| Strand Hardware Store E. E. Strand Proprietor (right) & Roy Matson, Frequent Visitor December 26, 1969 |
| As we look at this picture we can see how the two seem to be talking about and focusing on that old National cash register. Note all the nuts and bolts options in the background. There were just as many on all the other walls and twice as much stuff in the back room. If you couldn't find what you needed here or at the other hardware store in town, further south on 5th Avenue, it probably didn't exist. Strand Hardware was a common gathering point for people of all kinds in Strum. If you didn't need a bolt or nut or two and were in need of conversation that need could also be met. Roy Matson, my father, frequently took advantage of the pot belly stove talks. Elvin Strand is a brother of my great aunt Ruth (Garson) Strand's husband, Genhard. And anyone that grew up in or knows Strum also knows that Genhard was the local mortician, among other things. Strand Hardware was in the family for years beginning with Elvin and Genhard's dad, H. H. Strand. In the late 1940s and 1950s when I was growing up in Strum the telephone office was two doors south of Strand Hardware with the post office in between, I believe. I clearly recall the day a Minneapolis business customer called our Millwork business on the east edge of town wanting to reach dad. The man was told that Roy wasn't there but was somewhere in town. Our local telephone operator was on the ball, intervened with the call, as you could and did even in those days, and promptly announced that she would conduct a community wide search for Mr. Matson. "Please hold". Within minutes and a few well placed local calls from the operator, whose name I shall withhold but who we all know was one or the other, Roy was found at Strand Hardware and connected to the totally astonished man from Minneapolis. That was customer service! The Strum telephone operator knew that Roy was probably at the Hardware store or a restaurant if he wasn't at the mill. |
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