couple or three high school kids including myself) to attach a 2” x 4” frame that allowed us to elevate the front two counters into a three-tiered mega gift center -- where if you couldn’t find something to give Mom, or Uncle Bill or your pain-in-the-butt brother, well then, they didn’t need a present.
Then, after cleaning the front windows with a pail of sudsy water and a sisal brush as the help commonly did once a week anyway, it was time to build the holiday display in the four compartments behind the plate-glass windows in the front entrance.
One window was always filled with ideas for mom’s stuff: fancy silver trays, furniture, food processors, microwaves, decorative lamps, ladies watches, even an occasional elegant shooting iron.
Another window for dad: fly rod and reels, ice augers, power tools, Case and Oldtimer knives, chain saws and maybe a Toro snow blower with a bow on it.
One for the kids: solid Red Flyer wagons, steel Tonka trucks with authentic rubber wheels, real china-faced dolls, porcelain figurines and BB guns.
The final one could contain most anything, depending almost entirely on mood and inclination of the owner or his son or daughter-in-law. Ashely woodstoves, power splitting mauls, decorative glass dishes, it was hard to guess. One year, I remember a western working horse theme including a packsaddle, tack, bridles, lariat rope and other cowboy necessities.
But Dolores was the kind of place then that a rancher could come running in the store after an expensive item in emergency, grab and go, with instructions to “put it on a ticket and I’ll pay later.”
Though such shoddy accounting practices would never have been tolerated at the hardware store, one local story relates the hurried purchase of a new saddle at another local business. The owner of a saddle shop forgot which outfit the “in-a-hurry” cowboy worked for so he billed it to each of the nine biggest stock concerns in the area thinking that surely the responsible one would settle the bill. That turned out to be an error. Six of the outfits ended up sending a check in for the entire saddle amount with no questions asked.
Don Setser seemed to be the only one Merton Taylor, the owner, was comfortable with enough to hang the outdoor lights. Many years ago, as part of the high school student help, Don had won the local lighting contest in the business category and ever since, he was “forced” to roll back into town every year to string up an increasingly complicated and elaborate display.
The store, always a busy place, tended to hum for the next few weeks. What, with getting ready for inventory and the big bowl of eggnog and the ever-free and hot coffee at the back corner pot – along with busted pipes and broken chain saw files – this was ‘hammer time’ at the hardware.
Finally, on Christmas Eve, usually shortly after noon, came time for the deliveries. Owners Merton and his wife Cecil, had selected and wrapped presents all morning, and we loaded them in the beat-up 1965 International Scout, along with a couple of the Irish Setters of the ‘red dog store’ namesake, and began a distribution that would have made Santa proud.
Ironically, or perhaps symbolically, the store and nearly the whole city block, caught fire and burned to ground on the day after Christmas in 1984. With a changing retail landscape, aging owners and shifting loyalties, it was never rebuilt.
Those memories are not better or worse than many Christmas holidays that followed but certainly provide me a foundation of texture and color, sounds and warmth, the comings and goings of a small-town hardware store, and yes, a feeling of Christmas, that I can never forget.

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The Red Dogs of Dolores

Taylors were more likely to side with the dogs than the customer if a territorial dispute were to arise.

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

This story first appeared in the Denver Post when I served on their Voices panel in 2004.

There was no sign that officially named it that, but folks in Dolores, Colo., used to call the place the “Red Dog Hardware.” Four or five Irish Setters would lie around on the floor behind the counters all day. Usually, some of them were in the way of customers trying to find a chain saw file or some 80 grit sand paper, but they were easily shooed off to another corner of the 100-year-old Taylor Hardware building.
The store owners, Merton and Cecil Taylor, were more likely to side with the dogs than the customer if a territorial dispute were to arise.
Before it was a hardware store, it had been the old J.J. Harris Bank and the teller cages still separated the office area from cabinets full of T-hinges and rows of Gerry cans, fender washers, claw hammers, sisal rope and Mile High Grass Seed Mix.
Jason was the youngest and biggest of the big red dogs in the ‘80s and usually hung out by the coffee pot in the teller cage hoping for a stray doughnut or chocolate-covered bear claw. Occasionally a customer would scare him off for a few days by giving him a pinch of Copenhagen snuff. His begging tendencies were put on hold after he snorted and drooled all over oak floors from the snuff but in few days, he would be back begging again until the next round of snuff-and-drool.
When taking deposits to the bank several blocks away, one of the dogs (usually Jason) would carry a zippered bank bag in its mouth all the way inside to one of the tellers. The bank employees probably complained privately about having to deal with the dog-slobbered bank bag but would wait patiently for a human from the store to come down and finish the paper work. The hardware store owner sat on the bank’s board of directors so red dog delivery was just fine in this town.
In the summer, the dogs would lay out in the sun on the sidewalks near the flats of tomato plants and onion starts. Jason would attend to his “local politics” from about 8:30 to 9:30 a.m. every morning but would never have to worry about any leash law legislation.
In the evening, two or three of the older dogs would have to be helped into the old blue International Scout. The Scout’s driver seat would be flipped forward and the old dog’s front paws would be lifted up to the floor boards. Then, the the back end the dog would be lifted and pushed forward a little to the back end of the vehicle. Then the process would be repeated again for the next oldest and the next. Finally, Jason would jump in on his own volition, with only an occasional yip and then growl and snapping of teeth as the one dog landed on another.
Most of the dogs would live to a ripe old age. Upon each of their deaths, Merton, the store owner would hire a carpenter to build a pine box, dig out his map of where the other dogs were buried over the many years of having dog friends, and using mason line and permenent landmarks, find and dig a final resting place for the animals. Merton Taylor would then say a few words and send the dog down the path to eternity. Jason’s funeral was one of the saddest.
The hardware store burned, nearly to the ground, on the day after Christmas in 1984. Later when Merton died in his own ripe old age (In his 90s), one of the photos they used at the funeral was of him and a young red dog, perhaps Jason, back in better days when they were both more of a pup. I don’t think he would have minded at all if they got out the map and mason line.