An annoying story/ details from the old days

Mid 1970s, in my hot rodding, drag racing days, I got to go with my mentor for everything automotive and a mechanical engineer to some of his suppliers and machine shops.
One place, which he referred to as Peanut's, was a big industrial size brick building full of metal working machinery. IIRC, Peanut, a little elderly workhorse of a man, was the owner and sole employee. My car guy said there was probably a million dollars worth of machinery in that building. I'm guessing it was probably there to service the furniture industry which was huge in my area. Any time we needed any type of special grade 8 fasteners, he always had bins full of what we needed.
Then there was Lentz Machine Shop where maybe all the local drag racers including Don Carlton and the oval track racers took there engines and parts for machining. My car guy would walk in for some machine work and knowing how particular he was about his parts, they would just let him use their machinery and do it himself. We saw some really trick stuff in that building.
We also had a little mom & pop hardware store just down the street from his garage. It looked like an antique store even then. And they had prices like from years earlier. For any fasteners or such less than grade 8, I could get a bag full and never spend more than a dollar. At checkout, they seemed to just make up a price.

Sadly, they are long gone now.