Al Smith, President of Orchard Supply Hardware, Mayor of Los Gatos, etc.

(originally posted by edhawk on January 27, 2013)

Orchard Supply Hardware has always been my favorite store, especially the original one on San Carlos Street in San Jose. We simply call it Orchard, “Oh yeah, I bought that bag of manure and this framer’s hammer at Orchard.” It opened in 1931 as a farmer’s cooperative hardware and supply depot.

In those days it was run by a committee of farmer’s, but as time went by, members of the committee retired, died or got tired of the hardware business. A Los Gatos local, Al Smith, ended up being the single, last member of the committee and he was re-labeled, he became the president of Orchard Supply Hardware.

Somewhere around 1974 or maybe 75, I was putting together a fine art, coffee table magazine. I called it Redtail and it really almost happened, but starting publications is always risky and it never really got off the ground. Several other people were involved and we were able to get about 300 copies of a little eight page dummy version of Redtail, sympathetic printer who let us use his press. It actually ended up looking pretty professional, even though it was only eight pages. We also developed rate cards, promotional sheets, billing notices and all the other ancillary materials a publication would have. The entire bunch of us had been years in the publishing and printing businesses, though I don’t think any of us were over 25 years of age. At the time, I was working at the Los Gatos Times-Observer (we called it the “TO”) as production manager. For health reasons, I had to leave the TO so I decided to dedicate a few months to our Redtail magazine, to see if we could really make it work.

I put the sample issues, the rate cards and what ever else into a spiffy briefcase and, as they say, I “hit the bricks.” I started cold calling on potential advertisers. I hated doing that, but the others were all nine to five-ers and were stuck at their jobs during business hours. At this stage, we weren’t looking for real ad sales in a non-existent magazine, but support from area businesses who honestly would consider advertising should we ever really come to be. Though we were confident, graphic arts professionals, obviously we were neophyte businessmen.

The one establishment I was looking forward to calling on was Orchard Supply. Usually when I went to a company, big or small, I would nearly always get shunted to some minorling in the marketing department. No one likes to deal with blind call salesmen. I know I didn’t. When I entered Orchard’s corporate offices out near Spartan Stadium on San Jose’s Alma Avenue, I was in a huge foyer with only one cute girl in there, sitting behind a very large and imposing counter. She said “Hi,” with a big smile, took my flier about Redtail and started walking towards a door behind the counter, asking me to please wait a minute. She came back into the foyer and told me that Mr. Smith (Orchard’s president from Los Gatos) would see me in a few minutes. I almost threw up. I was going be talking to the president of my favorite retail establishment? I just wasn’t ready for that. This is the sort of meeting you prepare for, where you primp and prime yourself before hand.

There was a buzz from behind the counter and then a muffled male voice said a few unintelligible words. The cute girl stood and asked me to follow her through the door behind the counter. Beyond the door was a large common area with no furniture but it had several doors in close walls and and an array of several hallways splayed out into various directions of this faceless warehouse on the outside. I realized I was starting to hyperventilate. She led me to one of the doors with a plaque, reading “Al Smith.” She opened it and I entered a large office with a couple of mounted animal heads, a couch and a coffee table at my back but a huge desk with several large leather chairs on my side of the very clean desktop. She told me to have a seat, and as she turned, a door behind the desk opened and Mr. Smith stepped in, drying his hands. He looked me up down, as he sat behind the desk, he said “lots of hair, eh?” . . .

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