bookflaps

Genuine Counterfeit Confederate Currency

2011-11-13T11:01:00.009-05:00

It was the early days of the Civil War, March 1862. The public on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line, naturally enough, was hungry for any news about this upstart, self-proclaimed Confederate States of America. It seemed that they were actually serious, having elected a Congress and President, written a constitution, adopting a flag. They’d even started printing money!

The Philadelphia Inquirer, one of the major newspapers of the day, was able to get its hands on one of the new bills that had made its way though the lines, and it printed an image of the new currency. This in itself was a rather big deal since newspapers didn’t usually contain images of any kind. You’d find them in the big weeklies out of New York—Leslie’s Illustrated and Harper’s Weekly—but the daily papers as a rule didn’t carry illustrations. Each image had to be painstakingly engraved and that was a big deal since it took both time and money (actual photographs wouldn’t begin to appear in daily papers for another 60 years or so).

So when the image of this new Confederate currency hit the streets it was a bit of a sensation from several points of view. That edition sold out almost immediately.

All this came to the notice of one of Philadelphia’s merchants/entrepreneurs. Samuel Curtis Upham (February 2, 1819-June 29, 1885) owned and ran a successful shop on Chestnut Street, selling stationery and toiletries. He produced and sold his own patent medicines (“Upham’s Pimple Banisher”) for example. And he was doing well with patriotic envelopes, too. Each of these would carry a political cartoon that would ridicule Jefferson Davis or some facet of these new Confederate States, or would be emblazoned with eagles and shields, or the likeness of Columbia.

The story about the new money got him to thinking. So he paid a call upon the editorial offices of the Inquirer and purchased the plates used to print the image of the new currency.

And he went into the counterfeiting business.

He didn’t call his paper counterfeit, of course. Counterfeiting was illegal. He added a line to the bottom of the notes: “Fac-similie (sic) Confederate Notes Sold, Wholesale and Retail. By S.C. Upham, 403 Chestnut Street, Phila.” The first batch was of a $5 note, and these were sold for a penny each. They were to be viewed as novelties; something fun. “Mementos of the Rebellion” is how Upham referred to them in his advertisements in the New York Tribune and Harper’s Weekly.

Other entrepreneurs got in on the fun. By simply clipping off the “fac-similie” bit, Upham’s notes were virtually indistinguishable from the real thing. Cotton speculators started passing them as real. And they were being accepted in the South.

Upham was onto something. He expanded his offerings to include other denominations and eventually Confederate postage stamps. By the end of the war, he had printed nearly $15-million in fake Confederate currency (equal to about 3% of the entire CSA money supply).

He produced a quality product. In fact, many of his notes were better than the authentic ones. His paper was better. And he had access to engravers more highly skilled than the ones employed by the Confederacy. There are stories of how Southrons, when confronted with both legitimate and counterfeit bills would accept the counterfeits just because they looked more real than the genuine articles.

This came to the attention of officials in Richmond. Secretary of the Treasury Christopher Memminger wrote to Vice President Alexander Stephens, in August 1862, of the growing number of counterfeit bills in circulation and “the fact that they are publicly advertised for sale at the North proves the connivance at least, and probably the complicity, of the Government.” President Jefferson Davis apparently shared this view.

In fact, there is no hard evidence to suggest that the Federal government in Washington had anything to do with the scheme. It seems that this was entirely one more example of Yankee ingenuity’s working to make a buck…as it were. Of course it must be allowed that there are ample anecdotal accounts of Lincoln’s Secretary of the Treasury, Salmon P. Chase, winking at the entire enterprise.

The great Congress of the Confederacy was not amused, and passed a law imposing a sentence of death upon convicted counterfeiters. Upham claimed that same Congress put a price of $10,000 on his head, dead or alive. After the war, he bragged "During the publication of those facsimile notes I was the 'best abused man' in the Union. Senator Foote, in a speech before the rebel Congress, at Richmond, in 1862, said I had done more to injure the Confederate cause than General McClellan and his army..."

Other printers in the North, seeing Upham’s success, also started issuing “fac-similies.” The increased supply, coupled with the collapsing Confederate economy, pretty much killed the business. The price that could be commanded for the notes fell through the floor, and there just wasn’t the demand any longer.

Now we fast-forward 150 years…to this past Friday morning, to be exact. A gentleman walked into my shop, looking to sell two pieces of what he claimed to be Confederate currency. Holding the notes in my hand, something didn’t seem quite right. I am far, far from an expert on such matters, but my “Spidey-sense” was tingling here.

At first blush, they appeared right. They "felt" old, and didn't appear to be modern reproductions. But. They were printed on very good paper; better stock than I had seen before with Confederate money. Next, the engraving was highly detailed and of a better quality than on other pieces I had had. And finally, when examined under a magnifying glass, it appeared that the signatures had been printed, rather than hand-signed (as was the practice at the time). Ditto, the serial numbers. These just weren't passing my initial smell test.

Out of curiosity, I asked how he had gotten them and he told me a story about getting them earlier in the week “from some guy in a bar.” Obviously not a lot of provenance there.

With his permission, I held onto the bills to do a little research. After a couple of hours poking around various websites, I had an answer. It turns out that these were Upham bills. Genuine counterfeit Confederate currency.

They are worthless in terms of legal tender, of course. But that was never Mr. Upham's stated intent. He was looking to produce “mementos of the Rebellion.” And as such, they hold up rather nicely.

To collectors they actually have just a little more value than authentic Confederate currency.

Heros among us.

2011-05-04T12:06:00.006-04:00

He had a life. He had a wife. Most of that is gone now. But, by God, he still has that piece of shrapnel.

The call came late last week: an estate here in York. The gentleman was getting ready to downsize his housekeeping. He thought it was about time. He is 91 now; his bride of 63 years passed in January. The house is much more than he needs; he’s planning on an assisted living facility. Would I be interested in his books, and perhaps some of his stuff? The appointment was made, and I turned up on time and ready to go yesterday morning.

Some books in the living room; more in the attic.

I followed him up the stairs. It was hard watching him. He has a leg brace these days and he’s obviously lost a step or two from his prime.

When we got to the attic, he mentioned that he had a locker of clothing. I wasn’t too interested, but I took a look to be polite.

It wasn’t just clothing. It was full of uniforms. His uniforms. From World War II. He had been of the 4th Marine Division.

The 4th Marines took Roi-Namur, Saipan, Tinian and Iwo Jima. By the end of the war, they had also taken an almost incredible number of casualties: 2,774 killed in action; 524 died of wounds sustained in battle; 14,424 wounded. This out of a peak strength of 19,709. Do the math; that's a 89.5% casualty rate. These were some of the guys who won World War II.

He was one of the guys who won World War II.

He landed on Iwo Jima in the third wave. That island, one of the bloodiest in the Pacific, was little more than a big pile of volcanic ash. You’d sink up to your boot laces with each step. The tanks were bogged down on the “beach” because even their treads couldn’t negotiate the stuff. It was hard slogging. The Japanese were dug in and cut off, so they had nothing to lose and everything to gain by dying for their Emperor.

The locker contained several uniforms, including his dress blues. There were belts and ties. His ribbons. Cover (that’s Marine lingo for “hats”) of several descriptions. And several boxes of papers and mementos. Everything was in pristine condition. Those uniforms had been dry cleaned before being carefully put away. If you didn’t know better, you’d think that these pieces of history could have been issued to a raw recruit yesterday.

In one envelope was a notice of his promotion to Staff Sergeant, along with his discharge papers.

“I’ll just throw that out,” he said.

“No sir,” I replied. “I don’t think so.”

One box contained souvenirs: a piece of a downed Japanese Zero, Japanese currency and coins, captured books and personal effects (photographs, a toothbrush, postcards from the Japanese homeland). A banner of the Japanese Marines.

