Dan McKenzie Nails Down 50 Years in Hardware Business

Dan McKenzie can remember when the tattered piece of tile that says “Berger’s Clothing” marked the entrance to a thriving downtown men’s shop instead of to a plot of grass.

From the vantage of Hess Hardware, across Main Street from where Berger’s burned years ago, McKenzie has seen the downtown flourish, then decline, and finally be reborn.

Today, in fact, is McKenzie’s 50th year in the beige storefront at 377 Main St. That’s a lot of time to watch a community change. And a long, long time in the hardware business.

But the business is what McKenzie, 80 years old in March, is all about. Time may have changed the face of downtown. It may have changed the demographics of the place, or where folks go to shop. But when it comes to nuts and bolts, McKenzie is still the guy to see.

McKenzie came to Ventura in 1933, at the behest of his uncle, who owned a successful contracting business here. Those were the Depression years, and when his uncle offered him a job and a one-way ticket from Quincy, Ill., McKenzie didn’t have to put much thought behind the move.

“Coming from a farm in Illinois, things were tough. Real tough,” he recalls. “Coming out to California was a whole new world for me. It was like coming to heaven.”

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Like young men then and now, however, McKenzie didn’t know quite what to do with himself. He worked for his uncle and briefly flirted with becoming a doctor. But a year of classes at Ventura Junior College cured that notion, he says, laughing. He decided to move back to the Midwest.

“And that was the coldest winter in Quincy for 25 years,” he says. He wrote his uncle and begged to return. His uncle agreed, and McKenzie moved back to Ventura in the spring. He picked up a job with Hickey Hardware, then the largest hardware store in the county. He met Imogene Kyle--the prettiest girl in Oxnard, he says.

Things were going well, he remembers, and he didn’t think he’d ever leave his chosen home again. But it was 1941, and his draft number was 19.

He was among the first boys shipped out of Ventura County to fight in World War II--but not before he married Imogene. While his young wife waited at home, McKenzie fought in the 13th Armored Division, field artillery.

In 1945, he returned to California and was at Lompoc, awaiting redeployment to the Pacific theater, when the war ended.

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When he returned to Ventura, Walter Hess gave him a job at his new hardware store. Everyone knew everyone back then, after all, and Hess knew McKenzie had hardware experience. His first day was Jan. 19, 1946. “I was just looking for something to do, and I guess I just never left,” he says with a smile.

The years unraveled as they do in small towns. McKenzie and his wife never had children, and so they put their all into their work: McKenzie at the Hess shop, and Imogene at a local insurance company.

“The Hesses became like family to us,” he recalls. Perhaps that is why he stayed on when Walter Hess died in 1953, and eventually bought the shop in 1957 from Hess’s wife. Perhaps that’s why he never changed the name to McKenzie Hardware.

Business was already slowing down when the Buenaventura Mall was built in 1962, he says. Then the Home Depots and Price Clubs came onto the scene.

How does one compete these days? “You don’t,” says McKenzie. He knows he’s one of the last of his breed. So do his customers--those who are still around, anyway.

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Some would say it’s time for mom-and-pop shops like McKenzie’s to step aside. But to compare an old neighborhood hardware store like Hess to a Home Depot is to miss the point.

Here, you can buy Farberware percolator knobs. Glass ones, for your old coffee percolator. You can pick up a red Swiss Army knife, iron skillets and cake testers. You can buy wooden mousetraps, and picture hangers. You can buy a stainless-steel taco rack. And the Amazing Wonder Cup (with the New Metric Scale!).

If you can’t find the widget you’re looking for, McKenzie will know where you can, and provide you with directions. You might stay for a cup of coffee and a chat, as you can always find locals doing in the course of the afternoon.

“He can’t retire,” says Ed Lee, owner of Lindsay Insurance Agency on California Street and a Hess customer for more than 20 years. “Where will I come to eat lunch?”