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The end of the 1970s had not been particularly kind to Rusty Hammer Sr.

If you sat with him at the counter at Grounds for Divorce or caught him leaning against a pallet of fertilizer outside Rusty Hammer Hardware, he probably wouldn’t have described it as hardship. Men of his generation rarely did. They had grown up listening to stories about the Depression from people who had actually lived through it. Compared to standing in bread lines, most modern inconveniences barely qualified as suffering.

Still, the decade had worked him over.

Inflation had gotten so high that nobody seemed entirely sure what a dollar was worth anymore. Prices changed constantly. Freight costs climbed. Inventory cost more every month. Customers walked through the hardware store studying price tags the way ranchers studied rain clouds, hoping something might improve before they had to make a decision.

Home improvement projects were easy to postpone when every trip to the grocery store felt like a financial ambush.

Then came the cordless-tool disaster.

Skil had introduced a new line of battery-powered tools aimed at homeowners instead of professionals. According to the advertisements, extension cords were practically a relic of the horse-and-buggy era. The future had arrived, and apparently it ran on rechargeable batteries.

Rusty Sr. believed every word.

He borrowed money from Bluebonnet Loan & Trust, ordered inventory, built displays, bought advertising in the Stockton Telegram-Dispatch, and committed himself with the enthusiasm of a man who thought he had spotted tomorrow before everybody else.

Unfortunately, tomorrow never showed up.

Fort Stockton in 1979 wasn’t interested in being unplugged.

The townspeople continued buying drills with cords attached to them. They bought circular saws with cords. Sanders with cords. Hedge trimmers with cords. If a cord stretched across the garage floor and represented a mild safety hazard, that only reassured people that they were dealing with proven technology.

Eventually he moved the inventory, but only after discounting enough of it to make the experience feel like financing someone else’s education.

The whole affair left a scar.

The funny thing was that the unlikely bright spot arrived from his oldest son.

At the time Rusty Jr. was attending classes at Pecos County Community College, working part-time at the store, and spending an increasing amount of time chasing a pretty young woman named Debra Lynn.

One afternoon he convinced his father to place a small display of Rubik’s Cubes next to the cash register.

“They’re everywhere on campus,” he said. “People can’t quit fooling with them.”

Rusty Sr. wasn’t impressed.

The thing looked like somebody had taken a perfectly good puzzle and made it angry.

Still, the display didn’t cost much, so he agreed.

To everyone’s surprise, they sold.

Not exactly by the truckload. Fort Stockton wasn’t suddenly transformed into a hotbed of geometric problem-solving. But they sold steadily enough that a second order became necessary. Then a third.

One evening after supper, Rusty Sr. pushed his chair back from the table and shook his head.

“There may be hope for that boy yet.”

His wife smiled.

“What brought that on?”

“He sold out another shipment of those damn cubes.”

She laughed.

Rusty stabbed a piece of pie with his fork.

“Fort Stockton doesn’t mind frustrating itself with a block of colored squares,” he said, “but they sure as hell don’t want to skip plugging in a tool.”

That sounded about right.

Rusty Sr. had been raised during the Depression, and his views on parenting reflected it. He believed a father’s primary responsibilities were making sure his children were fed, clothed, sheltered, and delivered to church every Sunday so somebody could teach them proper manners and a healthy fear of God.

Most of his fatherly advice could fit comfortably on a cocktail napkin.

“Don’t drive home if you’ve had more than three beers.”

And:

“Whatever you do, don’t knock up that girl you’ve been bringing around.”

Neither topic had received extensive coverage at Almost United Methodist Church.

Unfortunately, only one of those lessons stuck.

A few years later Rusty Jr. arrived with news involving Debra Lynn and an impending baby.

His father stared at him.

“I told you not to knock that girl up.”

“I remember.”

“Then what happened?”

Rusty Jr. shrugged.

“I’d had more than three beers and pulled over to the side of the road.”

His father groaned.

“But I needed something to do.”

There was a wedding shortly thereafter. Trey Hammer arrived seven months later, arriving with enough enthusiasm to make everyone stop counting months and start counting fingers and toes instead.

By then the political winds were shifting as well.

Rusty Sr. had always been a Democrat. Not because he spent much time studying political philosophy, but because everybody he knew had been Democrats for generations. In West Texas, party affiliation was often inherited alongside eye color and stubbornness.

He voted for Jimmy Carter.

He distrusted Gerald Ford for pardoning Nixon and would probably have voted against him regardless.

By 1980, however, he was disappointed.

Inflation was still raging. Americans were being held hostage in Iran. Everything felt stuck.

When Ted Kennedy entered the race, Rusty thought maybe that was the answer.

Then Kennedy lost.

“If he’d been driving a Volkswagen instead of an Oldsmobile, he’d probably be president right now,” Rusty observed at the Lucky Lady one afternoon.

The men who understood the Chappaquiddick reference laughed.

The ones who didn’t kept twisting Rubik’s Cubes and pretending they understood politics.

Ronald Reagan presented a problem.

He was a Republican.

He’d been a movie actor.

And he was from California.

Any one of those things should have disqualified a man from public office.

Yet when Rusty stepped into the voting booth at the National Guard Armory and pulled the curtain closed behind him, he found himself thinking about Reagan’s optimism.

The country seemed exhausted.

Reagan didn’t.

A few moments later Rusty committed what he regarded as a private act of political infidelity.

He voted Republican.

Then he carried that secret to his grave.

Not even his wife ever knew.

As 1980 drew to a close, life began improving.

The hardware store recovered.

The cordless-tool debacle faded into memory.

His oldest son seemed to be developing occasional flashes of common sense.

For the first time in years, Rusty felt optimistic.

