Here is the bottom of the basement junk well. You're asking, come on! This isn't junk! This is full of all sorts of useful random hardware! It is filled with left over wood dowels used to put together years of pressed board furniture. It's screws and bolts that don't fit together. It's odd sized washers and old nails and even drill bits even though I don't own a drill. Therefore, it could be described as a piece of junk. It's not. However, for the blog, it's a good place to talk about something I've had forever and will likely continue to have forever.

Here's a reason. It's my classic retail senses tingling. As I grew up, we had one place where we could get hardware and appliances. Forest City. An evil chain seller. Sure there were independents, every city had one. We had independent appliance and electronics stores. Every city had one. However, all I remember was going to Forest City when we needed above. Of course, the big box revolution came along and we soon had three big box chains selling same and lots of electronics and appliance chains as well. Forest City got bought by a bigger chain, Handy Andy. I worked for them for a bit and I worked for the eventual killer Builders Square.  I bought this before they changed to Handy Andy mainly to house the bags of hardware culled from my grandfather's garage when he passed.

It's typical. Believe me, I've worked for chains about to be bought out or in bankruptcy, and if you wanted to sticker something twice, by gosh, you stickered twice! Woooooo! Wow! Civil disobedience! Attica! Attica! Whistle blower!

It's meant to be hung on the wall. I think my brother took his hardware and did same. Actually, the back of this kinda looks like an apartment block somewhere in the Soviet Union. Where am I going with this? If I had any 70's era Fisher Price little people, maybe I could play apartment with them. Some of this is useful right? Didn't I say that already? Let's have a look at some of the hard wares... If anything, some of it could be over 60 years old...so it's antique junk...waiting to be used....

Dowels. Actually, these aren't the surplus mentioned. These were purchased for something and you couldn't buy just one. Gee, wasn't that what a local hardware store would be for? One wooden dowel, .6 cents. In a tiny bag. These may come in use again when I strip a big screw in some of my cheap press board furniture and need to make a new screw hole. Um...junk.

Actually, for years and years, this has been the place to look for a screw or a nut that "may" work or "may" fit. It's also a place for anything I may have taken apart or screws from a tape recorder I've tried to fix. It's a junkyard for hardware that may get reused if it will fit. Too bad none of the screws are those "micro" screws for the electronics or cameras. I know a few of these screws came from my furniture. The little black wheelie looking thing was likely from a plastic choo-choo from way back when in my plastic choo-choo appreciating days.

So, even though I took a few more pictures of this storage device, and I could wax poetic on all of this junk that may be used tomorrow or in 5 years, I think I'll end on this one. I remember giving half of this hardware to my brother which meant, yes, I had to make an exact split of stuff. Which meant the copper nails, the screws, everything. My grandfather was a bit of a handyman and could fix anything around his house or his car. My brother can pretty much do same. Me? I need a nail to piece together a split stereo cabinet. I need a bolt to fix my Monza door when the latch fell inside the body. I needed the plastic choo-choo wheel for when my plastic choo-choo went off the track, to which the engineer, naturally, started pulling back. Get DOWN to your ROCKIN' SOUL.

Junk blog.

-Ric