Shoutout to the old appliance shop on 5th Street that still has a working parts bin from the 70s

I was down in Raleigh last weekend picking up a compressor for a customer's walk-in cooler and stopped by this little shop I hadn't visited in like 5 years. The guy running it is probably 70 now, same guy who taught me how to rewind a motor when I was starting out. He's got this metal filing cabinet full of original manufacturer parts from the 70s and 80s, all labeled by hand with a grease pencil. I needed a specific relay for a 1985 GE dryer and he just walked right to the drawer and pulled it out, no computer search or anything. Made me realize how much I rely on my phone to look up part numbers these days instead of just knowing where stuff lives. Has anyone else run into these old timer shops that still have inventory from back when appliances were built to last?

2 comments

2 Comments

quinn_nguyen1mo ago

@noahchen that's the thing, yeah. I spent my first few years in this trade just staring at parts catalogs and memorizing which drawer held what. Now I watch guys type every number into Google before they even look up. That old guy probably didn't even charge me full price for the relay either, just waved me off when I tried to pay. Next time you need something obscure, try hitting up a old timer shop first. They might have it sitting in a cabinet with a hand written label, and you'll get a story with your part.

noahchen1mo ago

Isn't it funny how we traded that kind of memory for a search bar? Feels like we lost something real just to save a few seconds.