Lake Geneva Hardware

I have spent more time wandering than you have. If you’ve hiked the Appalacian Trail without a map, you have not wandered like I have. If you were lost in a desert for, say, 6 months, your feet have not logged as many painful steps as mine have. If you were to walk from California to New York and back again, you’d have to do this many times, perhaps without end, before you will have spent as much time on your feet as I have. But my wandering has been in the aisle of Lowes and Home Depot, so at least I’m not in any immediate danger from predators, unless you count the guy who came up with the MSRP on a lithium impact drill as a predator, which I do.

Hands on construction projects force these visits to these large box retailers, and now that most of the hands on portion of my project is done, I find myself no longer in need of anything in bulk. Instead, I need a package of drywall anchors, and I don’t mean the sort that one hammers in, I mean the sort that screw in, of course. I need these, and I need a small package of felt pads for the bottom of a chair–felt pads that I only realized I needed once a scarring 6″ scratch was etched into the middle of my living room floor. I need a bag of rags, and I need a single drill bit that’s just a tad smaller than the screws that I needed the day before when I came to buy 4 screws of an undetermined thread and size. I don’t need a bunch of anything anymore, I just need a few things in small quantities, and I need them quickly and without walking such a great distance. This is why I need a hardware store.

I have only recently enjoyed hardware stores. By recently, I mean I have only enjoyed them for approximately one week. I have spent my entire life logging miles in the aisle of mega retailers, and I have only now reached the point where I despise those stores and those aisle and the smell of it all. I have always parked on the sidewalk in front of those big stores. At the Lowes I park in front of the contractor door, always making sure to keep my eyes down while I hurriedly walk from illegally parked car and in through the sliding glass doors. I do this so I avoid the disapproving gaze of the store workers and of the other store patrons who walks many miles through the Wally World sized parking lot before even gaining access to then walk down the similarly scaled aisles. I do the same at the Home Depot, parking on the sidewalk nearest the No Parking sign. If you’d walked as many miles in these halls as I have, you’ve also earned the right to sidewalk park. It’s a bit of an unspoken rule, even if no one else knows about it, including the people that make the rules.

Even so, I have now made it my life’s goal to avoid large stores at any cost. I don’t do this out of some increased level of retail consciousness. I am not an objector to large scale capitalism. I will not complain about how these large stores may or may not treat their employees, and I have never cared about the fact that the workers in each department rarely know anything about the department that they work in. This doesn’t bother me one bit. I am staging this boycott for the simple reason of logistics. If I need four screws, why do I need to walk a mile to buy a bag of ten screws and then walk all that way back? This isn’t about corporate morality, it’s about efficiency, and my feet are tired.

The hardware store scene at Lake Geneva is bustling. There’s Dunn Lumber in Lake Geneva, one of the newer feeling, nicer looking hardware stores. I go to this store because I use their contractor department for my construction needs, but I also go there because their power tool selection is better than the power tool selection at most hardware stores. Dunn Lumber is a good store, run by good people, in a great town, and I count on them when my car is in the 53147. Heyer Hardware is the Walworth hardware store. It’s similar to Dunn, but different. It feels a bit older, and the aisles are a bit tighter. The people, however, are very helpful, the selection of chrome plated and stainless steel screws dazzling, and the house cleaning type supply section is immense. Best of all, I can squeeze my car into the spot that lies between two handicap parking stalls and walk a mere six steps from car to store door, and that’s winning no matter how you cut it.

But these are hardware stores that have twisted their aim to serve the vacation home community surrounding Geneva Lake, and as such, they are a bit fancier than some hardware stores. For me, for my buck, my new favorite store is the Delavan Ace Hardware. It’s older, this store, so it feels more like an old-timey store. Items are stacked high and pushed together tightly, in a way that suggests magnificent selections of everything without actually offering magnificent selections of anything. I’ve been going there, a lot. I went there the other morning for a chisel, because apparently door hardware doesn’t just screw on like it should. There is chiseling and marking and pilot hole drilling involved, which is annoying. So I bought a chisel, and then a wire stripper, because my electrician left last week and now I can no longer peruse his tool bag to find what it is that I need to complete whatever task needed completing. I also bought some bolts, first small ones, then on a subsequent visit roughly 3 minutes after those screws didn’t fit into the holes in my new headboard, I bought larger bolts, and those fit.

When I bought a new shotgun to protect this new farm, I forgot to buy some ear protectors. Instead of driving to the sporting goods store where I bought the gun, I just drove to the hardware store, asked the friendly fella where the ear protection was located, followed him a few aisles to the designated ear protection section, and picked between four or five different offerings. I bought the cheapest one, a diet coke, and two million dollar bills for two dollars because I am the person who late-sale retail offerings were engineered to attract. I skipped a few skips to the car and drove home. It would have taken longer to walk one time down the hardware aisle at Lowes in the time that I found, bought, and left with my hardware store finds.

When you’re in Lake Geneva this summer, or Delavan for that matter, skip the big box store. Find your toolish treasures at the local hardware store and avoid the wandering. You’ll feel like a different person, a better person, and if you need only three bolts and two washers, then gosh darnit three bolts and two washers is all you’ll have to buy.