I carried a bit of Brown’s Hardware – an independent hardware store that operated in Falls Church, Virginia, from 1883 to 2025, literally 142 years – aboard Terror, the Vespa I rode in two Scooter Cannonballs.

The store closed in March 2025, forced out by skyrocketing property values, inflation, and declining sales you can trace to Amazon and big box retailers¹ and others.

For 142 years, Brown’s was a linchpin in Falls Church, a place where you could find just about anything you needed for your house, your car, or even your 2016 300cc Vespa.

It was so different from the big home improvement retailers, warehouses the size of the Vehicle Assembly Building. You recognized the staff because you’d talked with them the week before, or a month ago, or even longer.

They were always there, ready to help, and they could quickly find exactly what you needed.

(Photo: Falls Church Pulse)

They helped me when I was preparing Terror for the 2023 Cannonball. I needed to fabricate a dashboard device on the Vespa to hold a laminated sheet of daily checkpoints, a GPS mount, and a smartphone holder.

Vespas are single-cylinder scooters with short wheelbases that can vibrate like crazy. I got handfuls of parts from Brown’s…

• Short sturdy metal bars
• U-clamps
• Eyebolts
• Hook & eyebolt turnbuckles
• Pipe tube strap clamps

…and fashioned a device that connected to the Vespa’s windscreen mounts, rear-view mirrors, and handgrips². It held everything I needed, did not vibrate too much and didn’t look too bad. I was glad I had it in the Cannonball.

Brown’s closed three months before the 2025 Cannonball. The only way I could say good-bye was to write a one-page note explaining the mount fabrication and thanking the staff for their help.

I enclosed a few photos from the 2023 Cannonball, pictures of Terror on state highways in New Mexico and Oklahoma, evidence of their help getting me across the middle of nowhere. I gave everything to John Taylor, the owner, and said my thanks.

There’s an Ace Hardware three or four miles away and I’ve gone there a few times. It’s a good store, but Brown’s is still irreplaceable.

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1 – Think of Home Depot and Lowe’s and such.

2 – There are commercially made set-ups available but I wanted to build my own.