WILLOW CREEK — Pendelton’s Hardware & Feed, a Main Street institution for four decades, closed its doors for good on September 1.
Everett Pendelton, 67, cited declining sales and his own advancing age as reasons for the closure. The hardware store had been a fixture on Main Street since 1921, selling everything from nails and lumber to livestock feed and garden seed.
“I started working here when I was fourteen,” Pendelton said, sweeping the floor one last time. “My uncle opened the place in 1921. I took it over in 1949. I’ve spent most of my life behind that counter.”
The closure leaves a gap on Main Street that will not be filled for nearly 60 years. The building will stand vacant, its front window gradually growing opaque with grime, until it reopens as Northwoods Outfitters in 2018.
“I remember when this street had five retail businesses,” said Ezra Homan, who stopped into the store on its final day to shake Pendelton’s hand. “Now it has two. That’s not progress.”
The Gazette ran a retrospective on the Pendelton family’s role in the community, noting that the store had extended credit to dozens of families during the Depression. “Everett’s ledgers were never audited,” the article noted. “But they were kept in his head, and he never called in a debt when a family was struggling.”
Pendelton’s son Arthur, then 12 years old, watched his father lock the door for the last time. He would go on to become Willow Creek’s First Selectman, and he would carry into that office his father’s conviction that a town’s businesses are its backbone — and that losing one is a wound that does not always heal.