Remembering Los Gatos Mayor Albert B. 'Al' Smith

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 farmers, 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 got about 300 copies of a little eight-page dummy version of Redtail from a sympathetic printer who let us use his press.

Redtail actually ended up looking pretty professional. 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 whatever 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-fivers 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.

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