CHARLIE

There is a new hardware store dog! Charlie is a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel and he came to live with us at just 8 weeks old. He has a tough act to follow. His uncle Buddy (click on In Memory of Buddy above) slipped away from us almost two years ago. Charlie will never replace Buddy in our hearts but - - - look at those eyes - - - he's already carved a new place for himself in our hearts. He won't be showing up for work for a while due to certain manners that need to be learned (housebreaking for one), but will be in the store when the time is right.

Meantime we're back into winter mode - - - the rain has started and so has sales of roof patch, tarps, weatherstripping, heaters, hats and gloves. Haven't sold a snow shovel yet - - - but it won't be long.

Ammo

Times have sure changed! When I was sixteen I went into Winters Hardware in my little Nebraska hometown and made a down payment on a shotgun. I wanted it for hunting in the fall so Mr. Winters held it for me all summer and I made payments on it from the money I made working my tail off in the hay fields. A couple of years later I bought a .22 caliber handgun without any background check or waiting period or even any forms to fill out. When I was in high school my hunting parners and I would meet early in the morning with thermos bottles filled with hot coffee. We stopped at the bakery on the way out of town and picked up a bag of sweet rolls, fresh and hot right out of the oven. We would either go to our duckblind on the North Platte River or to any of a number of corn fields or tree rows to hunt pheasants. When it came time to go to school we made a mad dash - usually getting there just moments before the bell - and stashed our guns and boots and gear in the trunk of our cars in the school parking lot. Then when the last bell rang in the afternoon we dashed to our cars and headed back out to get in some more hunting.

Times have sure changed!

Imagine a sixteen year old buying a shotgun or an eighteen year old buying a handgun or high school students with guns in the trunks of their cars in the school parking lot.

When we bought Dunsmuir Hardware back in 1975 the Federal Firearms License kind of came with the store. Licenses were easy to get and there were several of them in town, held by people who dealt in guns as a sideline business or hobby. One by one those licenses have been given up as the regulations and requirements and expenses involved have increased. Now we have the only Federal Firearms License in Dunsmuir and one of a very few in the whole county. There have been many times when frustration with those regulations and requirements and expenses made us give serious thought to giving up our license but we've held onto it. We know that if we ever gave it up we could never get it back.

We don't carry an inventory of guns - that does terrible things to insurance rates and the Department of Justice has strict requirements for storing guns that would be hard for us to meet. We do special orders for guns for customers - rifles, shotguns and handguns. We have an assortment of gun accessories such as cleaning supplies, holsters, and targets, and we stock ammunition as you can see in the photo. We are licensed by the Federal Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms. We are certified by the State of California Department of Justice. We process the transfer of firearms between private parties, between other dealers and private parties, and of course the sale of firearms by us. It's a tangle of red tape with forms and requirements and waiting periods and background checks and we do our best to make the process fairly painless.

It's an interesting facet of our business that we enjoy.

HATS

We started selling t-shirts with our logo on them quite a number of years ago and they have always been a popular item with our customers. Recently however, the company we bought shirts from started to also offer hats. They proved to be even more popular than shirts. Our logo is reproduced on them in full color embroidery and the hats themselves come in a variety of colors and styles, from denim to hemp fabric. The sales rep from the Texas based company phoned us some time back - after we had just received an order of hats - and asked how we liked the "distressed" styles. We opened up the order and discovered to our amazement, hats with faded looking fabric and scuffed bills like the bottom one in this photo. The sales rep said, "Trust me - people love them." We discovered that he was right. Probably half of our hat sales now are the distressed variety rather than new-looking hats. When customers ask about them we offer a variety of explanations. They are hats that are pre-worn out for folks who are too lazy to wear them out themselves. They are hats that we had to go take back from folks who didn't pay their bill. And so on. We intentionally sell our hats for just over what they cost us - rather than making a profit on them. We believe that having them seen out there in the real world is a good image builder for our business. Ian Dunsmuir from Scotland - a descendant from the Dunsmuir that town is named for - visited our store one time and we offered to give him one. He insisted on paying for it with a Scottish pound note. We framed the note and have it displayed among our other memorabilia.

GOLD !

Back in 1991 the chemical spill at Cantara in the Sacramento River above Dunsmuir virtually killed our business in fishing gear for the next few years. It was a stressful time that hurt our business and others in our town by destoying our tourist industry abruptly. That part of our business had become increasingly important and its loss was a real blow. Sales of fishing gear to visitors as well as local fishermen (and women) stopped and we found ourselves looking around for ways to replace those sales.

We hit upon the idea of gold panning supplies. The Sacramento River was still here - it just wasn't available for fishing. The area has a long history of gold mining and it seemed like a natural thing to try. It's possible to pan for gold in the river right in town and find "fine gold" or "color" as the panners call it - tiny flakes of gold that are visible in a gold pan. Enthusiasts told us of the better areas to pan for gold in the river. The best areas seem to be where tributaries come into the Sacramento to the South of Dunsmuir - mainly those which come from the East side of the river. These spots; Castle Creek, Soda Creek, Sweetbriar Creek, Hazel Creek and so on - are easily accessible from Interstate 5.

We searched for a source of gold panning equipment and finally located one in Arizona - which later moved to Southern California. Setting ourselves up with gold pans, sluice boxes (like those in the picture), specimen bottles, instruction books, scales, tweezers, snifter bottles, and other specialized equipment, we were in the business. Our original supplier went out of business a couple of years ago and we had to find another (there aren't that many) and we continue to be in the gold panning equipment business today.

