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Sixty years of sameness fine for Feany

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Contributed by: Carol Rock/valleynews on 8/8/2007

1947 was a year of amazing firsts.

Walter Morrison invented the Frisbee. The first commercial microwave oven was put into use. African-American baseball player Jackie Robinson signed a contract with the Brooklyn Dodgers. The House Unamerican Activities Committee investigated alleged communism in Hollywood. The movie "Great Expectations" opened and Tennessee Williams' play "A Streetcar Named Desire" opened on Broadway.

And in sleepy little town just north of the San Fernando Valley, Don Guglielmino opened Newhall Hardware, a store where you could get a washboard, a hand-crank ice cream maker, a radiator bag, tools, screws, nails, pipes, hoses and various other sundry products people needed to fix just about anything.

Sixty years later, there's a microwave in every home and office, nobody really cares about communism in Hollywood, both "Great Expectations" and "Streetcar" are on DVD and although Morrison died earlier this year, those flying discs are as popular as ever. Customers leaning on the counter at the vintage hardware store - many of them old-timers - now discuss the antics of Barry Bonds, an African-American ballplayer who recently broke fellow African-American slugger Hank Aaron's home run record.

In other words, it's business as usual.

"We don't consider the people who come into the store as customers," said Vic Feany, who bought the store from Guglielmino in 1998. "They're our friends. Hopefully when they come in to see us, they need something."

One of Feany's regulars, 90-year old Hyram Swallow, had been in that morning for some roofing materials for some work he was doing. Himself.

Sometimes the regulars pitch in with advice for customers trying to figure out a problem. In the past, clerks have included retired painters and carpenters, who brought a trove of experience and information that was shared with anyone who asked. Now, those clerks are being replaced by high school students who don't have the hands-on experience needed to offer good counsel.

As Feany and I talked in his office, a middle-aged Hispanic man opened the door and smiled, handing Feany an envelope before waving goodbye.

"There is so much history here," Feany said, setting the envelope aside. "We still have house accounts. That was Primo Tapia, who used to drive the truck for his brothers, Charlie and Felix (local farmers who worked the land now covered with houses in Saugus and Valencia). We gave him an account so he could get parts for the truck."

The brothers' corn and produce business is long gone, but the family still lives nearby. And when Tapia makes a payment for the little things he needs for his house, he doesn't go online or mail a check - he stops in to hand Vic the cash.

"It's not a moneymaker to run this way," Feany said. "But it's part of the flavor. I wouldn't do it any other way."

On August 18, the store's actual 60th anniversary, San Fernando Road between Market Street and 8th Street will be the site of a huge celebration. From 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., a chuckwagon run by the Old Town Newhall Association will dispense hot dogs and soda, hardware store staff will be cranking out homemade ice cream, a blacksmith will fire up the forge and the blocked-off street will be filled with music. Friends - and hopefully new customers - will be welcomed by staff and regulars.

"It makes us feel good to be able to do this," Feany said. "Everybody on the street has pulled together like a community."

Asked what kind of advice he'd give to someone just starting out in business, Feany was stumped.

"There's no good advice. We're an anomaly," he said. "We haven't changed the way we do business in the last 60 years, which is tantamount to cutting your throat. We don't have electronic scanners or computers for a quick checkout. I guess we could fire half the crew and buy one and maybe do a little better, but that isn't what we are."

"I guess I'm just hard-headed," Feany added. "If we can't be what we are, I don't want to be at all."

The store itself could probably fit in one department of the big box home improvement stores like Home Depot or Lowes that have taken over the landscape. Aisles are narrow and goods - more than a half-million items, by Feany's estimation - are stacked to the 10-foot ceiling. First-time visitors are easy to spot - they're the ones gazing open-mouthed at the array of useful widgets and household items - the kind you won't see in a design magazine, but all over grandma and grandpa's house.

"There is so much history here," Feany said. "When Don got sick, the family was going to close it down and I just couldn't do that."

Feany said that his family backed his commitment to keeping the store open, cutting back on luxuries and helping where they could to keep the store - where Feany worked as a clerk - open for business. Until his death in 2001, the business patriarch would come in to the store on a sporadic basis, each time greeting Feany as one of his treasured employees. Feany had so much respect for Guglielmino, he still treated him as the boss, even after the paperwork was filed and money had changed hands.

"What harm was there in letting him think he still owned the place?" he asked.

Feany wants to preserve Newhall Hardware not just as a showpiece, but as a way for generations to come to learn about how things were done in the past.

"They don't know anything about this way of doing business," he lamented. "It's an important thing for kids to learn how to figure things out using a piece of paper and a pencil, instead of having a computer do it for you. Most of these kids have never seen a mechanical cash register. We have to teach them how to count back change. They need to know what life was like 20-30 years ago."

For now, Feany is concerned about staying open in the years after this landmark anniversary. He leans heavily on his store manager, Diane Vradenberg, to run the day-to-day business of accounting, staffing and inventory.

"I'm a hardware man. Everyone is blessed with a gift, mine is being able to fix things. I've always been able to take things apart and fix them, but I don't know everything about running the place. I open the door and sell a pound of nails and hope that I have enough to pay the rent by the end of the day.

"On the good side, we are what we are," he said. "When customers move away and come back to visit, if they say 'this place hasn't changed a bit,' then we're happy. That's our goal."

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