By Eric Hussey at Brownstone dot org.

A local headline brought a tear to my eye recently. The warehouse that had been the home of Tormino's Sash and Glass for decades - a couple of generations - burned in a big fire. Destroyed.

The warehouse was no longer in use, had a chainlink fence around it to keep intruders out, and still, the thought is that some variety of homeless people probably are responsible for the fire. The building was scheduled to be demolished, so the major issue with the fire was keeping other adjacent structures safe. But, still, it was Tormino's, for goodness' sake. And now it's gone. Visibly gone; gone for real. The old Tormino's is really, really gone.

I have my own set of fix-it skills. However, I work inside all day with people who come to my office, so I don't end up at the hardware store a lot. Well…what guy can stay away from a good hardware store for more than a couple of weeks - am I right?

But that's the point of this: You won't find an episode of This Old House with me figuring out how to fix things. I still love hardware stores.

The absolute nadir of my tool experience was when the local elementary school reported that our middle daughter seemed to have some sort of developmental issue because she couldn't tell some teacher the name of the tool in the drawing the teacher showed her - a hammer. The real problem is that I hadn't had to find a hammer and pound something together in the first 5 years of her life. Maybe that's an indicator that I was spending too much time in my office?

In those early family years, if I needed to fix something and didn't have the parts, I usually went to the local Ace Hardware. It was old Ace, not new Ace. I would walk in, looking every bit the college-educated-but-clueless, tool-bereft young homeowner who was now expected to just know how to fix things. The "nice" woman at the desk right next to the door would take one look at me and ask, "Why are you here?" It was probably closer to "Whaddya need?" But the tenor and voicing of the words clearly asked why I thought I had a right to be there.

I would show her the part that needed replacing, and she would just say, "Go talk to Bob. He's the one in the overalls." Bob was tall and remarkably thin, and wore some Mr. Greenjeans (but blue-) jean overalls. I would give him the part. He would assess it in his fingers, then walk over to what had to be 300 small, cryptically-marked drawers on the top shelf. He'd pull open one drawer, reach in without looking, pull out a part, and say, "That should do it." And, it always did it.

Those owners sold to a new generation. My last purchase from that Ace was a grill at a store-closing closeout price. I liked the price, but it was like watching a friend move away to a new town.

Next up, of course, were the big-box stores; stores 40 times the size of the old Ace with good, hard workers who know their area of the store. But none of them wear coveralls. A few of them assess with their fingers. And even fewer silently lead you somewhere, reach for one thing, give it to you while saying "This should do it," and then walk off - the walkoff not of arrogance or disdain, but the walkoff of absolute time-tested confidence. Knowledge. Practical knowledge.

Currently, if we can't get it at the new Ace, the big-box store is next, or we go to Amazon, look at a picture, and hope for the best.

Which brings me back to the loss of Tormino's Sash and Glass. It was started by lifetime local resident John Tormino in 1950 with a $200 loan and a wood-frame storm door he hammered together on the sidewalk outside his shop. In two years, he was in a real building with a reputation for having anything different and hard to find in the windows and doors.

My personal experience with Tormino's begins with a broken handle for a slider door. The old Ace was gone, and it was obvious I needed to replace the slider handle - no quick fix. I took the broken handle to the big box and got the clueless response of someone ...