Hometown Hardware

Before Sunday, it'd been a long time since I was in a small hardware store. Having sworn off Home Depot and Lowes—for their aiding and abetting of human trafficking—I found myself in a store about the size of Home Depot's holiday decoration displays.

The last time I was in a non corporate hardware store was in college, but that was few enough times as to not establish much for sensory memory. On Sunday, as I browsed the physical representation of a uniformly spaced spreadsheet—that is, the nuts, bolts, screws, and washers aisles—the sensory memories that came back to me were of childhood True Value errands with my dad.

Where you know the employees and they know you.

Big box stores are the trappings of unfettered capitalism. We don't need the one stop shops. Sure, their convenience is undeniable, but so too by now are their real costs. The cost on our selves, our communities, our environment, and the people being exploited for their labor that enables a portion of any "discount" you see at the big box stores.