I took it all.

Later, after the car had been loaded, we sat over a cup of coffee in his kitchen and he told me stories.

One of the worst parts of the battle, he said, came each evening just at sundown. The Japanese would shell the 4th Marines with antipersonnel bombs. These were nasty things that were primed to explode right over your head and spit shrapnel--jagged pieces of metal,glowing red hot, and moving faster than the eye could follow. If you happened to get in the way and were hit you in the wrong place, you’d be dead instantly.

The guys in his outfit would dig a shallow hole in the ash, jump in and cover it over with just a piece of canvas for protection. You couldn’t dig too deep because if you did you wouldn't be able to breathe with the sulfur coming up out of the ground.

On this one particular night, a shell burst overhead. It killed a man standing next to his hole. But our guy managed to get under what passed for cover in time. Even so, shrapnel pierced his canvas and hit him in the foot. It didn’t pierce his boot, but it left one hell of a bruise.

“I kept that piece of shrapnel as a souvenir; kind of a good luck piece,” he told me. “It was about the size of a half-dollar. I wish I knew whatever became of it.”

When I returned to the shop late in the day, I began to explore the various pieces and to paw through the boxes. More papers; more photographs. More artifacts.

And, in the last box, a piece of shrapnel.

I called him this morning. He hasn’t yet left for his new home. I made another appointment to visit him again tonight.

He had a life. He had a wife. Most of that is gone now. But tonight, by God, he will have that shrapnel.

The York Book and Paper Fair

2011-04-13T14:25:00.004-04:00

The Spring ’11 York Book and Paper Fair takes place next weekend and I’m looking forward to poking around a bit. I always seem to find interesting things there.

Our book fair here in York started in the fall of 1984, and has been running continually—twice each year—since then. That makes this the 55th edition. It also makes it one of the longest running book fairs in this part of the country.

Now, it isn’t the largest fair, to the sure. Nor is it star-studded, with lots of big name authors and special presentations from publishers. We don’t have the First Lady involved, like they do in Washington, DC. We don’t give out awards for best novels or for lifetime achievements. There are no roped-off areas or V.I.P. passes required to get into the “special” rooms.

(Although, to be candid, we did try to get Nora Roberts to attend since she doesn’t live too far away. After a number of invites, her people got back to us and told us that Ms. Roberts was aware of our little fair and really liked the idea of it and, if she were ever going to do one, ours would be the one she would do. But. She’s never going to do another one. So that makes us THE Number One Thing That Nora Roberts Is Never Going To Do. And that’s a distinction of sorts, I guess. But, I digress…)

We don’t go in for all that highfalutin celebrity and off-limits stuff here. All that is fine in its place, of course. If they want to do that in New York we invite them to go right ahead. But this isn’t the place; this isn’t New York. This is York. And this is the YORK Book and Paper Fair. It is just us, doing what we like to do: books.

We like to talk about them. We like to discover new authors or forgotten works by favorite authors. We like to sift through the older tomes, admiring bindings and layouts and typographic styles. We like to compare editions and dust jackets. We like the ephemera; the colors and the artwork.

We like to rub shoulders with other bibliophiles as we walk the aisles. We want to see what they’re reading, and we want to admire the treasures they’ve discovered this day; to share their enthusiasm for a new quest. And, frankly, we want to brag and show off a bit with the things we’ve managed to uncover.

We like to talk to the dealers, since they’re the ones who really know. What are they seeing at other fairs? What are the trends? What news from the front lines of the book world? (Not the hype and PR and stuff we get in the papers and online journals, but the real story.) Are e-books really taking over? Will there still be room for us luddites, who prefer reading paper to electrons?

And…what have you got hidden under the table? Anything special for me?

And we like the haggling. (“Well, on a good day and in the right place, that book probably is worth $75. But I’ve got fifty dollars cash money in my hand right now…”)

But most of all, we like the books. We like walking into the dealer display rooms and just standing there for a minute looking around at all the dealers, all the displays. The colors; the embossings; the foxings.

The books! All the books! Hundreds…thousands of them! Some are old friends. Some are new and unknown to us; perhaps destined to be new friends.

And every one of them, it seems, is calling to us.

Leather-bound, from the 18th and 19th centuries. Signed, 1st editions (“Really? Richard Nixon?”). Vintage paperbacks (“How many ways could they show a naked woman without really showing a naked woman?”). Pulp magazines with first appearances of a favorite author’s short stories (“That one’s got H.P. Lovecraft in it!”). Collected works. Obscure works (“Tarzan and the Ant Men! With a dust jacket!”). Limited editions. Spoken word (“Jack Kerouac doing a live reading?”).

Is that a real Steinbeck autograph? Did Erle Stanley Gardner really write that letter? That Jimmi Hendrix record, the first-pressing from Germany, is still in the shrink-wrap! Did you see that neat, old set of bookends down there…must be from the 50s!

Yeah…this is the York Book and Paper Fair. I’ve got my coupon. I can’t wait!

There are a couple of tables that I am looking forward to looking under.

A Flappers' Dictionary

2011-04-10T10:34:00.007-04:00

Hidden deep within a box of materials that came into the shop this week was a short stack of old magazines. I’d never seen this title before, but I knew what it was just as soon as I saw it: Flapper. “Not for Old Fogies” said the masthead, but I took a look anyway. These were in beautiful condition (“Near Mint” is the technical term) and were just a lot of fun to page through.

During the Roaring 20s of the last century, young ladies took on a new, and for the time radical, lifestyle. These were the years following World War I and prior to The Great Depression. It was the jazz age and the ladies were taking full advantage in daring new ways. Illegal bootleg hooch was all the rage, with hide-away flasks an important fashion accessory. Smoking cigarettes became a statement of liberation. Hemlines were going up and, according to some, morals were going down.

It was all a reaction to what women perceived as stifling control placed over them by the male of the species. This magazine catered to the movement.

The July 1922 edition of Flapper contained “A Flappers’ Dictionary.” According to the uncredited author, “A Flapper is one with a jitney body and a limousine mind. The Shifter is a new species who flaunts as his banner, “Something for nothing and then very little.”

“The flapper movement is not a craze, but something that will stay,” the author maintained. “Many of the phrases now employed by members of this order will eventually find a way into common usage and be accepted as good English.”

The dictionary went into some detail, listing the group’s slang and providing definitions. In the process, it also provided an insight: through the slang we can begin to discern attitudes and priorities and the mindset of the adherents. And the adherents, after all, were our grandmothers and great-grandmothers. Who knew?

My P,LSB*, ready and eager to join the movement, was amused by the term “Father Time” and couldn’t help but notice that it applied to one of us at the dinner table. And that was fine, until I pointed out that “Rock of Ages” might also have a present application.

So, whether you be airedale or biscuit, put down your dincher and pretend your munitions are fine for the moment. The whangdoodle is on in the background and you’re more weed than crepe hanger. This ain’t static; this is pure Di Mi. So pay attention; we don't want no klucks. And you may be edisoned later.

Absent Treatment—Dancing with a bashful partner.

Airedale—A homely man.

Alarm Clock—Chaperone.

Anchor—Box of flowers.

Apple Knocker—A hick; a hay-shaker.

Apple Sauce--Flattery; bunk.

Barlow—A girl, a flapper, a chicken.

Bank’s Closed—No petting allowed; no kisses.

Barneymugging—Lovemaking.

Bee’s Knees—See “Cat’s Pajamas”

Bell Polisher—A young man addicted to lingering in vestibules at 1 a.m.

Bean Picker—One who patches up trouble and picks up spilled beans.

Berry Patch—A man’s particular interest in a girl.

Berries—Great.

Biscuit—A pettable flapper.

