Nothing felt real until I went to Ace Hardware. It’s a short ride down Business 17 to this store, across the street from the Italian joint. The automatic doors opened and I stepped in. An older gentleman donning a red vest greets me right away. He’s the patriarch of hammers and nails. Puts me at ease, like a familial flesh and blood brother. I told him I’m here to pick up my window screens. He ushers me over to the cash register. I see my three screens behind the counter bundled up with strips of blue tape.
I give him my name and he punches it in. He steps away for a moment and returns with a short stack of papers, the work order.
“Can you believe it? No way to scan. I gotta punch in every pull tab, every plunger bolt, and every screen one at a time.”
Five minutes go by and he’s still punching. At one point another guy comes over to help.
“You need to use code L-A-B-O-R, all caps,” says the other guy.
I am savoring every slow, inconvenient, analog minute of this. Every time I step into this shop, I am honored that an actual human being greets me and makes me feel welcome. Beyond the cash registers the Green Egg grills are on prominent display and I can almost feel the pride in this shop. The store is like a shelter from the crappy future: its bricks are buffers from the winds of change. No AI is going to automate this place out of existence any time soon, and I’m drunk on this reassurance.
While they wrap up, I look around at the merchandise in the checkout area. There are Yo-yos for kids. There’s a cooler with colas, sprites, root beers, and orange sodas. There’s an array of canned peanuts. More cans of peanuts than you’d ever need. There’s old-fashioned horehound candy and of course an artillery of meat sticks.
The guys wrap up the processing and I pay them. I said goodbye to both of them as I left the store.
“Appreciate your business.”
“We are happy we could help you.”
“Sorry it took us so long to get these done for you. We were backed up for weeks, man.” They mean every word of it.
Back home, I installed the screens. The first one goes in just fine, but I tap the window twice by mistake in the process. This summons my ragdoll cat to the other side of the window. She’s staring at me now with feline authority; she’s presiding over the install like an eager superintendent. The motion of the cat alerts the dog and now the dog is running around to find out what’s going on. Cascading frenzy.
While the inside of my home is now chaos, the outside is calm. Coming off the sense of dulling hangover of a corporate workday, I start to awaken again. I start to feel normal. I hear the gentle cadence of crickets. I smell the faint scent of charcoal, likely wafting over from my neighbor’s house. He’s a family man. Runs a tight ship. Never lets his grass get too long even under the North Carolina sun. Keeps a pristine pool. Next, I move over to the carport and get the second screen in right away.
Then I head to the backyard through a creaky wooden gate, up the steps of my weathered deck, to the dining room window. This is the third and final screen to install. This one turns out to be a struggle. The frame on this screen is a little warped, so it fights the track. Yet, I enjoy the fight. After living in your head all day, ruminating, reading other people’s ruminations, always on glass screens with obnoxious glow of blue light, a recursive hell hole, this hardware task is grounding. Takes me right back down to earth. I love the contrast of physical L-A-B-O-R right after the workday, or soon thereafter.