Hardware Store Fascination
by Edgar A. Guest

Whenever I go to a hardware store,
I wander the counters around,
And gaze at knobs for the kitchen door
In a manner that's most profound.

I look at the glistening pots and pans
And the gadgets for shelf and wall,
The hammers and planes and electric fans
And I wish I could buy them all.

While mother is getting a packet of tacks
I stroll down the crowded aisles.
I linger to fondle a woodman's ax,
And the chisels and drills and files.

And I fancy that deep in the heart of me
The boy that I was survives,
For, old though I am, still longingly
I look at the pocket knives.

There is something about a hardware store
Which, strangely, I can't resist,
And I think it's the joys I have hungered for
Which somehow my life has missed.

Though under the chill of the years, I'd say
That many a passion cools,
A man will keep to his dying day
A deep-rooted love of tools.

Eddie Guest wrote and presented the above poem as the key speaker at a hardware convention in Detroit.