Sunday, January 03, 2010
Melrose Hardware owner Joe Moses: A community fixture
Melrose Hardware's customers appreciate the knowledge and patience of owner Joe Moses.
Photos by Stephanie Klein-Davis The Roanoke Times
Hanna "H.A." Moses opened Melrose Hardware in 1953.
Moses assists customer Curtis LaPrade with nuts and bolts for an equipment repair.
Items sold at Melrose Hardware line the pegboard and shelves. Moses stocks the small odds and ends that many big-box home-improvement stores do not.
Joe Moses is the owner of Melrose Hardware, a throwback independent neighborhood store where he's essentially the sole employee.
Neighborhood resident Paul Worrell visits Melrose Hardware frequently and shoots the bull with Joe Moses.
Joe Moses holds a historic photo of Melrose Hardware.
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He greets most customers by name and most customers call him Mr. Moses.
Neighborhood resident Paul Worrell, 78, strolls in to Melrose Hardware for one of his regular visits. He playfully insults owner Joe Moses, 75, the way men do. Moses laughs heartily and shoots it right back.
Over the next few hours, as customers open and shut the store's rattling old door. Moses glances up to welcome Mr. Wright, Mr. Holland, Mr. Hairston, Mr. Wood, as well as Joe, Raleigh and a host of others.
Worrell lingers. Steps out periodically to spit tobacco. Steps back in. Ambles around and bends the ear of Robert "Pint" Noel, who helps Moses with new stock a few hours each week.
With mock reluctance, Worrell talks about Melrose Hardware, a throwback independent neighborhood hardware store where Moses is essentially the sole employee.
"Nine times out of 10 I can get what I want here," Worrell says. "It's handy. It's right around the corner."
The hardwood floors in the 72-year-old building cant here and there.
Out on the curb, Donald Coleman holds a brown paper bag filled with a new hacksaw and tiling supplies. He waits to cross busy Melrose Avenue.
"I'd come here before I'd go to the big stores," Coleman says. "It's amazing how much stuff he's got in there. This is a place old cats know about. My dad brought me here."
Coleman says he likes Melrose Hardware's low prices and Moses, too.
"He is a really cool dude."
Other customers enter. Moses waits on them individually. He ignores the ringing phone. He zips around the small store in faded tan coveralls and a navy blue stocking cap. Worrell observes and shakes his head.
"He's like a bee. He fly all around here until he find something they need," he says.
Hanna "H.A." Moses opened Melrose Hardware in 1953 in the commercial building he'd had constructed in 1937. It already housed the small grocery store he'd shifted there in 1950 from Second Avenue Northwest, where he had opened Sanitary Grocery & Meat Market in 1920.
The Moses family was among many other Lebanese merchants of the era who first operated stores in Roanoke's primarily black Gainsboro neighborhood.
Dion Law asks Moses to duplicate a set of car keys. Law lives just down the street. Proximity helps bring him back. But Moses' personality figures in.
"I always deal with him because he's kind," Law says. "He's nice. Whatever you need, he'll find it."
Melrose Hardware still sells nails and some fasteners by the pound. Moses weighs them at the counter on an antique meat scale saved from the grocery days.
Joe Scarbro comes through the door. Moses says, "Joe, what you need?"
Scarbro, owner of Joe's Repair Service, buys a few pounds of roofing nails and a roll of roofing felt.
"I buy a lot of stuff from [Moses] because he's my friend," Scarbro says. "He always treats me right. And I try to keep the little man in business, too."
A patron buys a three-prong adaptor for a receptacle at home. Cost: 69 cents.
Moses cranks the circa-1934 National Cash Register and hands back change from a dollar.
A man brings in a faucet stem. Moses inspects it and replaces a washer. The customer buys a spare washer. Total cost: 50 cents. The man attempts to pay $1. Moses smiles but hands back 50 cents change.
Another customer purchases a box of insulated staples. Cost: $1.
Melrose Hardware does not sell power tools or lumber or big-ticket items. Moses says annual sales are "just under $100,000."
Moses worked for the federal government for 30 years before retiring in 1995 and returning to Roanoke with his wife, Amanda, to help John Moses, his brother, run the hardware store. He bought out John's interest in 2005.
Amanda Moses says her husband operates Melrose Hardware now as a sort of hobby.
"He doesn't do it for the money," she says. "He does it for the community because his dad did. My husband has the same personality and values as his dad -- generosity toward people, respect for people."
The store's earnings help buy gifts for the grandchildren and that's about it, she says, smiling.
Joe Moses greets regular customer Robert Beaver. Beaver says he visits the store just about every day for this and that.
"His drywall screws are cheaper than anybody else's, and he sells them loose," Beaver says. "You can get six or eight screws if that's all you need. You can't do that other places."
Two elderly men loiter in a narrow aisle and commiserate about growing old. One says, "I was doing good this morning but got over it."
A Hispanic man who speaks little English approaches the counter with a sparkling new kitchen faucet and two supply lines. Moses sees that the man has grabbed toilet supply lines by mistake. He quietly points out the error and retrieves the correct lines.
Tucked away behind the counter in boxes and drawers, Moses stocks the small odds and ends that many big-box home-improvement stores do not. And he helps people understand what they need and how to use it.
Loyal customers like to say Melrose Hardware has whatever they need.
But Moses can cram only so much stock into a 2,200-square-foot store.
"If I don't have it, I try to tell them where they can get it," he says.
A young man asks whether Melrose Hardware carries "those butterfly things that spring open in the wall." Moses nods and helps the man find toggle bolts.
Beaver says he once witnessed a customer asking Moses to cut a piece of glass. First, Moses inquired about the width.
"The guy held two fingers apart," Beaver recalls, laughing.
Moses seems remarkably patient with hardware-challenged shoppers.
But when a man walks in with Dickies-brand coveralls purchased last winter and wants to swap the never-worn work wear for a better fit after all those months, Moses briefly flares. But only briefly. After a quick back-and-forth discussion, the exchange proceeds. Both men seem content with the outcome.
A nattily attired, elderly woman grips a cane in one hand and an empty storm window frame in the other. Moses tells her he'll cut and install new glass by the afternoon -- work he performs two doors up in what is now storage space. He hangs a sign in the store window directing people up the sidewalk.
Typically, customer traffic ebbs and flows.
"Sometimes I'm busy. Sometimes I'm just standing around waiting," he says.
But when he's busy, he's busy. Customers wait their turn. Few leave.
"They're patient because they're all neighborhood people," Moses says. "We're a family store."
A patron tells Moses, “You’re a blessing to have here.”