An Unlikely Hardware Harvest

Often, customers plopping a socket wrench or a bag of grout on the counter will confess to Hazel Webb, co-proprietor of Balk’s Hardware, that they simply can’t stand grapefruit. To which Webb may respond with a perfectly persuasive axiom. “There is a reason why a hardware store sells grapefruit. And that’s because it’s the best in the world.”

It was in 1977, four decades after he launched Balk’s Hardware in South Pasadena, that Webb’s father, the late Les Balk, decided to sell his good friend J. Hal Seley’s Marsh Ruby Red grapefruits alongside weed whackers and WD-40. When Balk voiced his determination, Jim Seley, Hal’s son, was less incredulous than he might otherwise have been. “Les,” he says, “could sell anything.”

Grown in the Borrego Valley, their sour taste so minimized as to raise suspicions of an orange masquerading in yellow skin, Seley’s grapefruits were never a hard sell. The store typically sells out a 45- box shipment of the fruit, in season November to May, in a week (79 cents each, or $27 a box). For her part, Hazel Webb doesn’t see how this perfect hardware store grapefruit has room for improvement. “You can hardly increase the quality when you’ve got 95 to 98 percent sweetness.”

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Balk’s Hardware, (626) 799-7146