Big Timer—(n. masc.)—A charmer able to convince his sweetie that a jollier thing would be to get a snack in an armchair lunchroom; a romantic.

Billboard—Flashy man or woman.

Blushing Violet—A publicity hound.

Blouse—To go.

Blow—Wild party.

Blaah—No good.

Boob Tickler—Girl who entertains father’s out-of-town customers.

Brush Ape—Anyone from the sticks; a country Jake.

Brooksy—Classy dresser

Bust—A man who makes his living in the prize ring, a pugilist.

Bun Duster—See “Cake Eater”.

Bush Hounds—Rustics and others outside of the Flapper pale.

Cancelled Stamp—A wallflower.

Cake Basket—A limousine.

Cake Eater—See “Crumb Gobbler”

Cat’s Particulars—The acme of perfection; anything that’s good

Cat’s Pajamas—Anything that’s good

Cellar Smeller—A young man who always turns up where liquor is to be had without cost.

Clothesline—One who tells neighborhood secrets.

Corn Shredder—Young man who dances on a girl’s feet.

Crepe Hanger—Reformer.

Crumb Gobbler—Slightly sissy tea hound.

Crasher—Anyone who comes to parties uninvited.

Crashing Party—Party where several young men in a group go uninvited.

Cuddle Cootie—Young man who takes a girl for a ride on a bus, gas wagon or automobile.

Cuddler—One who likes petting.

Dapper—A flapper’s father.

Dewdropper—Young man who does not work, and sleeps all day.

Dincher—A half-smoked cigarette.

Dingle Dangler—One who insists on telephoning.

Dipe Ducat—A subway ticket.

Dimbox—A taxicab.

Di Mi—Goodness.

Dogs—Feet.

Dog Kennels—Pair of shoes.

Dropping the Pilot—Getting a divorce.

Dumbdora—Stupid girl.

Duck’s Quack—The best thing ever.

Ducky—General term of approbation.

Dud—Wallflower.

Dudding Up—Dressing.

Dumbbell-Wall flower with little brains.

Dumkuff—General term for being “nutty” or “batty”.

Edisoned—Being asked a lot of questions.

Egg Harbor—Free dance.

Embalmer—A bootlegger.

Eye Opener—A marriage.

Father Time—Any man over 30 years of age.

Face Stretcher—Old maid who tries to look younger.

Feathers—Light conversation.

Fire Extinguisher—A chaperone.

Finale Hopper—Young man who arrives after everything is paid for.

Fire Alarm—Divorced woman.

Fire Bell—Married woman.

Flap—Girl

Flat Shoes—Fight between a Flapper and her Goof

Fluky—Funny, odd, peculiar; different.

Flatwheeler—Slat shy of money; takes girls to free affairs.

Floorflusher—Inveterate dance hound.

Flour Lover—Girl who powders too freely.

Forty-Niner—Man who is prospecting for a rich wife.

Frog’s Eyebrows—Nice, fine.

Gander—Process of duding up.

Green Glorious—Money and checks.

Gimlet—A chronic bore.

Given the Air—When a girl or fellow is thrown down on a date.

Give Your Knee—Cheek-to-cheek or toe-to-toe dancing.

Goofy—To be in love with, or attracted to. Example: “I’m goofy about Jack.”

Goat’s Whiskers—See “Cat’s Particulars”

Goof—Sweetie.

Grummy—In the dumps, shades or blue.

Grubber—One who always borrows cigarettes.

Handcuff—Engagement ring.

Hen Coop—A beauty parlor.

His Blue Serge—His sweetheart.

Highjohn—Young man friend; sweetie, cutey, highboy.

Hopper—Dancer.

Houdini—To be on time for a date.

Horse Prancer—See “Corn Shredder”.

Hush Money—Allowance from father.

Jane—A girl who meets you on the stoop.

Johnnie Walker—Guy who never hires a cab.

Kitten’s Ankles—See “Cat’s Particulars”.

Kluck—Dumb, but happy.

Lap—Drink.

Lallygagger—A young man addicted to attempts at hallway spooning.

Lens Louise—A person given to monopolizing conversation.

Lemon Squeezer—An elevator.

Low Lid—The opposite of highbrow.

Mad Money—Carfare home if she has a fight with her escort.

Meringue—Personality.

Monkey’s Eyebrows—See “Cat’s Particulars”.

Monog—A young person of either sex who is goofy about only one person at a time.

Monologist—Young man who hates to talk about himself.

Mustard Plaster—Unwelcome guy who sticks around.

Munitions—Face powder and rouge.

Mug—To osculate or kiss.

Necker—A petter who puts her arms around a boy’s neck.

Noodle Juice—Tea.

Nosebaggery—Restaurant.

Nut Cracker—Policeman’s nightstick.

Obituary Notice—Dunning letter.

Oilcan—An imposter.

Orchid—Anything that is expensive.

Out on Parole—A person who has been divorced.

Petting Pantry—Movie.

Petting Party—A party devoted to hugging.

Petter—A loveable person; one who enjoys to caress.

Pillow Case—Young man who is full of feathers.

Police Dog—Young man to whom one is engaged.

Potato—A young man shy of brains.

Ritzy Burg—Not classy.

Ritz—Stuck-up.

Rock of Ages—Any woman over 30 years of age.

Rug Hopper—Young man who never takes a girl out. A parlor hound.

Sap—A Flapper term for floorflusher.

Scandal—A short term for Scandal Walk.

Scandaler—A dance floor fullback. The interior of a dreadnaught hat, Piccadilly shoes with open plumbing, size 13.

Seetie—Anybody a flapper hates.

Sharpshooter—One who spends much and dances well.

Shifter—Another species of flapper.

Show Case—Rich man’s wife with jewels.

Sip—Flapper term for female Hopper.

Slat—See “Highjohn”; “Goof”.

Slimp—Cheapskate or “one way guy”.

Smith Brothers—Guys who never cough up.

Smoke Eater—A girl cigarette user.

Smooth—Guy who does not keep his word.

Snake—To call a victim with vampire arms.

Snuggleup—A man fond of petting and petting parties.

Sod Buster—An undertaker.

Stilts—Legs.

Stander—Victim of a female grafter.

Static—Conversations that mean nothing.

Strike Breaker—A young woman who goes with her friend’s “Steady” while there is a coolness.

Swan—Glide gracefully.

Tomato—A young woman shy of brains.

Trotzky (sic)—Old lady with a moustache and chin whiskers.

Umbrella—young man any girl can borrow for the evening.

Urban Set—Her new gown.

Walk In—Young man who goes to a party without being invited.

Weasel—Girl stealer.

Weed—Flapper who takes risks.

Weeping Willow—See “Crepe Hanger”

Whangdoodle—Jazz-band music.

Whiskbroom—Any man who wears whiskers.

Wind Sucker—Any person given to boasting.

Wurp—Killjoy or drawback.

*P,LSB = Poor, Long-Suffering Bride

Tijuana Bibles

2011-03-06T10:50:00.004-05:00

One guy I know found a stack of them, when he was cleaning out his father’s estate, locked up in a case with the hunting rifles. They’ve also been known to inhabit old, nondescript cardboard boxes behind the oil cans on the top shelf in the back of the garage. Or in a far, dusty corner of the attic under a stack of grandpa’s high school papers or hidden between the pages of his text books.

They were naughty. They were graphic and gloriously unsophisticated. And they certainly weren’t subtle; nothing was left to the imagination.

They were the “Tijuana Bibles.” Dirty…really dirty…little comic books, often featuring movie stars (The Marx Brothers, WC Fields, Greta Garbo, William Powell, Cary Grant) or characters from the daily comic strips (Moon Mullins, Mutt & Jeff, Mickey Mouse, Blondie and Dagwood) and placing them in, shall we say, compromising positions and mouthing dialog that would make a sailor proud. If clothing was depicted, pants would be around the ankles and dresses would be flapping in the breeze.

