I’m Brock. I was 26 and I’d run that store for 6 years. At the staff meeting that morning, Aubrey, 3 weeks out of Mizzou, had a plan on her laptop. Self-checkout, card only for contractors; close the repair counter, which her slide called a low-margin service line; and cut Chad, who ran our lumber yard, to 12 hours a week.

Chad was standing right there holding his coffee. I said, “No, Chad stays at 40 hours.” That’s when Dad yelled. Then he gave her the keys, looked at me, and said, “Go on. You’ve got somewhere to go, don’t you?” I didn’t know what he meant. On my way past Aubrey, I said, “Chad’s worked here longer than you’ve been alive. Remember that when you count the drawer?” Then I hung up my apron on the hook by the back door and walked out to my truck. A month later, Aubrey called me in tears and asked, “Why did everyone quit?” I said, “Ask your degree.” And hung up. 3 weeks after that, my father pushed Otis Grim’s riding mower into a hardware store 20 miles down the highway and found three of his own people working for me. And it would be the end of August before I understood what he’d meant by somewhere to go.

The answer had been written down the whole time in pencil on a desk calendar in Hale, Missouri. But I should back up. Chillicothe, Missouri is the home of sliced bread. It says so on the sign when you drive into town. It’s about 9,000 people, a lot of them farmers, and most of them at some point have needed a hose clamp or a key cut on a Saturday.

For 28 years, the place they went was Rex’s Hardware on Washington Street. Rex is my dad. He bought the store in 1998 from the man who’d started it. And he put his own name on the sign. Red letters on white. And that sign is still the first thing I picture when somebody says the word home.

Wood floors that creak in the same three places. A bolt bin wall with 200 little drawers. A coffee pot on the counter by the register that was never once clean. And a group of old farmers who stood around it every afternoon at 3 and settled the weather, the price of beans, and whose fault everything was.

I grew up in that store. I sorted bolts into those drawers when I was 8. I learned to cut keys at 11, standing on an overturned bucket so I could reach the machine. By 16, I was working the counter every Saturday and all summer. And I loved it. Nobody made me. I just liked a place where people walked in with a problem and walked out with the piece that fixed it.

My sister Aubrey is four years younger than me. She was the kind of kid who did dance and student council and got her picture in the paper for the spelling bee. Dad went to every recital. He’d close the store early for those, which he never did for anything else. I didn’t mind.

I had the store. She had the stage. I figured that was a fair split. Dad was proud of her in a way he talked about, and proud of me in a way he didn’t. That’s the best way I can put it. He’d tell the coffee group about Aubrey’s grades. With me, he’d say, “Brock, the Millers need a ballcock for a toilet.” And that was about as warm as it got.

After high school, I wanted to go into small engine repair, lawnmowers, chainsaws, tillers, the stuff every farm and every yard in the county depends on. There was a 2-year program in Trenton about half an hour north, and dad paid for it. $9,000 all in. I’m grateful for that. I’ve always been grateful for that.

But I want you to know the number because I heard it a lot over the years. $9,000 came up when I asked for a raise. $9,000 came up at Thanksgiving once when I mentioned I’d fixed Otis Grim’s riding mower for just the cost of the parts. $9,000 I spent on that schooling, Dad said, passing the potatoes. And he gives it away to Otis. Otis Grim is 81 years old. He farms 400 acres with a son who lives in Kansas City, and he’d been buying fence wire from our store since before I was born.