A Piedmont Porchlight Story
If you ever spent much time in Blackwelder’s Hardware, you learned pretty quick there wasn’t much Mr. Blackwelder couldn’t find.
Didn’t matter if you needed a hinge from 1948 or a washer no bigger’n a shirt button. He’d disappear into that dim storeroom, shuffle things around for a minute or two, and come back carrying exactly what you asked for.
Never understood how he did it. Store looked like organized confusion to me. Looked like home to him.
One rainy October afternoon I stopped in needing exactly one ten-penny nail. Not a pound. Just one. I had a loose porch board that had decided to start complainin’ every time I stepped on it.
Mr. Blackwelder looked at me over his spectacles. “One nail?”
“That’s all I need.” He reached beneath the counter without even looking and laid a single nail on the worn oak top. “No charge.”
I thanked him and was fixin’ to leave when old Percy DuBar wandered through the front door, dripping rainwater onto the floor.
Percy nodded toward the nail. “Ten-penny?” Mr. Blackwelder nodded. Percy chuckled. “Reminds me…”
Mr. Blackwelder smiled the way he always did when somebody said those two words.
I leaned against the oaken counter that had supported the weight of nearly everybody in Piedmont. Rain wasn’t goin’ anywhere. Neither was I. Percy picked up the nail and rolled it between his fingers. “When I was a boy, my daddy always drove one extra nail into every new porch.”
“What for?” I asked. Percy shrugged. “Never told me.”
“Then why’d he do it?”
“Said every porch needed one nail that didn’t belong to nothin’.”
I laughed. “That don’t make a lick of sense.” “Didn’t to me neither.” Percy set the nail back on the counter. “Said someday somebody’d ask about it.”
“And?”
“And today you did.”
Mr. Blackwelder never said a word. Just folded another brown paper sack. After a minute I asked, “Did your daddy ever tell you what the extra nail was really for?” Percy smiled. “Nope.”
“Then how do you know there really was one?”
“Oh, there was.”
“How?”
“Because every porch he ever built had one board that never squeaked.”
That made about as much sense as anything else Percy ever said. I thanked Mr. Blackwelder for the nail and headed home through the drizzle. When I got back, I fixed the loose board in about five minutes. Then, for reasons I still can’t explain…
I drove one more ten-penny nail into the porch. Not holdin’ anything. Didn’t need to. Just because. Now, before you go thinkin’ there’s somethin’ mysterious about that… there probably ain’t.
Truth is, I couldn’t tell you today which nail it was if my life depended on it. But every October, when I sit on the porch with my coffee, I find myself glancin’ down at those old floorboards and wonderin’ if maybe Percy knew somethin’ his daddy never bothered explainin’.
Or maybe…
some stories are just better without an answer.
⁂
Have You Seen The Irish Blackthorn?
While Percy was telling his story, somebody later swore The Irish Blackthorn was leaning against the cracker barrel. I don’t remember seeing it there.