The subject was sex. And we’re not talking about sly innuendo here. The Kama Sutra would have been a good guide for the artists.

They were totally unauthorized of course. Copyrights and good taste were violated left and right. And there was nothing about them that was remotely legal.

Sometimes called “8 pagers”, each was roughly 4” wide by 3” high, with a single staple near the left spine holding it all together. They contained crudely drawn black and white line art, printed (often poorly) one panel per page, on cheap white paper. The covers were heavier weight, colored paper, usually displaying an illustration and suggestive title.

The art wasn’t very good. The spelling was atrocious. The printing was haphazard; nothing was quite square and the ink coverage was spotty. But none of that mattered since these weren’t the kind of publications you’d use as decorating pieces on the living room coffee table. If you were interested in reading one, you could figure out what was going on.

The jokes (more along the lines of wise cracks than fully-developed gags) were pretty lame. And they were chock full of racist stereotypes and now-dated cultural references.

In an earlier day and age, long before there was an internet or even before Playboy took hold, they were about as smutty as it got. They were the stuff of snickering adolescent boys, handed around in the schoolyard or in locker rooms. And they were a pretty big deal in their day.

They were sold under the counter. Or, perhaps, in barber shops and bars. Out of the trunks of cars or from deep pockets near the entrance to a back alley. (“Pssst. Hey buddy, you want some…”) Cost ranged from 25¢ to a buck or two, depending upon what the traffic would bear.

There isn’t a lot of good historical information about them. For obvious reasons, the publishers, artists and writers were anonymous (hiding behind absolutely outrageous monikers like “Payne N. Theass” and “Aiken Forett”) and if careful records were kept (doubtful) no one knows what happened to the data.

So, we don’t know who or how many publishers there were. We’re not exactly sure how many titles were published (somewhere around 800 have been catalogued), nor what the print runs were for each.

The first 8-pagers seem to have appeared sometime in the late 1920s, and they hit their stride in the 30s and 40s. New titles continued to appear during the 50s and even into the early 1960s, but the run was pretty much over by that time.

There is some anecdotal evidence to suggest they were a product of organized crime, compiled as an "after hours" project in otherwise legitimate print shops. It was the Great Depression after all, and anything to keep the printing presses moving…

What we do know is that they were some of the earliest comic books produced for mass distribution.

The first comic books were compilations of previously published material. A group of strips that had already run in the daily papers would be gathered together and published as stand-alone books. The Tijuana Bibles appeared shortly thereafter, and were probably the first examples of original comic material created for publication.

As such, they are worthy of at least a footnote in publishing history. No, they don’t rank with the Gutenberg Bible as a cultural milestone. But they are an important piece of Americana; a snapshot of mid-century gutter sensibilities.

From that point of view at least, they make for interesting reading (although small, measured doses are best). They do provide a glimpse into a different world. All in the name of sociological and historical research, of course.

I happen to have a pile of them in the shop, and I am not quite sure how to market them since I keep them under the counter.

Still, I don’t think they will be hanging around too long. I have a pretty good idea of who my customers are. And I think there may be a few who would be interested.

I may just have to saddle up next to one, over by the coffee pot: “Pssst! Hey, buddy…”

When the genie is out of the bottle...

2011-02-22T13:20:00.007-05:00

Shortly after having moved to York and assuming operations of The York Emporium, I was back in DC having lunch with an old client. The conversation was taking a variety of paths, as such things do, when we turned to plans for the shop.

He wanted to know if there was a list of some sort that detailed which titles we weren’t allowed to stock.

I was confused by the question. A “list”? “Allowed to stock”?

This gentleman is a very intelligent man. Russian by birth, he had been a member of the Diplomatic Corps of the former Soviet Union. He was now a permanent resident of the United States and was making his way through our society. But he was still looking at books through the prism of a controlled society.

I assured him that there was no such “list”, and that I would stock all manner of titles...pretty much anything I damned well pleased.

He was absolutely incredulous. And I don’t know which of us was more astonished: he, when he learned that, yes, we would stock things like Hitler’s Mein Kampf and The Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung, Mao’s little red book; or me, to think that I would not be “allowed” to have such works on my shelves.

“This is America,” I remember telling him. “We don’t tell each other what we’re allowed to read here.” That was an oversimplification of course, but I was attempting to make a point.

He shook his head in wonder.

Two incidents in recent days have brought this conversation back to mind.

The first is the publication of a new edition of Huckleberry Finn. A nice way of characterizing it would be to call it revised. A not-so-nice way would be to call it sanitized.

NewSouth Books, this month, is publishing this modified edition of the Twain classic. Heavily-charged words (“injun”, “nigger” and “half-breed”), have been eliminated and less-offensive-to-our-eyes words (“Indian”, “slave” and “half-blood”), have been substituted in their place.

Predictably, there has been a furor over this, with charges of censorship and political correctness and a defense of the sanctity of the artist’s original work.

Just as predictably, there has been a defense of the publisher’s rationale: Huckleberry Finn is one of the most heavily banned books by school boards and libraries because it includes these words. If the objectionable words are eliminated, it stands to reason that the book will be more widely read. And that, after all, is the goal.

There are valid points on both sides of the question. And I suspect that strong arguments will be put forward to support the relative positions. But what I find most significant is that we are having the debate at all.

There is no government entity that is telling us that we must, or must not, read Huckleberry Finn in either its original or modified editions. Or that the publisher must, or must not, publish the book in its original form. Or that, as a book peddler, I must, or must not, put the book (in any form) on my shelves.

And to my way of thinking, that is the most important bit.

Which brings me to the second incident that reminded me of my luncheon conversation.

Freedom seems to be breaking out in Africa and the Middle East. Political revolutions, violent and non-violent, have been taking place in Tunisia, Bahrain, Libya, Egypt and Yemen. It is a heady and rather frightening time. People are dying. Governments are falling. Societies are in upheaval. Issues are far from decided as this is being written.

But one result of the changes in Egypt, at least, is particularly significant and, I think, under-reported: books that had been banned by the former regime are back in the shops.

Thousands of titles had been banned from distribution by the Egyptian government under President Hosni Mubarak. But now that government is gone and one of the immediate results is that the books are back.

And they are selling! According to Al Arabiya, Egyptians are flocking to the bookstores in search of titles that were not previously available. Frankly, it makes no difference to me whether the books are good or not, or whether there were justifications for their banning or not. What is important is that they are now available.

The genie is out of the bottle and there is no easy way to coax him back in.

When we make our daily trek to the post office to ship books that had been ordered on-line, we are routinely asked if our packages contain anything hazardous. My standard reply is that the packages contain ideas, and those are often very dangerous. This usually elicits a smile from the clerk (who is probably thinking that I’m some sort of wise guy). But I am dead serious with that reply.

And I am proud to report that we sold two copies of Mein Kampf in the shop last week.

Erotica

2011-02-13T12:07:00.004-05:00

On the phone she sounded like a nice, older lady. Would we be interested, she wanted to know, in coming and taking a look at a collection of books she had. Seems they belonged to her husband, who was in a nursing home now. They were taking up space and it was time for them to find a new hone.

I told her that of course we’d be happy to take a look. I explained what we typically pay for paperbacks and hard covered books with dust jackets. She said that was fine.

“Just one thing,” she said. “They are erotica.”

Oh.

As a category, “erotica” covers a lot of ground. And not everyone shares the same definition. I wasn’t at all sure that my definition matched what this nice, grandmotherly-type lady was thinking.

