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Over 95 Years, Nichols Hardware Has Dispensed Paint, Nails and Advice. Now Its Homespun History Will Be Documented on Film
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
The smell inside Nichols Hardware is a bouquet of rubber and sawdust with metal undertones. It is a smell you might remember from childhood if you are old enough to remember dialing a rotary telephone.
The 95-year-old family-run operation has been at the same Purcellville location through two World Wars and prides itself on carrying everything from hog scrapers to tricycles.
There is something in the sum of the store's parts that makes people take notice: the handwritten receipt after each transaction; a clerk's instinctual memory for which one of a thousand drawers contains a certain size bolt; the careful deliberation of an employee thinking about how to get rid of a mouse odor.
These, along with a thousand other details, have turned customers into acolytes and have inspired three of them to memorialize the store in a documentary.
"We've lived long enough in Loudoun County to know there's nothing like Nichols," said Sarah Huntington, a portrait photographer and chief executive of Lincoln Studios, the three-person company making the half-hour film "Nichols: The Last Hardware Store."
"We feel we need to document it," Huntington said. "This kind of thing might not be there in a few years."
Photo Gallery
Nichols Hardware Subject for Future Documentary
From left to right, Rick Gibson, Frank Myers, Ted Nichols, and Rick Barton. With Rick Gibson in the background, Ted Nichols, with employees Frank Myers and Rick Barton, try to find a larger size tarp. (Katherine Frey)
Jim Bailey, who has worked at Nichols for six months, tries to help his neighbor and customer Patty Maher-Wade find a particular color of spray paint. (Katherine Frey)
Old photographs and newspaper clippings sit under plexiglass at the checkout counter at Nichols Hardware. Frank Myers, wearing glasses in the 1974 newspaper clipping, works at the store. (Katherine Frey)
Ted Nichols, co-owner of the hardware store with his uncle, listens as a vendor jokes around with him. (Katherine Frey)
Nichols Hardware Store in Purcellville has a little bit of a lot of things. Hugh Edmonds has worked at Nichols Hardware in Purcellville since September 1952. He now takes a few months off each year in the winter, but still comes into the store regularly. (Katherine Frey)
Hugh Edmonds looks over a light fixture that needs to be retro-fitted and helps to troubleshoot. He has worked at Nichols Hardware in Purcellville since September 1952. (Katherine Frey)
In a glass-enclosed office tucked away inside the hardware store, Yvonne Lickey works on the books with an adding machine nearby. There are no computers in this store. (Katherine Frey)
The Lincoln Studios started filming employees and customers at Nichols Hardware Store in August. Recently Peter Buck, center, interviewed longtime employee Pat Smale, left, as Drew Babb collected audio inside the hardware store. (Katherine Frey)
Peter Buck shoots the scene inside the hardware store in Purcellville. (Katherine Frey)
The Lincoln Studios started filming employees and customers at Nichols Hardware Store in August. Recently, Peter Buck, left, interviewed longtime employee Pat Smale, right as Drew Babb collected audio outside the back of the hardware store. (Katherine Frey)
Peter Buck talks about the video of Ken Nichols that he downloaded to his laptop computer after shooting at the hardware store one recent morning. (Katherine Frey)
Drew Babb collects audio for the project tentatively called "The Last Hardware Store" at Nichols Hardware Store in Purcellville. He is writing and editing the film. (Katherine Frey)
Kathy Shipley of Lovettsville has been shopping at Nichols Hardware Store in Purcellville for about 20 years. She talks with the film crew from the Lincoln Studios as she buys wax from Pat Smale. (Katherine Frey)
The film follows a year in the life of the store, and the filmmakers hope to draw audiences who share their amazement that such an establishment persists in the era of big-box chains.
"Sarah describes it as a ballet," said Drew Babb, the film's writer. "The way the men move, the way they take you around and they wait on you."
And then there's the smell. "One guy who lived in D.C.," said director Peter Buck, "he would come to Nichols once a quarter to smell it."
The ballet involves a corps of graying men moving unhurriedly through aisles packed with merchandise, knowing exactly where to find a hoof cleaner, a bull ring, a rocking chair or a three-pronged frog spear. Their specialty is personal service, human connection, and the time taken to root through the basement, find a screen door part and then explain how to install it.
Tiny wooden drawers behind the counter contain almost any sort of screw or tool you can imagine — and several you can't. During a recent visit, employee Glen Harwood pulled out a green metal implement that looked like a medieval tooth extractor. "That's something you won't find at Home Depot," he said. "That's a castrator."
Since filming began, the men working the floor (average age: 60) seem to take the cameras in stride, just another manifestation of interest in Nichols Hardware that swells every few years, resulting in a local newspaper article or two, and then subsides.
