Showerthought: I miss the old guys at the hardware store on 5th Street

About ten years back, an old timer named Frank saw me buying a can of polyurethane and said, 'Kid, you're gonna hate that in two coats. Rub the first one back with 0000 steel wool and a whisper of mineral spirits.' He was right, it changed the whole feel. Anyone else get a piece of advice that simple but perfect?

3 comments

3 Comments

sam_rivera2mo ago

That's the kind of wisdom you just can't get from a YouTube tutorial. Feels like we traded those little moments for endless information.

jana_davis902mo ago

Remember the guy who would just hand you the right part without asking a question. The YouTube video shows you ten ways to do it, but it doesn't know your house or your weird old pipes. That specific, quiet knowledge just evaporates when those places close.

skyler5161mo ago

Yeah because now I get to watch a 15 minute video where the guy has the exact same problem but lives in a house built in 2005 with perfectly straight copper pipes. My 1940s plumbing is basically a game of pipe Tetris that only the old guy at the hardware store knew how to solve. Now I buy three different parts every trip and return two of them like some kind of plumbing roulette. Maybe I should just start recording my own videos called "how to fix your sink when the last guy did it wrong in 1973.