Story originally printed in the La Crosse Tribune or online at www.lacrossetribune.com
Published - Sunday, August 31, 2008
Used bookstores are the best places for serious loitering
I’ll be spending a few days in Kansas City next week, visiting our daughter.
And because she and my wife are taking a two-day graphics art class, I’ll have plenty of time to do what I do best — loiter.
One of the best loitering spots is a used bookstore. Almost any used bookstore will do, but Kansas City has a great one. It’s called Spivey’s Old Maps, Fine Art, Prints & Rare Books.
The first thing you see when you walk in the front door is Mr. Spivey, sitting in a room devoted to old prints, smoking a cigar and generally looking like a history oracle. People come up to him and ask him questions.
There’s lots of old Kansas City and Midwest photos, posters, autographs, all manner of prints — and lots and lots of books. The store is located on a street that used to be the beginning of the Santa Fe Trail, an Old West wagon trail between Kansas City and Santa Fe., N.M.
What I like about used bookstores isn’t the fact that you can find real bargains and avoid paying brand-new prices in some big-box building, although that’s certainly true.
For me, the most important thing is that used bookstores, because they have a lot of out-of-print and hard-to-find books, don’t lock you in to one period of time. You don’t have to read just what the big companies want to sell you. You can float through time.
I bought a 1925 volume of letters between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson in a Minneapolis shop. I expected to be captivated by Jefferson and bored by Adams. It turned out to be the other way around. Adams’ letters were by far the more emotional and human.
I’ve got a 1937 volume of newspaper editorials written by William Allen White, who was editor of the Emporia Gazette, in Kansas. Despite coming from such a small city, he became a commentator on national issues — and was a regular visitor to the White House, particularly when Theodore Roosevelt was president.
He visited President Warren G. Harding for the first time in 1923, but Harding didn’t want to talk about national issues. He wanted to reminisce about his days as a newspaper editor in Marion, Ohio.
He told White, “You know, every day at three-thirty, here in the midst of the affairs of state, I go to press on the Marion Star. I wonder how much advertising there is ... There never was a day in all the years that I ran the paper that I didn’t get some thrill out of it.”
There used to be a used bookstore in a bad neighborhood of St. Louis. The owner kept the door locked, and you had to ring the doorbell to have him let you in. He’d squint at you through the window, sizing you up. Once he let you in, he would follow you around — until you said something about a book or author, and then you were OK.
Books cluttered the floor, and shelves went up to the ceiling. An old cat made his way through the maze. My favorite area in his store was a shelf full of Modern Library editions, and Viking Portable anthologies.
I bought the smallest edition I’ve ever seen of Mark Twain’s “Life on the Mississippi” for $3.75 in his store.
We’ve had so much flooding, consider this quote: “It was a big river, below Memphis; banks brimming full, everywhere, and very frequently more than full, the waters pouring out over the land, flooding the woods and fields for miles into the interior; and in places, to a depth of 15 feet; signs all about, of man’s hard work gone to ruin, and all to be done over again, with straitened means and a weakened courage.”
That’s not bad language for $3.75.
Used bookstores are quirky and different. Powell’s Books in Portland, Ore., takes up a full city block downtown. There are so many rooms on so many levels, that the store gives out detailed maps. Used books and new books share the same shelves. It’s all books to the owners.
The Strand Bookstore in New York City is crowded, bustling and impersonal. And there used to be a store in somebody’s house in Iowa City, and they would give you iced tea and invite you to sit down and read.
Good loitering spots all ...
Contact Opinion page editor Richard Mial at (608) 791-8232, or rmial@lacrossetribune.com.
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