But Pat Smale, resident wood stove expert (who will also sharpen your knives out back), pays attention to the competition. He scoffed at a TV documentary he'd seen recently about another hardware store. "They were making a big deal about how they sell nails by the pound. I said, 'Shucks, we sell nails, loose rope, all kinds of things by the pound.' "
Yvonne Lickey, 80, who has been a bookkeeper at Nichols since 1949, also seemed unfazed by the cameras. "I think it'd be neat," she said of the film.
And a few customers said it was about time.
"I always thought it would be a perfect sitcom," said Patti House, who owns a sign-making store across the street. "They're all such great personalities. . . . I can go over there with just the most weird problem and those guys, they can figure it out."
Michael Dennis dropped by the store to pick up a saw and have some keys made. He walked across the unpolished wood floor, past the gumball machines and the fishing lures. As the cameras rolled, he fell into easy banter with the guys behind the counter, whom he's known for more than a generation.
"Been coming here since 1979," said Dennis, 60, who is originally from Boston and lives in Round Hill. "When people move into the area and discover that this place is here, they're shocked."
Some customers are so eager to reminisce about the place that they don't wait their turn in front of the camera, but jump into the frame and start telling stories about odd finds or exceptional service.
Will the film appeal to people outside Loudoun? Its creators believe so. "I think when someone watches it they're going to think, 'I can't believe a place like this can exist, on this planet, in this century,' " Babb, the writer, said. "It speaks of substance. It's not a place with removable shelves that can be moved tomorrow and put a different name on it."
He waved a fuzzy remote microphone over the wooden floor as he walked backward across it, recording the creaking sound.
But are Nichols-type stores really an endangered species? Are we really doomed to a creak-less future?
According to statistics from the North American Retail Hardware Association, perhaps not. Although the number of independently owned stores decreased by about one-sixth between 1989 and 1998, it leveled out after that, with independent stores remaining steady since, at about 20,000 nationwide.
Independent hardware stores are an unusually hardy breed, said Scott Wright, the association's manager of training and communications. "There is a staying power," he said. Compared with drugstores and clothing boutiques, which are more easily displaced by chains, hardware stores offer services more difficult to mass market: a certain know-how and willingness to educate customers. "People still need help with their projects."
Wright, whose organization is based in Indiana, has never been to Nichols, but hearing a description, he said, "There is one in just about every small rural town across the country."
People in Purcellville might disagree. A tourist from the Waterford Fair once mistook Nichols Hardware for a re-creation of an old-time hardware store and asked Ted Nichols, the 62-year-old grandson of the founder, if he sets it up that way every year.
Nichols chuckled, recalling the encounter. But he's unsure whether the store will be around much longer. Ted Nichols's uncle, Ken, still works at the store, but he's 78.
His father, Edward, the previous owner, died two years ago in a murder-suicide in which he shot his wife, Margaret, who had Alzheimer's disease.
Nichols said no one in the fourth generation is interested in taking over. Even if they were, a newcomer might not want to run the store in the same way. A newcomer might, for example, replace the old bookkeeping system with computers.
"It would change the scope of the business," Nichols said. "Any store that goes computerized, they get all modern. The computer tells you all kinds of things we might or might not want to know."
Take Home Depot, he said, which uses a computer to track which items sell fastest and discontinues the ones that don't. For those items, the big-box store sometimes sends customers to Nichols.
"We just operate differently," he said. "We try and keep the slow-moving things, too."
Tagged: film, Nichols Hardware Store, Purcellville
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Endangered local hardware stores would be good federal bailout prospects. I spent yesterday at Home Depot, Lowes and Wal-Mart looking for a vacuum cleaner bag- finally found it at a local hardware store.
Posted by 12oreo (anonymous) on February 11, 2009 at 6:22 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Great and overdue story. I'm a bit afraid the notoriety will ruin this secret gem. BTW, Pat Smale doesn't sharpen tools 'out back'. He has a car behind the store where you place a bag with your name on it containing your saw blades, knives, scissors, etc. in the back seat. In a couple of days you come back, find your bag, leave your money and take your finely sharpened items home.
My two sons loved going there on Saturday errands - I think we own every Matchbox vehicle ever made - all purchased at Nichols. And Christmas was special - the same shelves that were stocked with pesticides and fertilizers during the spring/summer/fall were the same ones used to hold kids toys during Christmas season! By the way, my sons are now fully grown 20-something healthy and vibrant young men - noted athletes at the hometown Loudoun Valley High School in their day. The old timers know what will hurt you and what won't!
Posted by kbmcwhinney (anonymous) on February 11, 2009 at 7 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Goodonya and Good Luck, Drew and Sarah! jrp
.
