Landmark Store a Thriving Nuts and Bolts Business

The late mystery writer Erle Stanley Gardner knew a good pipe wrench when he saw one, and he appreciated a good hardware store, too. In the 1940s Gardner would frequently drive 100 miles to and from his Temecula ranch to the San Diego Hardware Co., in the Gaslamp Quarter, to buy hardware items.

But 37 years ago, Gardner issued a tongue-in-cheek complaint that is still sometimes true for the people who shop at the nearly century-old establishment that has been a downtown fixture since the horse and buggy days. In a July 22, 1949, letter to a former store owner and typed by a secretary in his New York City office, Gardner wrote:

“I’m glad you like my books because I like your store. The trouble is that too many people also like your store.” He goes on to talk about a “a very high-grade pipe wrench” that he wanted to buy but did not because a “potential customer . . . with a glittering eye” distracted the salesman waiting on Gardner.

” . . . There has been trouble due to the fact that customers stand in line, and the salesman interrupts what he is doing to wait on someone else,” Gardner said.

Rip Fleming, 34, president and co-owner of the store, said that he underStands Gardner’s complaint all too well. Today, his 25 employees, including eight salesclerks, still have to move fast to serve the throngs of customers--from Yuppies to East County farmers--who crowd the store six days every week.

Fleming has a degree in biology but gave up his chosen field of study when he fell in love with the aging store and the 50,000 items inside. Fleming and his partner, Bill Haynsworth, believe that the store, which opened in 1892 and has been at its current location since 1920, is the oldest business of its kind in San Diego County.

The two owners proudly display a letter of introduction written more than a century ago for the store’s founder. The letter, which was dated May 4, 1883, and signed by an official from the Second National Bank in Bay City, Mich., introduced Fred Gazlay as “a man worthy of trust, good habits and natural business ability.”

Fleming credits Gazlay with starting the store’s reputation for stocking hard-to-find hardware. Along with the usual array of nuts, bolts, hinges, etc., San Diego Hardware also carries such obscure items as hand and push wood drills, wood inserts that provide machine screw threads in a piece of wood, as well as washboards, horse shoes and triangular dinner bells often used on working ranches.

Of course, no hardware store would be complete without nail bins. But along with the common steel and galvanized nails stocked in San Diego Hardware’s ancient bins, one will also find old-fashioned nails made from copper and brass that sell by the ounce; and nails made from aluminum and new-fangled plastics. Buying a hammer can also produce a problem of choice. The store sells the common steel hammers as well as others made from rawhide and brass. The choice of hammer depends on the hardness of the surface to be pounded. The rawhide and brass hammers are less likely to damage a soft surface.

“I’ve been here since 1973, when I started out as a salesman working three days a week. I was going to San Diego State (University) at the time. Boy, I’d be in class and I couldn’t wait to get down here and work the floor. I didn’t know much about hardware at the time, but I learned a lot, mostly from the customers,” Fleming said.

One look inside the store is all the explanation that even the most novice do-it-yourselfer needs to understand why Fleming chose wheelbarrows, hammers and plumb bobs over frog dissections.

The sturdy, unstained and unvarnished oak floors are worn smooth, almost white, by the countless shoes that have walked on them. The ceiling is adorned with turn-of-the-century corrugated tin tiles with fancy raised designs that have turned yellow with age. At the back of the store, almost hidden among a variety of ladders, sits an ancient safe manufactured in Ohio before the automobile was invented.

And, of course, there are the numerous shelves, drawers and bins chock full of common and uncommon items. San Diego Hardware may be the only place in the county where one can buy the latest model in table saws and a single 3/8-inch long, 1/16-inch thick pin retainer. The store also stocks pans for gold-prospecting, prospector’s picks, lead wool (as compared to steel wool) and oakum. Fleming believes that his store may be the only one in the county that sells copper and brass nails.

“A lot of these things don’t seem all that odd to me, like the rawhide hammers we sell. These things have very practical uses. . . . The lead wool and oakum are used in the old cast iron pipes. Oakum is oil-treated hemp commonly used in the old cast iron pipe joints. The old plumbers forced the oakum in the joint, then lead wool followed by a caulking material. Pipes are mostly plastic now, but every once in a while, maybe every five years or so, someone will call and ask, ‘Hey, do you guys carry lead wool and oakum?’

“Copper nails are just as rare. We stock about 5 pounds of them and sell maybe two pounds a year. They’re expensive and sell at 85 cents an ounce. We actually thrive on that kind of business. Every two or three years someone will come in and order about 50 pounds of copper nails. Recently a woman from La Jolla was building a deck and she didn’t want the nails to rust and bleed on the wood, so she came in and spent about $500 on copper nails,” Fleming said.

The store carries genuine babbits or lead babbits. Walk down the store’s creaky stairs into the basement and you can buy the heavy genuine babbit made of hard metal alloys for $13.75 per pound or pay $2.75 per pound for the softer lead babbit. A genuine babbit is used as a sleeve bearing on heavy machinery, while nowadays lead babbits are mostly melted and used as weights for fishing lines.

Getting a job as a salesclerk at San Diego Hardware is not easy, Fleming said. Before hiring a clerk, Fleming subjects all applicants to basic hardware and math tests.

“You have to have a good math intelligence to be able to figure things out in the hardware business . . . The hardware test is necessary because we get applicants who tell us, ‘Yea, I’ve sold hardware for five years.’ But when you ask them to tell you the difference between a keyed-alike and master-keyed padlocks, well, they can’t. But even if they get past these tests, we still put them through a home-study course in hardware after they’re hired,” he said.

(Keyed-alike padlocks have identical locking patterns and can be opened with the same key. Master-keyed padlocks have individual locking patterns and use different keys but all can be opened with a master key.)

“Everybody stresses customer service, but not everyone stresses product knowledge. When you shop here you won’t be served by a salesperson who will merely point you to where the product is stocked. Our people are also capable of telling you just about everything you want to know about the product you’re buying,” Fleming said.