Owners, Middleburgh Hardware, Middleburgh, Schoharie County
The only thing they can’t get rid of is what the mud left behind.
“Dust, dust, dust. A fine, fine dust,” said Rich Vilegi.
The three feet of black sludge that bubbled through the floorboards of their Main Street hardware store got into places you’d never expect. Inside shrink-wrapped packages of hardware. Lining each and every thread on a screw.
And it smelled. Nobody ever tells you about the smell.
“It was like a mixture of sewage, and dirt, and a few rotten things,” said Heather Vilegi.
The color was all wrong. Blacker than mud.
“Fuel oil. Propane. All mixed together,” said Rich. “Black, black dirt and mud. Who knows what it was.”
Mud was the first thing they saw when they walked into their store on the Sunday morning of what was supposed to be a booming Labor Day weekend. Half their stock was destroyed.
“Our first instinct was to lock the doors and move away,” said Heather.
“To see everything ruined. Thinking, are we going to stay or go? It was unbelievable,” said Rich.
But the local hardware store is a popular place after a flood. People showed up almost immediately. They began grabbing hoses. Sluicing out mud. Buying tools and supplies on the honor system, since the cash register was still broken.
So the Vilegis began to rebuild. They ripped up the floor and tossed load after load of ruined hardware. The store re-opened within a week, to the applause of their customers.
But the mud doesn’t give up easy.
“You sweep the floors, you still find dust,” says Rich.
Text by Julia Reischel. Photo of (clockwise from top left) Rich, Juliana, Ian and Heather Vilegi in their store by Christopher Auger-Dominguez.