Our fishing business of course, came back after a few years and today is better than ever, but we have continued our gold panning business and it has been good for us. Kind of fits in the image of the "old fashioned hardware store" and is another specialized "niche" (like model trains, blue jeans, cast iron cookware, pocket knives, and giftware) that our customers enjoy.

Have to admit that we enjoy it too - it's fun to see the enthusiasm folks have for it and to hear the stories of their successes (and failures). At times like now - when the river is low - there are good opportunities for gold panning the sand bars, exposed bedrock, and low tributaries of the river. Then in the winter, when rain and snow melt raise the water level rocks move and stream beds get stirred up to make for more opportunities next year.

MODEL TRAINS IN THE RAILROAD TOWN

Some time back we became aware of the fact that the "Historic Railroad Town" had no model railroad dealer. We were fortunate to be contacted by Bruce Duncan who, with his dad, Bill, runs Golden West Hobbies. Bruce specializes in HO scale model trains and particularly those of local lines such as the McCloud River Railroad, Yreka Western Railroad, Southern Pacific, and Union Pacific. He supplies us with locomotives and rolling stock from major manufacturers and also custom painted and lettered cars and engines. This has developed into an important part of our store. It's a colorful and fun department that reflects Dunsmuir's railroad history and draws a surprising number of customers. We see a wide variety of model railroad hobbyists - adults and kids, beginners and experienced modelers, folks shopping for gifts for model railroaders or souvenirs from the Historic Railroad Town. Often vacationers who have been on excursion runs on the Yreka or McCloud lines come to us to pick up a souvenir of their experience.

The large model of the Southern Pacific "cab forward" locomotive in the center of this photo is an attention grabber. We were fortunate to acquire it from the family of Larry Green - a noted outdoor sports writer who lived in Dunsmuir. Larry was fascinated by the design of this gigantic locomotive and decided to model it - not building a kit, but working from photos and blueprints. He hand, carved, shaped, forged and created parts that are intricate and accurate to build this model which is over four feet long. Larry passed away before he completed the project. The tender is complete - right down to individual rivets - but the locomotive is about 90% done - just needing some details to be finished. Interesting that Larry chose to give his model the same number as the actual locomotive which is in the railroad museum in Sacramento.

British Car Show

It's time for the annual Memorial Day weekend British Car Show. This event has been held every year for the past 8 years or so and is a welcome springtime event. It's a fun time for us because we have owned British cars and have fond memories of them (in spite of Lucas electrical systems, terrible heaters, and funny names for things - like bonnet, spanner, boot, nave plates and spanners). We still get excited about the great lines of cars like this Jaguar XK-120 or 140 (not sure which). It's a nice event for the community since it is very clean; the cars come, the event is held and the cars leave - no muss, no fuss, no debris. The people who attend the event - both car owners and spectators - are (dare I say it) a cut above the average Railroad Days attendee. They are conservative, well behaved, enthusiastic, nice people.

Blocking of Dunsmuir Avenue in front of our store for events has been a controversial subject in the town. Yours truly went on a rampage about three years ago when the Railroad Days event blocked the street from Friday afternoon until Sunday afternoon. It murdered our business since our regular "bread and butter" customers couldn't get to our store to buy paint, nails, nuts and bolts and so on. My anger at that seems to have reached the organizers of the event because Railroad Days hasn't done it again and other events such as this one sort of tip-toe around the topic and are careful not to overdo it. The British Car Show closes the street for about three hours and that is great. It doesn't seem to disrupt our business a bit and the day has proven to be one of our busiest ones for the year.

Opening day of fishing season (April 29) has come and gone so our busy season has officially started. It will be an interesting summer since continually higher gas prices do seem to be having some effect. We're seeing noticably fewer out of town fishermen (and fisherwomen) and we've been told that there have been some cancellations for the British Car Show due to gas prices. It could cost $50.00 and up to bring a car from Sacramento for example. On the other hand - our business seems to be benefiting from a reluctance of customers to drive out of town to buy things that we sell. Our sales in lawn and garden items is noticably higher and the "bread and butter" nuts and bolts, plumbing and electrical and paint things are moving well.

We now have a website - www.dunsmuirhardware.com that links to this blog so more people should see it as the word gets out. It's a very simple site that is just our way of getting the old fashioned hardware store into the cyber age. It will be interesting to see what it does.

Thanks to Brad Sage for the Jaguar photo.

OUR LOGO

Our logo is an important part of our image. In the last 30 plus years it has become widely recognized in our area. When we purchased the store in 1975 it was called L & L HARDWARE - as it had been for a good number of years. The sign across the 50 foot storefront was tired and faded and needed to be redone and we really wanted to change the store's image and establish our own. A name change was needed. We considered McCloud Hardware but gave that up for obvious reasons - confusion with the neighboring town of McCloud and our family name, McCloud. The obvious choice was DUNSMUIR HARDWARE. We were introduced to a local artist - Tom O'Hara - who said he could do our storefront although he had never done anything that big. We liked what we saw of Tom's work and believed that he could do the job but still didn't know just what it should look like. After a lot of thought and research, we arrived at the lettering style and the central oval inspired by an early day Union Pacific Railroad poster advertising the opening of one section of the transcontinental railroad. We felt that it presented a western flavor and was representative of the mountain scenery, wildlife and railroad heritage of the area. Tom did a fantastic job for us and looking back on it now - we wouldn't change a thing. As a matter of fact, over the years we have had the sign re-done three times by other sign painters (Tom has moved on to other things) and we put them under strict orders to not make any changes in the original design. In full color across the storefront in the afternoon sun, it is impressive and was the first visible step in the town's movement to establish it's historic downtown. We're proud of it.