Came back into the city for a visit yesterday morning-I've been living in Lake Mills since November but I still like to come back and do my history reporting in the capitol city that I've come to know and love and that I hope to be able to move back to in the not so distant future.

Anyhow, I decided to start my day with breakfast at Willaby's Cafe but when I entered the establishment I found it full to maximum capacity and was told that it would be about a 20 minute wait which is about average for Willaby's on a Sunday morning.

So I decided to go over across the street to Lazy Jane's and see how it looked over there only to find the same situation as at Willaby's. So I decided to just grab a copy of the Isthmus as well as of the Capitol Times and sit on the bench directly across from Willaby's in front of the Willy Street Ace hardware store. During my residency in Madison, this was always one of my favorite spots to just sit and watch the world go by. It was a beautiful morning out and the birds were singing. A female Madison police officer came by walking her beat and we had a nice conversation before she continued on. Life felt great, like it couldn't get any better than this.

That hardware store is certainly a legend of it's own, being built in 1923 and having been in continuous operation as a hardware store from then to now. I did almost all my hardware business as it was part of my Willy St. beat which I would cover by throwing my laundry in at the laundromat further up the street, browsing St. Vinnie's, hitting the Willy St. Co-op, maybe grabbing something at Willaby's and grabbing any hardware-related items that I needed at Ace. I have always enjoyed coming in this work of art of a building with it's wooden floors and pressed tin ceiling and being waited on by the friendly courteous staff with a real knowledge of what they're talking about. I have read all the historical information on display behind the counter there and am always proud to shop at this living monument to Madison's past. Does anyone else out there have any memories of this store that they'd like to share?