On 12/9/2009 1:21 PM, John Leeke wrote:
> >>I am also looking for a real hardware store,<<
>
> When I came through there I found a good old-fashioned hardware store, 
> but dang if I can recall the name of the town-the same place I picked 
> up that beer at the micro-brewery, so if you still have that big brown 
> bottle kicking around under the kitchen sink it might have a label. 
> Maybe it was Jamesport, on the north fork? They even had the pocket 
> knife I was looking for. Between that and the chandler's shop just 
> down the street it looked like if they didn't have it, you didn't need 
> it.
>
> John
John,

Though we have 'hardware stores' we do not have any of what I would call 
real hardware stores w/in an hours drive. There is one in Riverhead that 
holds out some hope. Greenport (where you got the bottle that we still 
have) is more than an hour out on the North Fork and the reason it would 
have anything near a real hardware store is that Home Depot and Lowes 
have not invaded up out that far... the closest Home Depot to Greenport 
being in Riverhead, where the North and South Fork join. To me a real 
hardware store is one where you go in and find some stuff that has been 
sitting there since at least 1950 and a good likelihood that it will 
work w/ raising chickens. What used to be hardware stores seem to be 
going along like what used to be drugstores... where now you go to buy 
hardware. I can't hardly imagine asking any of our local pharmacists for 
oxalic acid... though I will give it a try. There is on the edge of an 
hour drive a few Ace Hardwares but I would not exactly call them real 
hardware stores. When in a local pennysaver I wrote a letter about the 
local Home Depot I got attacked that real contractors never shop at Home 
Depot... I wrote a reply in which I detailed where I had gone to buy 
every single material for the lead coated copper lined mahogany box 
gutters we built for Weeksville. That seemed to end the argument.

Likewise used bookstores that sell real books... the last one we had was 
more than an hour away in Port Jefferson. That went out last year and 
with it went a whole lot of my desire to visit Port Jefferson other than 
that it takes me to the ferry to CT. It is nearly an hours drive to the 
closest new bookstore, a Borders. The Ketchum Inn, local restoration 
project has a used book barn, but it is of limited selection, and use. I 
find better pickings at the Salvation Army a half hour in the other 
direction. The South Fork, Hamptons has independent 'new' bookstores but 
they do not have the richness of discovery that a used bookstore can 
provide.

][<en

PS: Ketchum Inn: I got their Holiday season solicitation letter today, 
to which I always respond that I will gladly give of my time but not any 
money.

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