Then Reagan won the election.

The very next day Rusty drove to Cactus CHEV-Olds.

His wife’s 1972 Impala wasn’t worn out. It simply felt tired. A trip to Palo Duro Canyon the previous summer had involved enough mechanical drama to plant doubts in his mind.

Now he figured it might be time.

“I don’t know if it’s Morning in America,” he told salesman Buck Belton, “but it’s Morning in Fort Stockton, and that’s good enough for me.”

Buck grinned.

The two men wandered the lot together.

They’d done business for years. Buck understood that selling Rusty a car wasn’t really selling at all. It was more like escorting him around until he decided what he wanted.

Then they walked past it.

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A Camel Metallic 1980 Oldsmobile Delta 88 Holiday Coupe.

Rusty stopped cold.

Not quite a religious experience.

Close enough to make a preacher nervous.

“This is the one.”

Buck didn’t argue.

The Holiday Coupe was Oldsmobile’s attempt to inject a little excitement into the practical Delta 88 lineup.

It wore Camel Metallic paint with a matching Landau roof. Wire-look wheel covers sparkled beneath the West Texas sun. Holiday 88 badges decorated the fenders. Twin sport mirrors and tasteful body moldings completed the look.

The car wasn’t flashy.

It was successful.

That was different.

Flashy cars announced themselves.

Successful cars simply assumed you’d notice.

Inside were Camel cloth bucket seats separated by a center console and T-bar shifter. A sport steering wheel sat in front of the driver. Air conditioning, cruise control, and a Delco AM/FM radio completed the package.

To Rusty, the interior felt like a country club that happened to have wheels.

The bucket seats alone made him feel ten years younger.

Maybe fifteen.

“You can be a family man without surrendering your soul to practicality,” Buck said.

That was exactly what Rusty needed to hear.

He looked toward the rear seat.

“The kids can crawl back there.”

Buck nodded.

“They’re flexible.”

“I had to do it.”

“Built character.”

“Damn right.”

The 307-cubic-inch V8 wasn’t exactly a race engine. With its four-barrel carburetor producing 148 horsepower and 250 pound-feet of torque, it wasn’t going to terrorize Mustangs at stoplights.

But it wasn’t supposed to.

Its purpose was transporting respectable people to respectable destinations while making them feel slightly better about themselves.

The two-tone styling was just subtle enough.

Folks wouldn’t accuse him of showing off.

At the same time, nobody would mistake it for an Impala.

That was important.

“It almost doesn’t look two-tone,” Buck observed.

“Exactly.”

There was a strange kind of genius in West Texas consumerism.

People wanted nice things.

They simply preferred that their neighbors not notice too quickly.

The negotiation lasted less than twenty minutes.

Rusty announced he wouldn’t pay more than seven thousand dollars.

Buck offered $6,922 plus tax.

Neither man wasted time pretending they were in a hostage situation.

Buck skipped the extended warranty.

Ignored the Scotchgard pitch.

Then quietly made up the profit by lowballing the trade-in value of the Impala.

Both men walked away satisfied.

Which is usually how you know a car deal was fair.

Rusty’s wife loved the Oldsmobile.

She also felt slightly guilty driving it.

For several months they parked near the back of the church lot because neither one wanted to appear fancy.

The funny thing was that the Oldsmobile represented something larger.

It symbolized survival.

The store was healthy again.

The economy appeared to be improving.

His son was becoming a man.

America seemed to be finding its footing.

The Delta 88 wasn’t merely transportation.

It was proof that a person could endure a rough patch and come out the other side.  Maybe even better than before.

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Of course, life rarely allows anybody to enjoy certainty for long.

In March of 1981, Reagan was shot.

Two months later, the Pope was shot.

Both survived.

Rusty wasn’t sure what that meant, but it felt significant.

Then Rusty Jr. and Debra Lynn arrived with their news.

Pregnant.

That evening his wife cried quietly in bed while Rusty stared at the ceiling.

“I told him not to knock that girl up.”

She cried harder.

Yet later that year, when little Rusty Hammer III arrived, both grandparents stood in the hospital nursery crying like people who had never heard of previous conversations.

Grandchildren have a remarkable ability to erase principles.

By Christmas the world looked different.

The Oldsmobile had accumulated six thousand miles.

The hardware store was humming.

Trey slept peacefully in his crib.

Rusty Sr. helped decorate the Christmas tree, something he hadn’t taken time to do in years.

While wrapping presents he found himself feeling grateful in a way that couldn’t be measured on a balance sheet.

He had his family.

He had his business.

He had his health.

He even found himself wondering whether Republicans might deserve another chance.

That thought alone would’ve shocked most people who knew him.

Late Christmas Eve he tucked a brand-new Rubik’s Cube into little Trey’s stocking and stepped back to admire his work.

The tree lights glowed softly.

Christmas music drifted through the house.

The Oldsmobile sat outside in the driveway catching reflections from the colored bulbs in the front window.

Rusty smiled.

“Betcha he’ll figure this damn thing out before he even starts school.”

Maybe he would.

Maybe he wouldn’t.

Either way, Rusty Hammer Sr. had finally learned something that most people spend half a lifetime discovering.

The corner you turn in life rarely looks dramatic while you’re making it.

There’s no parade.

No brass band.

No billboard announcing better days ahead.

Usually it’s just a series of small victories stacked quietly on top of one another.

A bad investment finally paid off.

A son finally grew up.

A grandson arrived.

A new car sat in the driveway.

And somewhere between disappointment and hope, between inflation and Christmas lights, between cordless tools and Rubik’s Cubes, a hardware store owner in Fort Stockton realized things were going to be all right after all.

At least for a while. 

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