Crankshaft by Tom Batiuk and Dan Davis for April 13, 2024

How? The same way that you keep track of all the crap that you buy online, Ed.

Man his accountant must have hated to examine his records!

Yes, because “heart” is the first thing that comes to mind when one thinks about hardware stores. And of course it only applies to the small, neighborhood hardware emporiums; no way an employee of Low’s or Home Dee-Po could care about their job or their customers.

This is the same Capraesque “sentiment coaxing” Batiuk tried a couple of times with newshound Skip Bittman and the Centerville Sentinel, and it rang just as false then.

“Ick! Does your CPA have to give you CPR? Do you get heartburn when you cook the books?”

And now, the extremely expected rollercoaster ending of a week of “Old Man Buys Single Screw.”

And yet Komix Korner with its one customer (Jeff) survives another business day.

“But thanks for reminding me that I’m going out of business.I’d forgotten. By the way, buy something else or get out.”

What’s all that dirt on the wall in panal 3? Dude also has hair growing in the wrong places

Same stuff in same spot for over 40 years.

There’s a small town near me with a remarkable hardware store. It’s one of the only going concerns in town that doesn’t sell alcohol. The owner’s getting on in age and his sons don’t want the business. When he closes shop the area will suffer a great loss.

A honest hardware man!!!!

He knew it by heart! AWWWW!! It’s his love and his passion and he’s going out of business! Par for the course around here.

“So all of this is going to be going away, Mitch. And as soon as this yokel starts marking down the prices for clearance, we’re going to strip mine this place of anything we can resell later. Probably in a year, when some celebrity decides to buy the store because they have a fondness for failed businesses and they need the stock.”

A sad example of why we need to support local businesses first before turning to big box stores or worse, Amazon.

Does. Mitch. Ever. Talk?

Way back in th day small store owners could do that…..for real!

It’ll be missed.

I think he just wanted to show off his shadow art panal two

Last month I needed a thermocouple to fix my ancient furnace. After identifying the necessary part (via a few YouTube videos), I looked for one on my local big-box hardware store’s website. Fourteen bucks, and the site told me there were two in stock in my local store, and exactly which aisle and shelf it would be found on.

I’ll take that over “I know it by heart” any day.

I was going to comment that “H.E.A.R.T.” is in fact the name of his computerized inventory system, but realized constructing such an acronym would mean I had (again) put more thought and effort into this strip than Batty did.

Yes, many independent neighborhood hardware store operators, knew thier stock-AND, customers, better than any computer program.

I’m guessing that a member of the family is going to buy the store. As they have done for every other business in town.

Kind of a weird question to ask that out of the blue. Does he ask that in every store he enters?

I once met a bookstore owner like that. I was in England, looking for a specific history book, and the shop in Canterbury had several rooms with books stacked two deep on most of the shelves. I asked the man and he led me right to it.