New owner keeps longtime mom-and-pop hardware open, locally owned and downtown
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- Lindsay Highsmith, nicknamed C, bought the longtime Handyman Hardware.
- The store will be renamed C’s Keys and Things and stay locally family owned.
- Highsmith plans to keep the store’s old-timey, personal customer experience.
For the last 15 years, anybody who walked into Handyman Hardware with a busted faucet or a broken switch found Lindsay Highsmith behind the counter, welcoming any frustrated, grease-covered amateur with a smile and helpful question:
“Whatcha workin’ on today?”
And then he walked you straight to the solution — a new toilet flapper, a corner bracket or a single washer — while you enjoyed a bag of popcorn.
And now Highsmith, nicknamed “C,” has bought that staple of do-it-yourself jobs that opened in 1956, and he plans to keep it old-timey and family-owned in a downtown that increasingly throws obstacles at the mom-and-pop shops.
The only change, other than adding sandwiches and cold drinks and phone chargers, will be the name:
C’s Keys and Things.
“We’re going to try and keep the feel of the place,” he said. “I think people like a personal experience. If you come in Handyman, you immediately find friends. We’re going to remember you.”
“Just walked in”
A mainstay on New Bern Avenue, though in several locations, Handyman Hardware dates back 70 years to when former City Councilman Ed Walters opened it with the sales savvy and people skills he learned in his father’s Fayetteville grocery during the Depression, then later as a traveling salesman for Palmolive and Gilette.
Deana and Greg Lusk’s family took over in 1987, and for decades ran it as a place where a neighborhood handyman could easily stop in three times in one day to buy the right-size washer, then a bigger wrench, then a fresh hacksaw blade to replace what broke five minutes ago.
Willie Jones, better-known as Mr. Willie, worked there for 35 years, always dressed in Sunday finest, retiring well into his 90s.
Then Highsmith joined 15 years ago, and he didn’t apply online.
“Walked in,” he recalled. “Just walked in and needed a job. I’m a hard-worker, got ideas ...”
So many old-timers gone
Just down New Bern Avenue, Honeycutt Cleaners closed after 75 years — a victim of pandemic slowdown. Watkins Shoe Repair on Peace Street is gone. Man-Mur Barber Shop will see its Hillsborough Street building sold soon.
Highsmith had the good fortune of buying from his building’s owner, who could have taken pricier buyers.
“If you didn’t have people doing that,” he said, “Raleigh would change instantly and be unrecognizable. Nobody wanted to keep it. They were like, ‘We’ll sell everything and turn it into a club. We’ll sell everything and turn it into this.’ ”
A certified locksmith, Highsmith brings the added value of talking every day to painters soaked in paint, drywall installers coated in dust and plumbers wet to the ankles.
“I knew nothing about roofing when I got here,” he said. “I’ll bet I could put a roof on now just talking to roofers.”
The phone rings as he speculates, and he answers with a friendly “C’s Keys and Hardware.”
A pause while he listens, nodding.
“Yes,” he says after a while, “we have paint by the gallon and the quart. Hmm. I don’t think I’ve got any paint that would work on leather.”
“God is good”
Walk into what has seemingly always been Handyman and Highsmith is there with his sons, his fiance Lisa, his stepmother Thomasa and a slew of familiar faces. Highsmith boasts he recognizes at least 75% of the customers.
“You remember he made that key for my Ultima?” says a longtime customer at the cash register, bragging on Highsmith. “God is good, baby.”
A higher power, indeed, must have been at work.
“This opportunity was not my plan,” Highsmith jokes. “If it were up to me, I would be a race car driver.”