Edison Coatings wrote:
>>
>> There is always something cheaper, and if that's your priority, why 
>> don't you pick up your crew in the Home Depot parking lot and save 
>> some real money while you're over there picking up cheap materials?
>>
I recently got in a local controversy in our local newspaper along the 
lines that the local Home Depot was potentially going to shut down to 
whit I wrote a letter to the editor expressing that 1) it would be a 
real sorry mess if the big box moved out and we got a Walmart, 2) 
particularly rough now that the Home Depot has forced almost all of the 
smaller local hardware stores out of business, 3) that I like going to 
our Home Depot, do it quite often, and I like the Mom's & Pop's that 
work there, we have developed friendships (some of them histo presto 
related) and 4) if the Home Depot DID go out that I would encourage the 
local merchants to start talking to Lowes. I would much rather shop at 
Lowes... only it is a much further drive to get there. An dI expressed 
that I have shopped in a whole lot of Home Depots  from Long Island to 
Manhattan to Westchester to CT to the Cayman Islands... and that they 
are all different in their oddities as to customer service. Regardless.. 
some numnuts from a more out-East lumber yard wrote back a personal 
attack to the newspaper indicating that I must not be a real contractor 
as I shop at Home Depot.

I responded that I am a real contractor and provided illustrations of 
same. Most notably I explained the mahogany lead coated copper gutters 
we built for Weeksville were funded by a grant from Lowes. I bought the 
mahogany from Riverhead Building Supply, the lead coated copper from 
Allied (and that was tough because we went to the LI branch and they did 
not even know they had any until I pointed at it), the BM paint from an 
Ace Hardware in Ronkonkoma, the little copper nails off the internet, 
and the glue and stainless steel screws from Home Depot. There was 
NOTHING cheap about the gutters.

And as to pick-up labor... I don't particularly use it though I know 
where to get it... not anywhere near the Home Depot but more like near 
the Sears in Farmingville... and there is a whole lot of it available at 
the 7-11 in Southampton... don't use it much ever since the guy threw up 
and passed out and fell in the mud trough, or the other guy that dumped 
a wheelbarrow of stone on me when I was working in a window well... 
dates back to when I used to have to stand in Rockville, MD on the DC-MD 
line with all the Afrikan American day laborers and wait for my morning 
ride w/ the Italian stonemason -- and I was on the books but kept that 
to myself. Whenever the police would show up we would all, me included 
the one white guy, would have to run across the street. At least I was 
employed.

I am thinking of writing a letter to the local newspaper suggesting that 
the solution to the illegal immigrant situation is to naturalize all of 
them. Tho my wife suggests that I had better think about that a bit longer.

In parting... they do not sell Hydrated lime out here at either the Home 
Depot or the local mason's yards... nobody has ANY clue what to do with 
it. We have to make a trip to LIC in Queens to get it.

][<en

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