She might be talking about some of the early “girlie” magazines of the 20s and 30s, for example. Those typically had lush cover illustrations showing lots of leg, or ladies in skirts that were split up to here with bust lines that went down to there. I could see how she would call these pulp magazines “erotica.”

Or maybe she was talking about some of those World War II-era pin-up babes. Most of those were fairly tame by today’s standards. Girls in bathing suits lounging by a pool, or dealing with a gust of wind while attempting to change a flat tire while wearing a too-tight outfit and heels. Yank Magazine stuff.

Either of those options would have been fine with me, for both are highly collectible… particularly if they are in good shape.

As I hesitated a second, trying to find a delicate way to frame my next question, and she said, “Playboys.”

Ah. Well. That made it easier, at least.

I explained how the only real value in that title was in the editions dating from the 50s, and maybe the early 60s. You might find something of a little higher value here and there with a special issue, but that generally, I’d only pay, at most, no more than 50¢ per magazine for dates from the mid-60s through the mid- to late-70s, and that, honestly, I wasn’t even interested in any dates later than 1980 or so. Unless, again, it was a special 40th Anniversary issue or something of the kind.

That was fine, she said. They were all boxed and out in the garage. The dates started around 1967 and she was sure there were issues that I’d take. So…sure, I’d visit her and we could made a deal.

Honestly, I felt a little more comfortable now. Playboys. Not horrible. We were both adults, after all. A sly smile, perhaps, and a “boys will be boys” shrug. At least I wasn’t going to have to go into a deep, philosophic discussion of reading habits and censorship and relative levels of depravity and such with someone who was, if not old enough to be my grandmother, then certainly older than my parents. I could do this.

“Three boxes of books, too.”

Not a problem at all. Here, I was thinking Book-of-the-Month Club editions of popular novels; after all, that’s what I usually encounter on missions of this kind. We made the appointment and I went to visit her early in the week.

We went straight to the garage and I confirmed immediately that her definition of erotica and mine were, indeed, different. There were the Playboys, as advertised. Hundreds of them, actually. Pretty much every issue from 1967 through 2005; almost 40 years. And they were pristine. The later years looked like they’d never been out of the plastic mailing sleeves. A few other titles, too, but nothing too outrageous.

But she wasn’t talking about the magazines when she told me of erotica. She was talking about the books. And those didn’t quite fit my idea of erotica. In fact, they were pretty darn close to my idea of straight-out, no-holds-barred (literally) porn.

Mass market paperbacks, with and without pictures. Trade paperbacks, with and (primarily) without text. Hardcover books in dust jackets and plain, brown wrappers. The kind of stuff that, in an earlier day and age, would have drawn jail time if they were sent through the mails.

Yowza.

Publishing restrictions had tightened up quite a bit during the 1960s. The Supreme Court was wrestling with their own definitions of obscenity. “I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it.” Nebulous lines in the sand regarding local standards. And statements of “redeeming social value.” Obviously, no one wanted to go to jail for publishing this stuff.

Still, there was a market. So titles were presented as pseudo-sociological and pseudo-psychological treatises, and were invariably written by people who could string “M.A.” or “Ph.D.” after their nom de plumes in an attempt to give the material the stamp of respectability. And if it turned out that folks were reviewing the literature with aims other than pure scientific curiosity, well, that certainly was beyond the control of the publishers.

So, Oral Sex and the Law, and The SwappersThe Sexually Aggressive Male, along with others of their ilk, came into general circulation. All were emblazoned with “EDUCATIONAL MATERIAL FOR ADULTS ONLY• Sale to minors prohibited”, or words to that effect, on the covers. Perhaps that was a sop to the censors. Or perhaps that was a bit of added promotion, for those who just didn’t get it. Maybe a little of both.

In any case, I now had three boxes of it. Along with about 15 years of Playboys.

After I had finished loading it all into the car, I returned to the garage to finish the transaction. I wrote out the receipt, thanked her and said all the nice things.

But as I was driving away, it occurred to me that this “erotica” hadn’t necessarily belonged to her husband. I’m not quite sure how I got the idea that at least some of these books were actually hers.

Maybe it was because she winked at me.

Birth of a bibliophile.

2010-10-08T21:05:00.002-04:00

A young gentleman came into the shop this afternoon; I'd guess he was about 14 or 15 or thereabouts. He was with his Mom. They were both “first-timers,” and were just poking about to see what they could see. After offering to show them where things were (“No thanks.”), I pointed out the coffee, invited them to help themselves and left them alone to poke.

A couple of minutes later he came up to the counter and asked about one of the books in our front display case. That’s the case that we keep locked since it contains some of our older and more expensive books.

We walked over to take a better look and when he pointed it out to me I saw what had drawn his attention.

It wasn’t prominently displayed, and it was one of the older volumes; and just a bit beat-up, actually. It wasn’t in tatters, but it did show its age. It was lying on its side and so it was a little difficult to tell what it was. Elocutions was stamped in gilt on the spine.

I opened the case and handed it to him. He opened it and his eyes got very wide when he saw it had been published in 1774. There were hand-written notes from previous owners on the inside front cover, and the pages were browned and foxed with age. The ink was starting to fade to sepia.

“Mom! You’ve got to see this!”

She came over and marveled with him, turning the pages gingerly. I just stood and watched. At this point they didn’t need any extra commentary from me.

“Can I get it?”

“Well, I don’t know. How much is it?”

It wasn’t cheap. This isn’t the case where I keep the $3 paperbacks, after all.

When I showed them the price written on a post-it note inside the front cover, she groaned. But he really wanted it, and she really wanted him to have it. And we have the Fall Sale coming next week anyway. So I cut them a pretty good deal and quoted a price that was about what I had originally paid for it. That sealed the transaction.

Later, after everything had been bagged and they were heading for the door, I asked him if he knew how to care for it.

He asked how, and that was a good sign.

“Well, for starters, you don’t carry it around like your Mom is carrying it now.” I indicated the plastic bag she was holding by the handles. He immediately took it from her and brought it to me.

“The first thing you do is make sure it stays laying on its side,” I said. “Gravity is the enemy and if you have it standing up on a bookshelf, gravity will tug at the pages and will start to pull them from the binding.”

“Next, keep it out of the sun. And, when you are done with it, keep it safe. Ideally, wrap it in acid-free paper. But at the very least, find a sturdy box when it can be kept safe from everyday wear and tear.”

I told him that the goal was not to restore it. “You’re not good enough at it; I’m not good enough at it.” His goal was to try to preserve it just as it is.

“Look at it this way,” I said. “In 150 years or so, there’s going to be a guy just like you who will want this book. Your job is to take care of it for him.”

He just looked at me and nodded. He got it.

Now, I can’t know for sure of course, but I have a suspicion that today I witnessed the birth of a bibliophile.

2010-09-19T20:32:00.004-04:00

Brian Keene is not the spookiest guy I know, but he does rank right up there in the general categories of creepy and, not parenthetically, talented. A two-time winner of the Bram Stoker Award, he is an up-and-comer in the field of horror fiction.

A novelist of some repute, he has published about a dozen titles, many short stories, and now he’s writing comics, too, for the likes of DC and Marvel. Several of his novels have been made into movies.

I am proud to say that Brian also frequents (haunts?) our shop. He will, on occasion, attend one of our events. Sometimes he has a troupe of other writers and friends with him. But more than once I’ve looked up to see him just poking around the stacks.

(And I keep trying to sell him on this idea of a story set in a used book shop with the kindly old—and wise—book seller being the hero who saves the day and possibly the world. He just gives me a smile and moves on. But I digress…)

Since Brian is a local guy, we have been lucky enough to host him for readings and signings. He was the Guest of Honor for our first HORRIBLE SATURDAY in 2008. That was a coup because he’s rather busy these days, squeezing in appearances at various and far-flung conventions when he can be pried away from his writer’s studio.

