The hardware store on Melrose Avenue was a busy place. The main thoroughfare, which was Melrose Avenue itself, always had a lot of pedestrian and vehicular traffic.
So there was almost never a shortage of customers. I used to like having to go into the store's below ground cellar to retrieve big fifty pound bags of rock salt that
customers would purchase whenever it snowed. The rock salt would be spread along the sidewalks to help keep people from slipping and falling. In addition I also liked
it whenever someone would purchase one or more galvanized metal garbage cans, each with its own lid. These trash cans were a common sight as rows of them would routinely
be lined up every morning in front of all the neighborhood's apartment buildings to await pickup by New York City's Department of Sanitation trucks. The cans were big
sellers and I would get a workout having to carry them up from the store's basement, one at a time.
But my father's specialty was that he was a licensed locksmith. At the back of his store stood his workbench with a key maker and a grinder, plus hundreds of blank
keys of all shapes and sizes hanging in rows along the store's rear wall, and waiting to be fitted and cut whenever a customer would need a new key.
My Dad also installed locks and security gates, and peepholes as well as door chains. Back then these were very popular items because almost every apartment in the
neighborhood had at least several different key operated locks on the entry door to the apartment, as well as a safety peephole for someone to peek out from whenever
their doorbell would ring.
Door chains too were an important security device to help stop a potential push in burglary. Because of the high rates of crime, residents would eagerly purchase
these items to include the most popular of them all, the steel window gate. These heavy devices were my father's biggest seller. The gates would be installed in any
window which faced a public fire escape. Such gates, when properly locked from the inside, kept out burglars. Unfortunately, sometimes they would also prevent firefighters
from entering a burning apartment to rescue anyone who may be inside it. Locked window gates have always contributed to fire deaths.
I recall my father always carefully instructing the owner of a newly installed window gate not to lock the gate when they were inside the apartment, but to only lock
it whenever they would leave. But all these devices, be they door locks or chains, or window gates helped to make life safer for people. And my dad and his partner
did a brisk business with this.
I also remember sometimes going with my Dad, after he closed the store for the day, as he made his rounds to install these things. He carried a big tool box along
with an electric drill. It took a lot of work to drill holes and to secure these devices into steel doors or along the sidings of window frames. I would help my Dad
carry everything, and the window gates seemed to weigh a ton. I would help to hold the gates or the door lock as he would carefully screw and bolt the items into place.
Anyone who lived in New York City during this period, especially in the so called "bad" neighborhoods, would be familiar with these products.
Now, all these years later, my father is about to turn 100 years old. I thank God that his health is good. He can still manage his own affairs. He can walk, and
he's not sickly or bedridden. My Dad also likes to keep himself busy playing cards with his friends, reading and writing and fooling around with his computer. He is
active and alert.
To be on this earth for a century is surely a gift from one's Creator. I am happy for him, and I hope he has many more years remaining. For my father it has been
a long life well spent.
D.B.