Posted by john.porter (anonymous) on February 11, 2009 at 7:03 a.m. (Suggest removal)
12oreo: Sears has vacuum cleaner bags in abundance.
Posted by dingus3 (anonymous) on February 11, 2009 at 7:05 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Nichols Hardware may be the only thing in Purcellville that hasn't seen great change
in the last 95 years. Congrats.
Posted by habibhaddad (anonymous) on February 11, 2009 at 7:13 a.m. (Suggest removal)
What about Brown's Hardware in Falls Church? They've been there for 120 years! I was just there last week. I had gone to Home Depot to get a small pane of window glass. HD wouldn't cut the glass for me. Brown's cut the glass for free and the price of the glass was almost half of what HD charged.
Posted by foofoofoo (anonymous) on February 11, 2009 at 7:23 a.m. (Suggest removal)
As a relative newbie to Purcellville, I found Nichols Hardware to be love at first site. The have a wonderful collection of interesting stuff, but more inportantly, they have a staff that actually cares. They actually take the time to teach this over-educated American how to your household repairs or improvements. They will stop what they are doing and problem solve and then show you what to do. They even put up with my endless questions. My only regret is that they are not open more hours when I am not working.
Thanks Nichols Hardware. You have helped make my move to Purcellville even better.
Posted by DrS1 (anonymous) on February 11, 2009 at 7:41 a.m. (Suggest removal)
I once was asked how many Virginians it takes to change a light bulb. The answer was, "Five. One to change it and four to talk about how good the old one was."
Now we know where they got the bulb, and probably the fixture.
Posted by jim4postnatl (anonymous) on February 11, 2009 at 8:44 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Well, such shops are not common today anymore. A lot of work and not so much income compared to renting the space to some fancy clothes shop or whatever. Thats what most hairs do, at least in Germany.
Posted by uzs106 (anonymous) on February 11, 2009 at 9:19 a.m. (Suggest removal)
What a lovely story! Long may they thrive!!
Posted by afranzgrieg (anonymous) on February 11, 2009 at 9:26 a.m. (Suggest removal)
God Bless the small independent hardware stores. Hopefully the documentary will spawn a new appreciation for similar stores still left in the small towns across America.
Posted by james.dicus (anonymous) on February 11, 2009 at 9:28 a.m. (Suggest removal)
When I gre up in Fairfax, there was a hardware store you could go to, to get the individual $0.06 screw you needed out of a bucket. Now, Home Depot will only sell you an over-packaged pack of 10 for $2.50.
What do I need the other 9 for? Why do I need to pay so much? Why is elaborate packaging needed?
What's happening is forced overconsumption, disregard for the environment, and overcharging.
Posted by Client-9 (anonymous) on February 11, 2009 at 10:09 a.m. (Suggest removal)
grew
Posted by Client-9 (anonymous) on February 11, 2009 at 10:09 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Thanks for this story - these small independent vendors that actually provide meaningful customer service are rare birds indeed.
Also, those living closer in towards DC should check out Cherrydale Hardware on Lee Highway in Arlington, close to the Cherrydale Safeway. Doesn't sound like it's as extensive as the Nichols Hardware - I don't know that you'd find a castrator there - but same basic idea.
Posted by stodge (anonymous) on February 11, 2009 at 10:13 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Loved this story--came across a similar store in Maine this summer. If you were blind or kept in a dark cellar year-long, you could still tell the seasons simply by sniffing the air in one of these stores. Pungent fertilizer in the spring; lemony citronella in the summer; the tangy scent of new metal rakes and wheelbarrows in the fall; and the comforting smells of spruce and spice that linger long after the holidays are over.
Posted by yomammahere (anonymous) on February 11, 2009 at 10:13 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Small local hardware stores fill a niche in rural communities where big box stores don't have enough traffic to make it. Sadly we have lost many in our area, but in the small town of Concrete Washington, we have Cascade Suppply and they do have everything.
Posted by 3jewels (anonymous) on February 11, 2009 at 10:26 a.m. (Suggest removal)
I live in Chicago and I have been to Nichols. I love their advertising slogan "If we don't have it, you don"t need it."
Posted by dec11 (anonymous) on February 11, 2009 at 10:56 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Here is an interactive panorama of Nichols Hardware that I made in 2005:
http://worldwidepanorama.org/worldwidepa...
Posted by skip (anonymous) on February 11, 2009 at 11:06 a.m. (Suggest removal)
That is the real Americana!
I hate, no, I loath the big box hardware stores in which you never know if they have anything in stock, and when you ask them, they check the computer, send you to another of their stores that the computer says they have in stock, but when you get there, it is not in stock, just in the computers.
