Well, what’s too bad is the stark absence of ice cream cones, any time you want them, here in the middle of town. That’s certainly not the worst of it all, but it’s something that hits you as the weather warms up: “I know! Let’s go to the hardware store for an ice cream cone! That’s just what we need in these times!”
But ice cream-scooping involves hands and closeness and well, ice cream cones set out for pickup on the socially distant porch don’t do so well, especially as ice cream weather sets in.
One of the most important gathering spots in the United States of America is Ashfield Hardware Store. Among the items they offer is a free serving of everything you need to know, whether it’s where in town to buy homegrown meat, or whose mother is ailing this week. You got a possum that’s annoying you at night, they’ll lend you a Have-A-Heart trap. You need a new sink for your bathroom, they’ll order it for you. When I bought Elmer’s Store in 2005 and needed an electrician, a plumber and a set of carpenters, I went to Ashfield Hardware and found them all, right there between the counter and the gift cards! In the Great Ice-Induced Power-Outage of 2008, Ashfield Hardware came up with a whole barrel-full of hard-wired phones for people to use as long as they needed them. If the slogan hadn’t already been taken, I’d say that “You can Get anything you want at Ashfield Hardware Store.”
So when it came time for good citizens and businesses to follow Governor Baker’s rules about staying home and only the essential staying open, Ashfield Hardware owners Nancy Hoff and Laura Bessette ciphered out how to serve customers safely in a store no bigger than from here to there, yet full of essential needs.
At first they let people in, just a masked few at a time, and stood back as they rang them up. That worked for a little while, but dang it, too many were left waiting. And the front porch of the place is stocked with essentials like salt, sand and canning jars so there isn’t a lot of room to stand around out there, awaiting your turn.
So, as with all things, Nancy and Laura turned to the creative.
They wanted the new method to be fast, efficient, and helpful, but to contain traditional Ashfield warmth. Customers now telephone in and Nancy or Laura take the order, describing the available options. Please note: The only telephone associated with Ashfield Hardware was crafted when you still needed a curly cord to attach the handset to the phone itself. And the phone itself has its own skinny flat cord that runs to a little hole in the wall. Fortunately, Nancy and Laura know the store so well they can describe every single particle of what they’ve got in there without leaving the counter. That’s efficiency.
So you place your order, and Laura puts it in a bag. And, since love and neighborliness are as much a part of the store as the hammer department is, Laura decorates the bags with hearts and personal notes just so the shopper knows they are still quite loved inside the place, even if they can’t go in for the hug.
Then she sets the bag out on the porch, on top of the canning jars or the sand, for the shopper to come and pick up. Money is transacted either over the phone with one of those new-fangled credit card things, or left under a rock on the porch, the old, regular way.
People waiting for orders can keep socially apart in the tiny parking lot out front — too small for more than about six or eight cars to squeeze into, but perfect for a greater number of individuals to gather apart and share the latest news.
One recent day when the now-empty street presented a few family members out for a stroll, Nancy and Laura saw them from inside, went out to the porch and everyone clapped for the passing parade! Entertainment is entertainment these days, and you gotta applaud it when you get it in any form.
Victory Gardens are making a comeback, so that seeds and gardening supplies are in high demand. Fishing supplies, too. In the hilltowns, when the going get rough, people take it into their own hands. Dr. Jane Willis and Ashfield Needle and Threads are sewing masks and offering them for free at the hardware store, and Abby Ferla and Christopher Sabo of Foxtrot Herb Farm on Baptist Corner Road are making their own Immune Systems Tea, offering it at the store too, for donations, only.
No ice cream, but plenty of love, plenty of creativity, plenty of reasons to celebrate living where we do. But I do look forward to the return of the ice cream.
Nan Parati lives and works in Ashfield, where she found home and community following Hurricane Katrina. She can be reached at NanParati@aol.com.