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George Kramer sat hunched on his stool behind the counter of the small hardware store on Coney Island Avenue, gazing out the window at the passing traffic.

Toward the back of the store, beyond Kramer's field of vision, Isaac Abraham was rifling through a cabinet. Abraham, the store owner for many years, knows Kramer about as well as anybody, and he was about to give a demonstration.

Quietly, he removed a faucet knob from the cabinet and hid it behind his back. Then he approached the counter and clapped it down with a flourish.

Kramer gave it a perfunctory glance.

"Gerber," he said.

"Gerber what?" Abraham asked.

"99-1151."

Abraham turned over the package to show the catalog number: 99-1151.

Kramer -- George to me -- is my second cousin, and he has worked at Kramer's Hardware in Brooklyn for 58 years. He has a developmental disability that is obvious to people who meet him, but he also has a rare and less-apparent ability: Like Kim Peek, the inspiration for the 1988 film Rain Man, George has a powerful memory for dates, numbers and facts.

If you tell him your birthday, he can tell you what day it will fall on two years in the future. He studies phone directories and atlases in his spare time.

On the surface, a run-down hardware shop in Brooklyn might seem an odd place for a person such as George to thrive. But if you set aside the sheets of pegboard, the metal cabinets and the key-making machine, what remains are hundreds and hundreds of small, obscure utilitarian objects, many almost identical to the casual observer.

George can identify each nut and bolt and screw on sight, and he knows where in the store it is kept. He knows its cost. And he knows the name -- and often the phone number -- of the company that made it.

His command of the inventory is such that Abraham has never had to invest in a computer to track it.

"My reliance on him is mind-boggling," Abraham said.

That reliance began with a favor: Thirty years ago, Abraham took over the store from George's father, David Kramer, who was worried about his son's future. Abraham agreed to keep George employed until George was ready to retire; and when Abraham transferred the store to a new owner about a year ago, his successor did the same.

Through it all, George has been an ideal worker: honest (perhaps because he is incapable of lying), uncomplaining and extremely punctual.

http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/life/stories/2010/01/22/2_RAIN_MAN.ART_ART_01-22-10_D5_K0GCE1N.html?sid=101