[ossiblue]

The hardware store demise.

It goes hand-in-hand with the demise of true DIY customers. Let's face it, most of us on this board are dinosaurs who still understand and appreciate how things work and the quality (or lack of) in workmanship. Most things we still strive to fix are now simply replaced. Newer items not only don't have the quality to be repaired, they don't offer parts for the repair. The old hardware stores that we remember serviced customers and their products that are no longer "mainstream." They could not compete.