Map · Establishments · Reilly’s Sporting Goods
An establishment in Harmon
He gave him a nickel and put the nickel in David’s hand, not on the counter, the small Main-Street courtesy of a man who had been doing this his whole life and that Bill had taught him before Brian was old enough to count change.
— The Good Father
Reilly’s Sporting Goods is the cleats-and-basketball-shoes store on Main Street, founded in 1957 by Bill Reilly. The bell over the door, the long oak counter, and the bin of canvas work gloves Bill kept by the register are all original. Bill stood behind the counter for forty-eight years; in 2005, at sixty-eight, he handed the keys to his son Brian, the quieter Reilly, who has been ringing up shoes ever since. Brian knows the local kids’ sizes the way other shopkeepers know their regulars’ orders.
In The Good Father, the store is a small portrait of the Main Street economy the series keeps mourning. David Marsh buys his son Cooper a pair of high-tops the morning of a Saturday game; Brian rings them without comment, takes four twenties and a five, and puts the nickel of change in David’s hand, not on the counter, the courtesy Bill taught him before he could count. “Tell Cooper good luck Saturday,” Brian says. It is the kind of transaction the big-box stores on the bypass cannot sell.
The Reillys of the sporting-goods store, Bill and his son Brian, are a Harmon family of long standing and should not be confused with the Reilly brothers of The Loyal Man, the county assessor Dennis and his businessman brother Kevin. It is the kind of shared surname a real county carries, two unrelated families who have both been here long enough to be fixtures.