By Donna Beth Weilenman
Staff Reporter

Some time tonight, bright spotlights will pierce the North Bay darkness. But they won’t signal a retro-style movie premiere.

Instead, Gene Pedrotti, owner of Ace Hardware, will be marking a pair of sites where his business has been located in the 90 years since it was established.

On Tuesday, a day before the commemoration, Pedrotti, the “third generation operator” of the family business, related the story of how his store became a staple of the Southampton — and Benicia — business community.

The Pedrotti family moved from Switzerland to Bolinas in the early 1900s and began a family dairy with a herd of 90 cattle, Gene Pedrotti said. One family member, who had been milking the dairy cows, decided to open a small general store: Cassini & Pedrotti, in Duncan Mills. But the store closed when Ralph joined the Navy to serve in World War I.

After the war, he moved to Soscal in southern Napa County, where another family member, James, had established Pedrotti Ranch, an 895-acre dairy. There Ralph met Domitilla (Ida) Vaio and her two children, Rosemary and Americo, who was nicknamed Al.

Ralph and Domitilla married and moved to Crockett, where one retired merchant, James Firpo, proposed opening a hardware store. Shortly afterward, Firpo & Pedrotti Hardware was open. It was June 1922.

“The storefront was simple and humble,” Gene Pedrotti said. “It was barely 500 square feet.” The store originally was at 726 Second Ave., where Ghioldi Jewelers sits today.

“With moving ladders and shelves that soared to the 15-foot ceiling, Firpo & Pedrotti sold the latest inventions,” Gene Pedrotti said. Among the merchandise were Dover irons, popular because they were electric and could be plugged in to warm up. The store’s Maytag washers had agitation tubs and hand-cranked wringers.

Some of the many kegs of nails had arrived by ships that sailed around Cape Horn, since the Panama Canal that was built to cut that journey short wasn’t completed until 1914, Pedrotti said.

Crockett saw a boom in the 1930s and 1940s because the local sugar refinery, C&H Sugar Company — with initials that represented California and Hawaii — was growing to meet a market hungry for cane sugar.

“Sugar required lots of manual labor,” Pedrotti said. “Processed cane was packed in 100-pound sacks and was moved by raw, brute force.”

Once the ships had docked, hundreds of day laborers, brought in by truck from San Francisco, worked to unload the cargo.

“These hardworking men toiled in long shifts,” he said. They’d stay in Crockett’s boarding hotels, he said. And bars.

“Drinking was popular,” he said. “Crockett supported many, many bars and taverns.”

During that time, Ralph and Domitilla were raising a family — Rosemary and Americo as well as new sons Larry, who was Gene’s father, and Benjamin.

Americo, Larry and Benjamin worked in the hardware store, which changed its name to R. Pedrotti & Sons when Ralph bought Firpo’s share of the business in 1938 for $6,000.

Employment and population in Crockett increased to 4,600 in 1945, Pedrotti said, and the family’s business was prospering.

In fact, it needed more room, so the Pedrotti family moved the store 100 feet up the street, to 712 Second Ave., where they had twice the space as before.

The hardware store stayed put for another 50 years, Pedrotti said. “The phone number was 262,” he said.

Ralph retired in 1945, and the company was renamed Pedrotti Hardware. Five years later, Benjamin would leave to pursue other interests.

His brother, Larry, and his wife, Laura, had five sons, and Al and Jay had two as well, and all worked at the hardware store.

“With or without child protection laws, they were happily cutting keys with power equipment, filling empty Clorox bottles with bulk paint thinner, chiseling glass out of wood sash windows,” Pedrotti said. They’d watch as Larry and Al puttied glass into place.

In September 1977, Al was given the Estwing Golden Hammer, which Pedrotti said is “one of the most coveted awards in our industry. This hammer proudly hangs in the hardware store today as a reminder of the generosity and commitment that small-town entrepreneurs offer their communities throughout America.”

Though Al wanted to retire, he delayed leaving the business so his nephew, Gene, could finish college.

Gene Pedrotti received a bachelor of science degree in business from the University of California-Berkeley in 1980. After graduation, he joined the hardware store staff. “It was amazing that such a small town as Crockett still had its own hardware store at all,” Pedrotti recalled.

“When so many communities are overrun by chains and impersonal corporate companies, to have a real hardware store, locally owned, is a treasure,” he said.

“A local hardware store is like a post office. Towns which can claim both are classy.”

Pedrotti incorporated the company Aug. 25, 1981, then sought out a replacement supplier, since its existing supplier, Bay Cities Wholesale Hardware Company, was failing.

That’s when Pedrotti Hardware joined the dealer-owned cooperative of Ace Hardware.

With those two changes in place, Pedrotti Hardware began reaching beyond Crockett to serve other local companies.

At the same time, Pedrotti became instrumental in organizing the Crockett Chamber of Commerce, becoming its first president.