Posted by wowisdabomb (anonymous) on February 11, 2009 at 11:09 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Where is Pucellville? I must go there from Fairfax, VA
Posted by karamvb (anonymous) on February 11, 2009 at 11:22 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Take RT7 West beyond Leesburg. Follow the signs to exit at Purcellville. I don't live there, so I don't know the street names, I just know how to get there! It is a pretty drive.
Posted by momof2 (anonymous) on February 11, 2009 at 11:25 a.m. (Suggest removal)
The hardware store is located on North 21st Street. Travel 7 westbound and get off at the Purcellville exit (Route 287). Travel south to business 7 (Main Street). Make right onto business 7. You will go through three traffic lights. North 21st Street is on your right just past the big flag pole in Town. The hardware store is mid block on your left. Plenty of neat shops around as well.
Posted by LoudounModerate (anonymous) on February 11, 2009 at 11:41 a.m. (Suggest removal)
don't forget about Brown's Hardware in Falls Church, it's been open 126 years now, still owned by the family!
Posted by destewar (anonymous) on February 11, 2009 at 11:52 a.m. (Suggest removal)
As one of the film makers, let me invite customers who have loving memories about Nichols Hardware to visit our web site at www.thelasthardwarestore.org If we like your comment, we'll try to get you on film! Thanks for all the positive feedback! Drew Babb, the Lincoln Studios, Lincoln, VA
Posted by Drew_Babb (anonymous) on February 11, 2009 at 1:22 p.m. (Suggest removal)
I worked across the street at Nichols Appliance back in the 1970's. I now live in GA, but it's good to see Nichols is still open with the same friendly faces and service. It will be sorely missed if and when it closes. Pat Smale worked with me on the appliance side back then and yes, he would sharpen your knives and chains back then too.
Posted by olfart (anonymous) on February 11, 2009 at 2:13 p.m. (Suggest removal)
I ride my bike up the W&OD to get to Nichols and I drive from Tyson's to Springfield to get to Fischer's. So now you tell me I'm missin' Brown's in Fall Church?!?! How'd I do that! Hardware store DO smell great!
Posted by tornillo_de_rosca (anonymous) on February 11, 2009 at 10:35 p.m. (Suggest removal)
I grew up in Purcellville and Bluemont and, as a kid, I have some fantastic memories of Nichols. The creaking wood floor, the smell that can only belong to a small-town hardware store, going in there Saturday morning to get whatever we needed for the weekend's home improvement project . . . just great stuff. The town itself has changed a lot over the past few years, but it's great to see a local icon like Nichols still around.
Posted by lstratman (anonymous) on February 12, 2009 at 11:02 a.m. (Suggest removal)
My Dad, Dick Horn, was a hardware distributor from Herr and Company in PA. He sold to Nichols Hardware. He loved the story - you made his day!! - Chris Horn Sylvester
Posted by csylvester (anonymous) on February 12, 2009 at 11:25 a.m. (Suggest removal)
This story is wonderful! Thanks, everyone for sharing!
Posted by momof2 (anonymous) on February 12, 2009 at 1:34 p.m. (Suggest removal)
I grew up in Purcellville in the 50's. Nichols is were we went to buy our bluejeans (boys). There were no dressing rooms but the empty merchandise boxes were stacked in the right hand rear side of the store so we had a place to try the jeans on.
Also, for years after I first married, our Christmas tree was silver bulbs with blue lights. For years I would make a trip to Nichols to buy extra blue light bulbs when I needed them as everywhere else the bulbs were packaged in sets of four different colors.
I was raised by the whole town as everyone there knew my mom and dad. What a wonderful place to grow up.
Charlotte Ashby, LCHS class of '59.
Posted by cashby0505 (anonymous) on February 14, 2009 at 10:36 a.m. (Suggest removal)
We all have stories about Nichols. Like the time I went looking for a rubber seal for my blender. When I asked if they had any, one of the gentlemen thought a minute, then I followed him out to the side room where they keep all the electrical stuff. At an old oak desk he opened a drawer. There were several packets of rubber seals, some which had been there for years. He asked me what kind of blender I had. When I told him, he handed me a packet and told me he thought it would fit. I figured, at $.50 it was worth the try. I've had that rubber seal for over 10 years.
Posted by lillian (anonymous) on February 14, 2009 at 3:14 p.m. (Suggest removal)
"Nichols said no one in the fourth generation is interested in taking over."
What can Purcellville do to help preserve this treasure?
Anyone at LCHS interested in sending some community service students over?
Anyone want to learn how to do some non-computerized accounting from Miss Yvonne?
Any youngsters in their 50's interested in learning what's in all them little drawers behind the counter?
Posted by LoudounPatriot (anonymous) on February 15, 2009 at 10:50 p.m. (Suggest removal)
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