This Must Be the Place

a tiny kingdom
Hidden at the end of a cul-de-sac on
the outskirts of downtown Raleigh,
North Carolina is a brick building
that boasts: Wilder’s Inc., Bolts & Nuts. The
building is short and squat, only one story
tall, and the roof lifts up to the slightest peak
as it approaches the center of the building.
A faded blue awning overhangs the front
doors, which is the only part of the building
that isn’t flat from asphalt to roof. In other
words, it’s plain and easy to miss, unless
you’re specifically looking for it.
Wilder’s was founded and built by
my great-grandfather, Thomas Hardy Wilder,
in 1954, and he chose a spot in the heart of
downtown Raleigh for its location. In the
‘70s, though, he decided to purchase a plot of
land that’s a mere 10 minute drive away from
the city center, off Capital Boulevard, and
permanently relocated Wilder’s to the address
it’s at today. My great-grandfather constructed
the building by hand, laid every brick on
its facade, and poured all of the concrete
flooring. Perhaps calling Wilder’s plain is a
disservice — like my great-grandfather, the
architecture is both utilitarian and unfussy,
and there’s some implicit beauty in its lack of
complication.
In the 40 or so years that the building
has been around, it’s remained relatively
unchanged. Inside, Wilder’s is a vast, open
warehouse, and only a counter separates
the lobby from the endless rows of shelves
containing an inexhaustible variety of nuts,
bolts, and fasteners. Our employees, almost
all of whom I’ve known since I was born, sit
at the counter and wait on customers, and it’s
fascinating to watch them work — most of
Wilder’s employees were hired by my Papaw
and have worked there for multiple decades,
and their knowledge of our inventory is
astonishing. Huge 3-inch binders, full of
laminated pages detailing the various nuts and
bolts we stock, are available for reference, but
that’s it. There are no computers, no digitized
inventory, no barcodes. To say our business is
antiquated is putting it nicely.
Most of our customers are old white
men, and they’re men I’d describe as “good
ol’ boys” — gregarious and unreserved
southerners who swing open our doors, bellow
a hello to the guys at the counter and call
loudly for my dad to come out and chat. As a
third-generation family business, Wilder’s has
many, many regulars, who love to tell stories
about my late Papaw and bemoan how our
store is one of the only true Raleigh businesses
left. They respect the photos of Republican
presidents and conservative slogans that line
the lobby’s wall — to them, it’s an intimate
experience that only small, local business
can curate, and I’m inclined to agree, despite
how much I despise being confronted with a
Trump flag whenever I walk in.
I spent the better part of my
childhood running and weaving through
the store’s shelves, my bare feet picking up
every bit of dirt and grime on the concrete
floor, and, as I grew older, helping my mother
balance ledgers and stuff yellow invoices into
envelopes. It was like a tiny kingdom that I
could lay claim to, where everyone knew me as
“Tommy’s granddaughter” or a “Wilder girl,”
and I never exhausted of playing tricks on the
guys — mostly popping out of shelves and
scaring them — exploring the back offices, or
stealing knick-knacks from the attic. When
one of the employees would make me mad,
I’d remind him that I would be his boss one
day and stamp away indignantly to tell my
mom that Durwood or Dan or Dennis had
hurt my feelings. (There’s an incredibly odd
power balance between a bratty nine-year-old
heiress to a nut and bolt company and one of
its employees.)
I knew Wilder’s would all be mine
one day if everything proceeded as normal,
an old warehouse full of nuts, bolts, and
fasteners, but I was unsure if I wanted any it.
I’m still unsure. On a practical level, neither
my sisters nor I know very much about nuts
and bolts, and running a small business you’re
dispassionate about is fruitless. Perhaps more
critically, the store is fundamentally entangled
in my family’s paternal history. My Papaw, who
died in 2006 at the age of 66, was spiteful and
mean and difficult. I remember asking him
if I could have one of the pretty gold pocket
watches that he collected, and he swung one
in front of my face, replying, “You can have
this when I’m dead.” (He wasn’t lying: He
willed his stamps, pocket watches, and other
dated trinkets to me and my sisters.)
He openly weaponized Wilder’s, and
told my father, who began working at the
store as soon as he returned from military
service at 22 years old, that he would keep
him as poor as he could for as long as he
could. That all changed, of course, when he
died and my father inherited Wilder’s, but in
turn, he weaponized the store as righteously
as his own father had. Money, capital, wealth
— they’re deeply horrible things that we
cannot live without, that can be abused and
hoarded and used for insurmountable harm
that outweighs any good they might procure.
Being financially dependent on a person, on
a business, weathers the soul. On one hand,
Wilder’s is the reason I’m able to go to
college; on the other, it’s the reason I’m filled
with unspeakable anxiety whenever I think
about money or my family’s relationship to
our patriarch. If not for Wilder’s, I’d probably
be living near the poverty level; if not for
Wilder’s, I wouldn’t have to interact with the
person who has inflicted the worst emotional
pain onto me that I’ve ever endured.
Perhaps I’m convinced that selling
Wilder’s would release me from the lasting
hurt that its owners have given me, that I
could get rid of the building and my pain in
one fell swoop. I don’t have to decide right now
— that day feels centuries away, an exercise
in daydreaming in which I contain all of the
power that’s always been right under my nose
but far from my reach — but, for better or
worse, it will be mine someday, the bad parts
and the good parts alike, and I suppose that’s
pretty special. How many other people get to
say that, one day, they will have their own tiny
kingdom full of nuts and bolts?
RIGHT: A METAL STRUCTURE AT THE WHITNEY MUSEUM OF ART. SEPTEMBER 2018.