WOW it has been a long time since I heard any Amy Grant. But I totally heard “Baby Baby” this morning. AND COULD SING EVERY WORD.

Have I mentioned, in this blog, how I worked in a hardware store for a while in high school? Only briefly, it seems. But I totally did. And Amy Grant takes me back there.

From the winter of my sophomore year in high school through my first winter break in college, I worked at a once locally owned, making-the-transition-to-a-franchise hardware store. It was an institution in my small town, and had, within my memory, been an all-purpose general store like the kind the Ingallses frequented in the Little House on the Prairie books. My dad bought lumber and nails there; my mom bought our jeans and turtlenecks and shampoo there as well. When I was little, and the store was in its second (of three) sites, I used to entertain myself at the massive Matchbox car display near the counter while my parents did their errands; when I turned 9, no fewer than three of my friends gave me Strawberry Shortcake necklaces purchased at this place.

I worked at the store in its third site, when it had mostly mutated into any old chain hardware store. It still had traces of its old mercantile character, though. We still sold greeting cards and sewing supplies; you could still outfit yourself in chamois shirts and work pants (if you happened to be the size of our meager offerings). The place was run by the son and daughter of the original owner, and staffed largely by older folks and high school kids — ladies at the register, gentlemen doing the “real” work at the back.

I mostly ran the register and stocked shelves, but I managed to learn a fair bit about hardware and lumber. I even remember some of it — handy now, as a homeowner. My parents, who were still restoring the old house where I grew up at the time, were delighted to get my employee discount, and I was grateful for the flexibility the daughter-boss gave with scheduling. She always worked around high school practice and rehearsal schedules, and even let me go away for other summer jobs then come back to the store during the school year.

The old ladies I worked the registers with cracked me up, and I became quite close to one of them. I waited on all kinds of local characters — parents of classmates I’d known for years, people from my church, skeevy contractors and good ole boys, old timers who’d been shopping the store their whole lives. And since the store was in our town’s only shopping center, I also got to see a good deal of my friends who worked at the nearby grocery store, pharmacy, pizza parlor, and video store. I could tell, when I drove or walked into the shopping center parking lot, who among my acquaintances was working, based on the cars in the lot.

There are probably more stories of the hardware store to tell, but all I really meant to say was that the easy listening station that was always playing there was always playing Amy Grant. Hearing her puts the smell of sawdust and paint in my nose, the taste of York Peppermint Patties (always available in a bowl at the counter) in my mouth, and the dry, waxy feel of handling shopping bags and shipping boxes on my hands. It’s not altogether unpleasant.

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