MISQUAH — The sign in the hardware store window has said OPEN MOST DAYS for as long as anyone can prove, and in forty years the store has closed early exactly once: the afternoon of August 1, 1986, when Walt Sorensen married Carol at First Lutheran and the whole business district understood that hardware could wait. A week from Saturday, on their fortieth anniversary, it will happen for the second time.

They met at the counter, which everyone assumes and which happens to be true. Carol came in for a hinge in the spring of 1985 — “a plain butt hinge, three-inch, and he tried to sell me up to brass,” she says — and came back the next week for the matching one, which she concedes she did not strictly need. Walt’s version agrees on every particular except the salesmanship, which he characterizes as “informational.” They were engaged by Christmas. The hinge, both confirm, is on the cellar door of the house to this day, and has never once squeaked, “because,” Walt says, “I stand behind what I sell.”

Forty years of marriage and forty years of a shared cash register would seem, to outside observers, like a compound risk, and the Sorensens are regularly asked for the secret. Walt’s answer has not varied in a decade: “Separate key rings.” Carol’s is longer by one word: “Separate key rings, and patience.” Pressed for detail, Carol added that in forty years they have disagreed seriously about the store exactly three times, “and I was right twice, and we don’t discuss the third one.”

The store itself has become one of the town’s load-bearing institutions precisely because of its famous vagueness. OPEN MOST DAYS, residents have long understood, is not a schedule but a philosophy — a promise that the store will be there roughly when needed, staffed by people who know which drawer the odd washers live in. “Most days has served us well,” Walt said. “You put a real schedule up, now you’ve made a promise to strangers. Most days is a promise to neighbors. Neighbors know how to check.”

On August 1, a hand-lettered sign will go in the window — Carol has already made it — reading CLOSED EARLY, FORTIETH ANNIVERSARY, BACK MOST DAYS. There will be a supper at the Loon Ridge with the family, and, per Walt, “no speeches, one toast, and church the next morning like always.” The town is invited to stop by the counter in the meantime and say congratulations, which, this being Misquah, will be transacted along with a purchase, because nobody in this town has ever entered the hardware store for only one reason.