Saturday, February 2, 2019

Day 53- Thoughts of a Hardware Geek

As you may/possibly/probably know by now, I work at ACE Hardware! It's not a glamorous job, nor a particularly clean one. There's grease and gasoline and paint and mud. But today I was looking around... I looked deeper. And I found something surprising- beauty in the every day work environment!

When you pull out a brand new chain saw chain from it's box, it shimmers and shines a little bit in the light, untouched by dirty hands or greasy machines. It reminds me of taking a silvery chain out of a box at the jewelers, catching the light, like liquid starlight.

In the back of we have rolls of copper tubing that looks like someone melted thousands of dollars worth of pennies, and formed them into a mesmerizing, shiny coil, just waiting to be unrolled and stretched across space and time, once currency now something entirely different.

Upfront we have hundreds of paint chips from different companies, a mesh of regular and jewel tones, effortlessly evolving from one shade to another.

In the back behind the parts counter, there are endless dusty boxes and bags of parts for chain saws, mowers, pressure washers, you name it. It reminds me of the Department of Mysteries from Harry Potter, with the towering shelves on all sides, full of parts from tiny to huge. The containers are dirty but nestled away are the parts themselves, still shiny and unused.

The pottery aisle is packed with containers, basins, bowls, and buckets of every hue and every size you can imagine. They are all crammed together, waiting to be picked and ready to hold plants and flowers.

Even being out in the Shop has a surprising charm. The walls are covered with pegboards full of tools and Stihl calendars. There's always music playing, and it feeds the chaos. If you're fortunate, you might even see a beautiful little cat named Lucky. She owns the whole shop!

I wonder... maybe I spend a little too much time there.

Sarah

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