45 YEARS A BOOKSELLER

Hello, bookies,

Linda and I are back from vacation in Lakeside, Ohio. We were doing nothing more than r&r. The biggest decision each day was whether we walked or biked the four blocks to the lake, where we would read and write the afternoon away in the pavilion, overlooking Lake Erie. Ah, luxury and indulgence.

We temporarily adopted feral cats there by carrying kitty kibble in our tote bags in case we ran into some of the many cats running around. We met others looking out for the homeless cats, an instant bond, just like connecting with someone when you're in a bookstore. It's just magic.

The magic has been with me for 45 years this very month. And I still love getting paid to hang out in a bookstore.

In September of '64, I was a sophomore at Geneva College in Beaver Falls, PA, and my mother had just been hired to manage the campus store. I was spending hours most days hanging out at the student-center shop, standing in the aisles with a book in my hand, leaning up against the slanted bookcases.

This was back in the days when mass-market paperbacks were leaping from drugstore racks to real bookstores. Up until then, hardbacks were all you could mostly find in a bookstore. It was with trepidation and excitement that regular bookstores began stocking the small paperbacks. Which were an instant hit, duh!

For college students, the ability to buy Hemingway and Steinbeck, C. S. Lewis and "Peanuts" books in a cheap, conveniently-sized format gave a spirit-freeing rush. Stuff 'em in your back pocket or purse and take them anywhere. I read my eyes out in paperbacks propped up against those Geneva bookstore fixtures.

When Mom needed help unloading a shipment of textbooks and Golden Tornado sweatshirts, or pricing and stocking the hundreds of notebooks just arrived, I'd give her a hand for as long as she needed.

Finally in October, after a month of my constant presence, she insightfully suggested, "As long as you're going to spend your college days in a bookstore, you might as well get paid for it," and I've been hanging out in bookstores ever since. Thanks, Mom!

45 years. That's a lot of books out the door, perhaps close to a million?

14 bookstores. Three wives. Dozens of colleagues. Hundreds of memories, and that's what I turn into my bookstore-ies.

I wish I'd been writing store-ies through all those years, but it took being in my own bookstore to motivate me sufficiently to take my scribbled notes and turn them into the text they deserve. Oh I've got plenty of notes from most of those stores, but if you are a journal-writer yourself, you understand why it's so tough to go back and decipher notes from many years earlier. You know you made those notes for a very good reason, but the mistiness of time wipes out all but the mere words, most of the time.

If I don't follow-up my notes with developing at least a foundation for a subsequent narrative within a few days, many times I lose the intent of the notes. And with all the notes I take, lots of store-ies slide away.

I used to have a steel trap for a memory. Now it's more like a plastic sieve.

I take notes nearly every day in the store. A bookshop is blessed with interesting characters as customers and customers with interesting stories. As I re-learn constantly, everyone has a story to tell, even if their life is generally uneventful with a personality that wouldn't have enough spark to power a nightlight.

I was reminded of that again this summer when I drove an hour north to Marion, Ohio, to do what I call a housebuy -- being invited to someone's house to buy their books. Though I had anticipated nothing beyond reviewing and evaluating what books I'd make an offer on, a 93-year-old WWII veteran entered my life and got into my heart.

The store-y that will come out of my day with Mr. Miller is called "Honor Flight". I'll work hard to bring it out in early November in time for Veterans Day. I hope to post it here first.

The ability to spend my days around books and book people seems like a huge blessing to me, especially with Linda so long and wonderfully in my life. I can share my (mostly) joy with the world beyond the Acorn Bookshop by writing bookstore-ies that illuminate one long-time bookseller's days behind the counter, out in the aisles, and always with the surrounding tens of thousands of books.

I leave you on this special occasion by quoting Will Y. Darling, an Englishman who wrote "The Private Papers of a Bankrupt Bookseller" in 1931. He described our lives thusly:

"I thank the fortune that made me a bookseller.
It could have made me anything,
but it could not have made me happier."

Go visit a bookstore, and say hello to a bookseller. At the very least you'll be spending time with everyone from Jane Austen to Robert Heinlein, from Dan Brown to Rita Mae Brown, from Einstein to Gandhi. And you just might end up in a bookstore-y.

Bookstore George

copyright2009