Tim and Tim Smythe Jr. stand in an aisle at P&T Surplus in Kingston, N.Y., on Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2023. (Tania Barricklo/Daily Freeman)

KINGSTON, N.Y. — After 60 years of being the destination for every kind of odd and end under the sun, P&T Surplus at 198 Abeel St. is fighting for survival as its owners struggle to pay mounting bills.

The shop is a favorite of artists, sculptors, and tinkerers of all kinds who can find everything from metal, wiring, and other hardware items to wheels of all kinds. There are also vintage computers and electronic components, some dating back to the original IBM mainframes.

All sorts of road signs hang on the walls while two lifesize plastic heads sit on the checkout counter.

Timothy Smythe Jr., who runs the shop on the banks of the Rondout Creek with his father, Timothy Smythe Sr., said while the shop has a loyal legion of customers, it’s fallen on hard times due to the COVID-19 pandemic and both him and his father falling ill.

Smythe Jr. said he suffers from advanced kidney failure and has to go to dialysis three days a week, while his dad suffered a stroke back in 2019 and another small stroke more recently.

The younger Smythe said all the while they fell behind on mortgage and tax payments and had to sell the building to another owner who now leases it back. Even so, he said, they’ve not been able to pay their rent and are struggling to pay their Central Hudson bills.

He added that business boomed for a time at the outset of the pandemic in 2020 when they were one of the only stores in the area to have masks in stock, thanks to his dad.

“He had so many contacts with suppliers to get masks, and we had people lining up outside the store,” Smythe Jr. said.

The younger Smythe also said that, despite the demand for masks, his dad still ended up donating as many as possible to hospitals and schools.

But the initial business plummetted and hasn’t fully recovered, he added.

The Smythes have started a GoFundMe page seeking help with paying the bills and keeping the doors open, So far, it’s raised more than $14,500.

Smythe Sr. said he’s worked at the shop full time for 50 years, putting in countless hours.

“I work 60 hours a week, always putting new merchandise out and packing hardware on downtime,” he said.

P&T Surplus began when Smythe Jr.’s uncle Phillip Reilly and his business partner Donald Hines had the idea to buy scrap and surplus from IBM’s plants in the town of Ulster, Poughkeepsie and Fishkill, Smythe Jr. recalled. The building was designed to accept these loads, he added.

“We’d get three tractor-trailer loads from IBM for one mainframe computer, he said. “We’d dismantle it and take it apart from all the precious metals down to smaller screws to power supplies. Every component was state-of- the-art then.”

Smythe Jr. said they’d then sell the components to customers, including shops on Canal Street in Lower Manhattan. Back then, Canal Street was full of shops selling scrap components with each having its own niche like motors, he said.

“They’d come up here and we had a mail-order parts business,” he recalled.

He said that business eventually petered out after IBM closed up shop in the town of Ulster, pulling the rug out of the area’s economy. But IBM’s retreat gave them one last boost when it shuttered its Fishkill plant and they made a deal with Millens Recycling, now-defunct, to obtain surplus items from that operation, Smythe Jr. said.

After that, the store shifted to more of a retail outlet, he said.

He noted they saw a boost for a while when personal computers first started becoming popular. But that later dwindled after IBM sold off its PC arm to Chinese firm Lenovo and smartphones gained popularity.

But P&T still manages to do a solid business off of surplus from plastic manufacturing companies, people doing renovations, and cleanouts and auctions, Smythe Jr. said. While the internet has proved to be a formidable competitor for many mom-and-pop shops, Smythe said it’s helped P&T find another outlet and an edge. Sometimes customers inquire on Facebook if they have something they are looking for in particular, he added.

These days artists, particularly sculptors, are some of the shop’s most loyal customers.

“We sell a lot of metal,” he said.

He said P&T is the go-to place for the Kingston Artist Soap Box Derby, held each August just around the corner on lower Broadway. He added that, one time, they even entered a car made entirely from old IBM materials.

“They love coming here for wheels, bearings and scrap metal,” Smythe Jr. said.

As for the weirdest thing to ever come through the shop, Smythe Jr said it was a jet afterburner from the set of the 1996 movie “Twister.” He is not sure how it even ended up at P&T, but customers wanted the highly valuable metals it contained like titanium.

On a recent morning, customers flowed in. They included Bob Messina, who collects knives. “I come down here from time to time and I read what was going on and I decided to come down and get a few things,” he said.

Another customer, Janet Bunnell, stopped in while visiting the area from three hours away in Owego. She said it’s the perfect store as her son collects metals. An artist, she’s shifted more into working with metals, making sculpture robots.She picked up a solid bronze item that Smythe Sr. marked down from $25 to $10.

“If you’re an artist this is the place to come,” she said.

Despite all the challenges, Smythe Jr. remains optimistic about the future.

“Hopefully, business picks up,” he said.