He was, in fact, the inspiration for our annual, day-long HORRIBLE SATURDAY event. It was during one of his visits that we were chatting and the idea popped up. He’s been a supporter ever since.

So when his latest book, A Gathering of Crows, was published last month, I decided that I had to have it so it would be ready and at-hand for an autograph the next time he stopped in. After closing up last night I stopped on the way home to pick up a copy from one of the chain stores (yes, a “real” retail book store and, yes, I paid the full retail price; but no, I didn’t join their frequent buyer’s club).

Later in the evening sitting at the kitchen table I opened the book and started the process. I began by reading the Acknowledgments, and thought it was pretty neat. Though my connection with Brian, I know a lot of the people he mentions there. In fact, we’ve hosted a number of them in the shop for readings, during HORRIBLE SATURDAYs and otherwise. Pretty neat, I thought.

And then I got down to the end of the list and there, right in front of the publishers and everyone, he lists “Jim Lewin of The York Emporium.”

That goes somewhat beyond the label of “neat.” So I herewith take back that crack about him being creepy.

I was surprised. I am truly flattered. I may have to go buy another copy so I can send it to my Mom.

If you should bump into Mr. Keene before I do, please tell him how I feel. (And, if you wouldn’t mind, would you put in a plug for the story line about the kindly old book seller (did I mention wise?) who uses his great mental agility and physical prowess to save the world and stuff. I can see a continuing saga here.)

In the meantime: buy the book.

Just ink and paper

2010-07-17T21:47:00.001-04:00

“I don’t know if you remember my father or not, but he used to just love coming in here.”

I was helping to unload the car. Four good-sized boxes of books. There were already so many boxes at the front of the shop this afternoon that I had a hard time finding space for four more. It has been that kind of week.

So I made non-committal noises about remembering who the gentleman was.

“He’d been pretty sick, so he hasn’t been in for at least a year,” he said.

“I’m really sorry to hear that,” I said. I finally found a clear space over by the coke machine and set the box down. There were more out in the car and I was ready for the next trip.

“He did love to come here.”

I straightened up and gave him a questioning look. There was more to come, I knew.

“He died last December, just two days after Christmas.”

“Oh. I’m really sorry.”

We stood looking at each other for a moment.

“It was his heart,” he said. “He had a heart attack last summer. Probably a stroke, too. And he started slipping after that. He really went downhill quickly after Thanksgiving. We didn’t think he’d make it to Christmas.” He shrugged; smiled. “But he did.”

I just nodded.

“This is the start of his library. There’s more. I’ll be boxing it up and bringing it in.”

“OK. We’ll try to find a good home for it.” I smiled.

“I know you will. So did he.”

“What do you mean?”

“I asked him, a couple of weeks before he died, what he wanted me to do with his library. He told me to take the books back to the Emporium. He got most of them here to begin with, and he said that you would know what to do…that you’d take good care of his books.”

“I will.” I said it in a whisper. It was almost a vow.

He nodded. “I know.” It was almost a prayer.

Sometimes I am not at all sure that what we are selling here is just ink and paper.

2010-06-15T10:27:00.005-04:00

It was just a couple of weeks ago that a lady walked into the shop with some autographs to sell. Usually I steer clear of those. They are hard to authenticate, and I have been burned before. Even when they are authenticated, they are hard to sell. York doesn’t seem to be a real hotbed of autograph hounds.

But this grouping was a little different. She had collected these herself, she said, during a trip to Hollywood some years ago. And included in the lot was Walter Lantz, complete with a sketch of Woody Woodpecker.

Woody Woodpecker is not now nearly as popular as he once was. But during his day, he was a pretty big deal. Not as big as Mickey Mouse, of course (but then, who was?), but during the 40s, 50s and even into the 60s, he was a “star” in the cartoon world. He had his own TV show, and a number of his shorts played regularly in the movie theatres.

Walter Lantz (1899 – 1994) got into the business early, with his first job when he was just 16. During the years of the Great Depression, he worked at Universal Studios first in the production department, then as a producer. He became an independent producer in 1940. That was the year Woody Woodpecker was developed.

The story goes that while on his honeymoon, Lantz and his bride Grace were continually disturbed by a woodpecker outside the window. It may have been kismet, because Lantz was searching for a new character at the time. Grace eventually became the voice of Woody.

I am a big believer in synergy. So I bought the autograph collection because there was synergy here.

We were in the process of planning our annual SCI-FI SATURDAY event (scheduled to take place this coming weekend). One element of the event will be the screening of Destination Moon. This is a classic, though seldom seen, science fiction movie.

The movie is notable on several accounts. It took over two years to produce (a long time back then), primarily because the technical problems were enormous. Simulating weightlessness, for example, in an age before computer animation was a real challenge. As was a realistic depiction of stars against the backdrop (they had to rig special lights—car headlights as it turned out—that would be bright enough without turning to odd colors when filmed in Technicolor). The detail went down to picking the right location on the moon for landing, so the earth would hang in the proper spot in the sky. (Destination Moon won the Academy Award for “Best Special Effects” in 1950.)

This was all done with technical and mathematical precision, and it was hailed at the time for its attention to scientific detail. One of the reasons for this was that the technical advisor, and the screenwriter, was a real noodge about such things.

His name was Robert A. Heinlein.

Heinlein inspired cast and crew and imparted his determination for precision to them, and to the production. Destination Moon was Heinlein’s only screenplay.

Heinlein, of course, was one of the BIG THREE of science fiction writers in the middle years of the 20th Century (the other two being Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke). I happen to have a connection with Heinlein through the work I’ve done on The Virginia Project, which I’ve blogged about before.

There were parts of this whole space flight business that were wholly alien to the audiences of the time. This was a solid 10 years before the Mercury and Gemini missions and 20 years before Apollo actually went to the moon. The concepts of weightlessness, air locks and all the rest, along with their resulting problems, hadn’t come into public awareness. Some education was required so audiences could grasp the levels of difficulty.

The same thing was required when Jurassic Park was produced. Some of the concepts of genetic manipulation and gene-splicing needed to be explained so audiences would know how dinosaurs could possibly be roaming around an island park off the coast of Central America.

In that movie, they spliced a bit of animation into the narrative. It was a technique they copied from Destination Moon.

A special guest star was hired for Destination Moon. They used Woody Woodpecker. It is a bit of animation stuck in the middle of a serious movie.

So when the Walter Lantz autograph, complete with a sketch of Mr. Woodpecker, walked in the door…yeah, I bought it.

But the synergy didn’t end there.

Last week I received a call from Windhaven Press, the good folks who brought me into The Virginia Project to begin with. Seems there’s one more piece they want me to do for them.

This week I am to receive Heinlein’s original manuscript for his only screenplay. They have now decided to include it in the project. So this week I am to undertake the conversion of the original script of Destination Moon from analog (i.e., typewritten sheets of paper) to digital files.

Douglas Adams, creator of The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, wrote another series of books about Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency. The series is based on the detective’s conviction of “the fundamental interconnectedness of things.”

Walter Lantz-Woody Woodpecker-Destination Moon-Robert A. Heinlein-The Virginia Project-SCI-FI SATURDAY-the fundamental interconnectedness of things.

I may be in science fiction heaven.

The Lady in White

2010-06-09T17:10:00.002-04:00

The Lady in White made an appearance in here on Sunday. It was her first in several months, at least the first of which I am aware.

I’ve blogged in the past about our alleged ghosts. Most of those posts have focused on one single entity and our attempts to communicate with him. His name, we have been led to believe, is Elmer. Those who know him tell me that he is comfortable in here and is actually rather friendly (as far as ghosts go). He has made himself known to visitors of the shop (although never to me), on several occasions going so far as to lead folks directly to a specific book that was sought.

