SYLMAR : Hardware Store Still a Bastion for Jittery City

The wooden bin of peanuts is right where it always was in Cooper’s Hardware Store, beside the sign asking patrons to please throw the shells on the floor.

The peanuts were there at 7 a.m. last Monday too--a sign that even after the earthquake, some institutions remained. Customers who streamed into the darkened store on Foothill Boulevard in search of emergency supplies nibbled them as they shopped, tossed the shells, then paid what they could. Many just promised to pay some time later.

“We were just writing up tickets, because we didn’t have any generators yet,” said David Cooper, the 26-year-old grandson of store founders Eileen and Ray Cooper. “We just handed out flashlights, and they would hand them back when they found what they needed.”

In a community that all but burst at the seams in the 1980s condominium craze, this 45-year-old hardware store is an institution. And like the rest of Sylmar, it is shaken but not fallen.

Harried building inspectors still have not sorted out the damage statistics by geographical areas, so it is impossible to say how badly Sylmar was hit, said Los Angeles’ principal inspector, David Keim.

Residents just use the 1971 quake as a benchmark. Damage wasn’t as widespread, but sporadic pockets look like they did 23 years ago. Entire blocks of rural homes and horse barns seem almost unharmed. On still other blocks, buildings and houses buckled. An entire seven-building complex has been fenced off, festooned with red “unsafe” tags.

Callous observers might call Sylmar a two-time loser. But it is bouncing back, longtime residents say.

“I’m getting a lot of calls, a lot of people that want to volunteer,” said Frank Jacobs, president of the Sylmar Chamber of Commerce, and another two-time survivor. “Neighbors are talking to neighbors, people come by and wave.”

After the 1971 quake, Sylmar felt stranded, Jacobs said. The community had no water for a month. Now, there not only is water but volunteers who bring it to your car at the Sylmar High School disaster center, he said.

David Cooper says the quake shook loose some of the traits Sylmar boasted in its more rural days, when the store’s staple was horse feed. “It’s surprising how honest everyone was,” he said. “They just came back and paid,” added his mother, Sue Cooper.

A week later, they are still coming in, and Cooper’s is still scrambling to find what they want. No one has had time to sort the bolts that crashed across the aisles, or clean up the splattered paint and varnish. But the peanuts--they’re still in the same place.