After my dad’s back surgery, I spent six years running his hardware store. But when my younger sister came home with a business degree and proposed cutting a longtime employee’s hours from 40 to 12 a week, I refused. Dad shouted in front of the crew, “Your sister earned a business degree. All you’ve ever done is take,” then took the store keys off the hook and put them in her hand

I didn’t think of a fair price for Otis as giving anything away. Dad did. I finished the program in the spring of 2020. That same spring, dad’s back gave out. 20 years of lifting water softener salt. And one morning, he bent down for a bag and couldn’t straighten back up. Two discs.

Surgery in Kansas City. He never really came back full-time. After the surgery, Dad came in around 10:00, drank coffee with the farmers, signed whatever mom put in front of him, and went home at 2:00. Mom did the books from the little office in back three mornings a week. Everything else was me.

I was 20 years old and I ran the store. I did the ordering every Tuesday. I kept the contractor accounts, the builders, and the plumbers and the electricians who bought on a monthly tab and paid at the end of the month because that’s how it had always worked and that’s how they liked it. I ran the repair counter in the back corner where half the county’s lawnmowers ended up sooner or later.

I handled the county account, too, which was the biggest single customer we had. The county road department runs a fleet of big ditch mowers all summer. the tractors with the long arms that cut the grass along the roads. And for 20 years, they’d bought their blades, belts, and parts from us. I knew those machines bolt by bolt.

When one broke down on a county road on a Thursday afternoon, I’d drive the part out myself. I hired the people, too. Over those 6 years, it settled into a crew. Chad ran the lumber yard. He’s 58, built like a mailbox, and he’d worked at that store under the old owner and then under dad, 30-some years in all.

Joan Taylor ran the paint counter. She could match any color you brought in. A paint chip, a coffee mug, a sweater, and she’d been doing it for 30 years. Herb Tilman was our cashier, 69, and he called every woman who came through his line young lady, including Joan. Ricky drove the delivery truck.

Dusty worked the floor and loaded trucks. And there was Braden, a high-school kid, slow but honest. That was the crew. For 6 years, it worked. Now, here’s the thing I didn’t tell anybody back then. In March of this year, I drove down to Hale for a carburetor kit. Hale is a little town about 20 miles down the highway, maybe 400 people, and it has a hardware store that’s even older than ours.

Austramm Hardware. One long room with a tin ceiling and a lumber shed out back. It belongs to Sully Austramm, who’s 71 and who I’d known for years from the parts dealer meetings. Sully had that kit when nobody else in North Missouri did. When I walked in, Sully was at the old rolltop desk he keeps behind the counter, writing on a big paper desk calendar.

Sully writes everything on that calendar. Orders, the weather, who owes him money, whose birthday it is. He’s done it for 40 years. There’s a drawer at the bottom of that desk full of old ones. He sold me the kit. Then he leaned back in his chair and said, “My knees are about done, Brock.

Annie and I never had kids. I want to cut back to 3 days a week and I need somebody who can run this place like it’s theirs. I’d pay you a cut of what the store makes. Fair cut. I’ve watched how you do things. It was the nicest thing anybody in my line of work had ever said to me.

I said no. I told him I can’t, Sully. Dad needs me up there. His back’s never been right. Sully looked at me a long second. Then he nodded and wrote something on his calendar. I figured he was writing down the carburetor kit. I never told Dad about the offer. I thought about it, but I knew how it would sound.

It would sound like I was holding it over him to get a raise, and I didn’t want that. I didn’t need him to know I’d turned something down for him. I just needed the store to keep running. Aubrey graduated in May. Bachelor’s degree in business administration. Dad threw a party in the backyard with a rented tent and a sheetcake, and he stood up and gave a speech about how she was the first one in our family to finish a four-year degree.