{Ahem.}

I will admit to being frankly, and openly, skeptical about Elmer. Even if I were able to get my arms around and fully embrace the concept of a ghost--or some spectral entity that continues to possess individual consciousness--I very much doubt that such an entity would bother to show people around The York Emporium.

Yes, this is a fun place with lots of neat stuff to look at. But surely he/she/it would have better things to do than be a tour guide to our shop. In all the universe; in all of creation, there must be places that are even neater and more fun than The York Emporium. As much as it pains me to say this, I know it to be true.

And if I know that, Elmer must certainly know it.

So to say that I am skeptical about Elmer, well…that puts a positive spin on “skeptical.” I’m not buying it.

The Lady in White, however, may be something different.

Sunday afternoon a young lady, aged 9 or 10, came up to me and asked if we had any books about ghosts.

“Yes we do,” I replied. “Let’s go take a look.”

As we walked back to the juvenile section she told me that she wanted something about real ghosts, and not ghost stories.

“My Daddy doesn’t believe in ghosts,” she said. “But I do. I’ve seen them.”

“Oh? Have you really?” I said.

“Yes. I just saw one in here,” she told me.

“You did?”

“Yes. She was looking at a book over there,” she pointed. “She was just putting the book back on the shelf when she saw me. Then she went away.”

“What did she look like?”

“She was wearing a long white dress, with long sleeves. And she had a big white floppy hat.”

There is no way that this little girl could know that her description exactly matched every other description I’ve received of the Lady in White. Those descriptions came from people who did know each other, but who have each seen the Lady in White. Over the past year, there have been 3 or 4 individual and distinct sightings.

On each occasion she is in the same general area of the shop, but she isn’t always in the same spot or near the same book shelf. Sometimes she is looking at a book, other times she is walking down the aisles.

And on each occasion, the Lady in White has “gone away” just as soon as she becomes aware that she has been seen. She has been described as shy and skittish.

There are a number of implications here, all of them just a bit disquieting. The first is that she is aware of her surroundings (she examines books on a shelf, or walks down an aisle). Presumably she can read English (otherwise why would she look at a book?). This, in turn, means she can interact with these physical surroundings when she chooses (she appears to read book titles, she moves books on a shelf). And she is aware of people (she turns her head to look at them), and she is self-aware (she “goes away” when she becomes aware that she is seen). She makes choices. She changes her behavior depending upon circumstances. There is a "now" and a "here" for her. And she knows it. This would seem to imply individual consciousness.

I can laugh and joke about Elmer and his penchant as a tour guide. But I cannot dismiss the Lady in White quite so easily.

And that is the most disquieting thing of all.

A 'Record Riot'

2010-02-17T22:20:00.004-05:00

I know a guy who has a million records. That’s not hyperbole. In fact, when I say he has a million records, it is probably an understatement.

He lives in a 3-story house in the suburbs, and he barely has room for his kitchen table, TV and bed. Everywhere else, there’s records. You will see some on turntables (which are on the kitchen table and on the TV), but most are in boxes, stacked three or four high. And the boxes are everywhere, from the outer walls to the middle of the room. You walk from the kitchen, through the living room to the stairs and through the upstairs rooms following paths through the boxes.

Don’t even think about going into the basement.

And those are just the records he needs for everyday use. For the others, he has an off-site warehouse (again three stories, but with an elevator) and two additional storage facilities.

I know another guy who collects vintage recordings. Edison cylinders. Old Victrola platters (they only had recordings on one side). Early 78s of vaudeville routines and minstrel tunes. On the rare occasions when we’ve managed to get something in the shop that he doesn’t already have but needs to add to his collection, I am not allowed to tell his wife (1) how many pieces he’s bought (this time) or (2) how much he has paid. On at least one occasion, we’ve had to hold onto one of his purchases until he knew she wasn’t going to be around for a day, so he could bring it into the house without a lot of excess conversation.

It wouldn’t be accurate to say that he is hiding his acquisitions. But he is a wise man and he has learned that, in the interests of domestic tranquility, there are times when it is best not to flaunt his, er, independence in this regard.

These two gentlemen are well known, liked and even respected in their individual spheres of acquaintance. If you were to pass either on the street, you wouldn’t give either a second glance if you were unaware of their passion for their collections.

They aren’t alone.

Last September we re-set the store and were able to devote a room to music. We have cassettes and CDs, and even a few 8-tracks. We have books, of course. And we have some sheet music on the wall, and even a few posters and autographs (Bing Crosby, for example). But what we have more than anything else is vinyl.

Rock-and-Roll, Jazz, Classical, Spoken Word, Country, Comedy. And from the day we put that together, I have been amazed at how much we sell.

At first I thought that only the Rock-and-Roll would sell, so that’s where we put our focus. We had a few Classical albums stuck off in a corner, but then they started to sell (autographs, too…Pavarotti lasted less than a week). So we expanded our selection and sales expanded likewise.

Then we got a large selection of Jazz albums from an estate and those started to sell before I could even put them away. The same thing happened with Country.

On at least two Sundays last fall, the sales out of the record room exceeded the sales of the rest of the shop, combined. That, to me, was amazing. We have almost 19,000 sq. ft. of books and stuff, and only about 300 sq. ft. of records. Yet, there are times when more people are in the record room than there are in the rest of the shop.

So yes, I noticed. There is something going on here.

And that’s why, when another avid collector approached me in January with the idea of a vinyl swap meet, I agreed.

Publicly, we’re calling it a ‘Record Riot’. Privately, I am calling it an experiment. I am really very curious to see who is going to show up. Supposedly there are dealers coming from Baltimore, Lancaster and Harrisburg, in addition to York. I’m not charging anybody to set up or to get in. In fact, I will be spending money on coffee and goodies to be given away. (And it is likely that I may wind up holding onto purchases for a week or two, until wives will be out of town.)

It will be a worthwhile investment. I want to know what it is about vinyl that fosters this passion. This is old technology, several generations old. Cassette tapes and 8-tracks have come and gone. Audio CDs are almost a thing of the past at this point. Yet vinyl lives.

Purists will tell you the sound is better, and this may be true if you’re using a high-end system (most collectors don’t). Is it the “pops” and “crackling”? The whole routine of taking the disc out of the jacket, dusting it off, placing it on the turntable, hoping there are no scratches, and then sitting back for 20 minutes or so before you have to do it again? The graphics and liner notes on an album? Some connection with a lost and, perhaps, more innocent time in one’s life?

I hope to find out next Wednesday evening.

Besides, my P,LSB* mentioned that she may be going out of town for a weekend here in the next month or so.

*Poor, Long-Suffering Bride™

Names in the Books

2009-12-18T08:14:00.002-05:00

“About ten years ago I dropped off a box of books here and I am wondering if you still have any of them.”

I tried very hard not to roll my eyes. It was obviously going to be an interesting day.

“Well, frankly sir, I hope not. I would like to think that my inventory turns over a little more frequently than once every 10 years.”

Now I will freely admit that I was just a little grumpy yesterday morning. Maybe it was the jerk who cut me off on the drive in. Maybe it was the grounds that I spilled when I was making the coffee. Maybe it was the snowstorm that is supposed to arrive this weekend, on the Saturday before Christmas yet. Maybe it was a combination of things. But for whatever reason, I simply wasn’t in the mood for foolishness at that point.

“I cleaned out my grandfather’s house after he died, and they were his textbooks,” he said. “I just needed to get rid of them then, but I’m kind of sorry that I did, now.”

It turns out that this gentleman had grown up in York, but had moved to North Carolina twenty-some years ago. He comes back every so often to see relatives and visit the old haunts. On a whim, he stopped into the shop yesterday to see if any of those books were still here. It wasn’t unreasonable.