By 1985, the store needed to expand even more, and on Aug. 15, Pedrotti leased a new spot in Crockett at the intersection with the town’s only signal light. And Larry Pedrotti joined Al as a recipient of the Estwing Golden Hammer, Pedrotti said.

The store’s telephone number had expanded, too. Now it was 787-2ACE.

Two years after the store’s latest move, Crocket marked the 60th annversary of the Carquinez Bridge. Armed with 2,000 flashlights supplied by Pedrotti Hardware, residents lit up the bridge Thursday, May 14, 1987, and the C&H Sugar Company sign, which had been dark for 20 years, was relit. Pedrotti led the celebration committee.

Three days later, the bridge was closed to vehicles so thousands of people could cross on foot.

Pedrotti, as chairperson, received a letter from Ann Lindbergh, wife of pilot Charles Lindbergh, who made the first solo trans-Atlantic flight and had landed the day the Carquinez Bridge had opened.

That famous landing dominated the news, overshadowing the bridge’s opening celebration and its significance as the last leg of the new transcontinental highway, the Lincoln Highway. But in her letter, Ann Lindbergh sent her best wishes for the bridge’s anniversary celebration, Pedrotti said.

During the 1980s and 1990s, Pedrotti’s business grew, but Crockett was experiencing a decline as freeways and shopping centers lured businesses away. Finally, Pedrotti decided that if the store was to remain healthy, it needed to move.

His company bought Dan’s Ace Hardware, and Pedrotti’s moved to Benicia on Valentine’s Day, 1992.

“Although melancholic, it was the right choice,” Pedrotti said.

It gave Pedrotti’s much more space than the 500 square feet of the company’s first store. The Southampton Shopping Center location is about 13,000 square feet.

The move also meant a new telephone number — 745-NUTS. “The store was just that,” Pedrotti joked. Benicians welcomed the new company to town. “From then on, it has been a love affair!” he said.

In fact, Pedrotti Hardware was awarded the first-ever Benicia Business of the Year award on Sept. 25, 1994.

And June 20 of the next year, John Madden, the former NFL coach who became Ace’s spokesman, used the store twice to film commercials that were aired nationally.

One had a jingle set to a country-Western melody, with the lyrics, “Ace is the Place in Benicia, California,” Pedrotti said. That put Benicia in the national spotlight.

That’s not the only time the store has been the backdrop to a national celebrity.

Norm Abram, home improvement expert and television personality, visited the store Sept. 19, 1998, as he promoted his book, “Measure Twice, Cut Once.”

Nor was the store done receiving honors. At Ace’s semi-annual convention in Pittsburgh, Penn., Oct. 17, 1997, Pedrotti Hardware was given the Ace Hardware President’s Cup as the best Ace Hardware store in the country, beating out more than 4,800 other locations for the honor.

“In less than 20 years from its humble surroundings in Crockett, Pedrotti Hardware became the most recognized Ace store in the United States,” Pedrotti said.

Pedrotti himself was still living in Crockett, even if his store had gone to Benicia. And he brought 500 shovels from that store for use March 3, 2000, for the groundbreaking ceremony that announced the building of a new suspension bridge over the Carquinez Straits.

That span, the Alfred Zampa Bridge, opened Nov. 9, 2003, and 30,000 people walked its length and celebrated as fireworks sparked across the water. Again, Pedrotti was chairperson of the celebration committee.

Pedrotti Ace Hardware, as a business, has remained active in local as well as national events since moving to Benicia.

It’s encouraged recycling, even before a new city contract with Allied Waste provided ways for companies, as well as residents, to recycle.

Pedrotti learned about “save, salvage, repair and reuse” as a child, and in 2008 began offering his store as one spot where Benicians could drop off dry cell batteries and fluorescent lights.

From March to May 2011, Pedrotti programmed his cash registers so shoppers could donate to American Red Cross relief efforts after the magnitude 9 earthquake and resulting tsunami devastated Japan. He also committed to matching every donation with an equal contribution. When the fundraising wrapped up, the Red Cross had a check for $67,900.

Pedrotti credits his store’s success “on the service and commitment of a great Ace team,” and said in the past 20 years more than 270 people have spent part of their careers in his store.

He’ll be celebrating the store’s anniversary with a party at his new home in Martinez that starts with Mayor Elizabeth Patterson ringing a bell to honor past employees and officers who have died: Monica Briggs, Christine Crothers, Jana Kerwin, Henry Baranzini, Ben Peskoff, Mike Rosenquist, Andrew Shook, Chris Stevens, Bill Waynberg and brothers Al Vaio and Larry and Ralph Pedrotti.

“At dusk, you will find three searchlights, one each in both Crockett and Benicia, to signify our roots, and one at my home in Martinez, where the Ace team is gathered,” he said.

Though Pedrotti has been thinking of the past as the company marks the significant anniversary, he’s not staying there. “On to the centennial!” he said.