So I tried to appear enthusiastic as we headed back to where the books might be hiding. I pointed out the sections on medicine, on mathematics, on general science and on chemistry/physics. We do have some rather old textbooks on the shelves, so it was possible he could find something. I offered him a cuppa joe and then left him to his browsing. I went back to what I had been doing, muttering darkly to myself.

Honestly, I forget he was in the shop.

About an hour later he came up to the counter with a pile of books.

“I found one,” he said. He opened the front cover of the book and showed me his grandfather’s name. He seemed pleased.

“Great,” I said. “Looks like it’s a good day.”

He smiled. “Yeah. Yeah, it is.”

“Looks like you found some others, too” I said, pointing to his pile. It was a stack of old Child Craft books. This is a set of about 10 books full of children’s stories. We have several sets in the store and they are not the sort of thing that fly off the shelves. I was happy that he was going to take these. We have two or three other sets in the store and I wasn’t going to miss this particular set.

“I had these when I was a kid,” he said.

“Oh, good! And now you’ve got another set.”

“No, you don’t understand,” he said. “I had these.”

He opened up the front cover of one and pointed to the name, written in a child’s scrawl.

“That’s me. These were mine.”

I just stood and blinked.

“I have no idea how these got here. I haven’t lived in York in over twenty years. I didn’t bring these in., but here they are. And I need to take these with me.”

And he did.

And suddenly I didn’t feel quite as grumpy.

The Dead Are Mine

2009-09-27T10:45:00.004-04:00

Earlier this summer, we were called to help clean the books out an estate here in York. There were hundreds and hundreds of paperbacks involved; nearly 600 as I recall.

In the heat of battle, as it were, you don’t stop and examine every book in detail. There simply isn’t time. Often we’re one of the last calls, and when we get there we’re informed that everything has got to be out in just a few days, so it is either us or the dumpster. And if the book isn’t falling apart, it goes into the box to be sorted out later.

Such was the case with this estate. When I did finally get around to going through the boxes I came across a rather interesting novel, published in 1965, The Dead Are Mine by James E. Ross.

It is the story of a combat man, a sergeant of the regular army during World War II; specifically during the action at the Anzio beachhead during the early months of 1944. That was a particularly brutal period of the war, and this is a particularly brutal book about the everyday life and duties of a grave registration squad. It was their job to pick-up the bodies, German as well as American, and deliver them to the cemeteries for internment.

The Dead Are Mine is an extremely well written book. Originally published by David McKay Company, Inc. in 1963, the paperback edition from the estate (Cardinal #50075) was published in 1965. As far as I can determine, there was only one printing of each edition.

It tells a bleak and depressing story. And it has the ring of authority, with the sort of detail and color that doesn’t come from sterile research. Unlike Harriet Beecher Stowe, for example (who never saw a plantation nor had met a slave prior to writing Uncle Tom’s Cabin), it was clear to me that Mr. Ross had seen this side of the war.

Which led me to wonder what else he had written. The answer, apparently, is nothing. Searches on various online databases only made reference to this one book. And there is virtually no biographical information available at all. There was one reference, however, to a story about him published in the December 3, 1963 edition of Life magazine.

Finding an old issue of Life isn’t that big a problem, if you happen to be in the used book business. One of the fringe benefits of the business is that I often come in contact with old issues of magazines. And this past Tuesday, while visiting yet another estate, the issue presented itself. And there was the article, buried deep (page 110) within.

It turns out that Mr. Ross wasn’t a particularly nice man. The article was written because the book was just being published. He was 43 at the time, and had spent 20 of those 43 years in prison for a variety of reasons. He was a pool hustler, a con man, a thief and a murderer. As a sideline, he was also an alcoholic and borderline drug addict. He wrote the book in his cell, on a dare.

The book really was his story.

He was in the army, as a sergeant, and he was at Anzio. As punishment for deserting the battlefield, he had been assigned to pick-up bodies and deliver them to the cemetery at the beachhead. There is no black humor here, as there is in Catch 22, or in Bill Mauldin’s Willy and Joe cartoons. There is no we’ll-get-through-this-togetherness, as there is in Audie Murphy’s To Hell And Back. But there is detail and color--the mud and the slime, the bleak occurrences, the descriptions of newly-dead bodies and mangled body parts and wounds and bloody, burned uniforms and the aftermath of sudden and violent death. And the outlook of a short and bleak future with no end, other than the very real probability of adding yet another body to the pile, in sight.

Mr. Ross’ descriptions were accurate because they were real. He had seen and experienced them all firsthand. There was little that came from his imagination; most of it just came from his memory. And the man had a talent for putting it all down on paper in vivid and horrible detail.

I don’t know what happened to Mr. Ross; I can find nothing more recent than that one article. He may be living still, perhaps in a prison cell. If he is, he would be close to 90 now.

Life said an agent was attempting to sell the book to a movie studio, but no movie was ever made. Life also said that Mr. Ross was working on a second novel, but if that was ever finished it was never published.

But I do know that, if he did nothing else, Mr. Ross delivered one truly remarkable book. Maybe that was enough.

The Virginia Project

2009-09-21T10:04:00.004-04:00

For the better part of the past two years, Pam and I have been involved in The Virginia Project. Our moonlighting efforts were wrapped up a week or two ago, and now the story can be told.

The project involves the work of novelist Robert A. Heinlein, and our small part in it is something of which we are really quite proud.

Robert A. Heinlein, of course, was one of the biggest names in science fiction during the middle years of the 20th century. If he wasn’t the biggest, he was certainly up there in the top 5, or even the top 3…his only real competition came from the likes of Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov.

Heinlein (pronounced Hine-line) is probably best known for Stranger in a Strange Land. Originally published in 1961, the novel relates the experiences of Valentine Michael Smith, a human raised on Mars who journeys back to Earth and makes some profound changes in our alleged culture. The book tackles a variety of topics including organized religion, big government, individual responsibility, money, sexual freedom and morality offering (for the time) some rather radical views. It was a certified BIG DEAL during the 60s and wildly popular among the counter-culture of the time.

Since its original publication, it has never been out of print. In 1991 an unexpunged edition was published. Putnam, who first published the book, had demanded some 60,000 words (nearly one quarter of the original manuscript) be deleted because they feared some of the references were just too far over the top. Critics are still quibbling about whether or not it was a good idea to put those 60,000 words back.

It wasn’t his only book, of course. Heinlein’s first professional publication came in Astounding Science Fiction magazine in 1939 with a short story, “Life Line.” He was prolific, turning out short stories, novels and screen plays through the 40s (with time off to serve during World War II), 50s, 60s, 70s and into the 80s. He died in 1988.

Upon his death, Virginia, his wife of 40 years, had the presence of mind to renew his copyrights. She supervised the posthumous publication of a number of his short stores with such works as For Us The Living, Tramp Royale, Grumbles From The Grave and Requiem. She died in 2003.

The work of the Heinlein Trust continues. Called “The Virginia Project” in honor of Mrs. Heinlein, the Trust is reissuing the complete works of Robert A. Heinlein as a set of premium quality (acid-free paper; leather bound) books. There will be 44 volumes when it is complete, and the set carries a rather hefty price tag of $1,500. The press run is limited to 2,000 copies of each volume.

Each volume is going back to the original-original, just the way Robert and God had intended…and before various editors got their hands on it. To do this, scholars are working with the Heinlein archives, sometimes pouring over the typewritten manuscripts, to ensure that everything is, indeed, original.

The heavy-lifting on the project is being undertaken by Windhaven Press of Auburn, NH. Nancy Hanger and Andrew Phillips, owners of Windhaven, are well-qualified for the task. Authors in their own right, they bring years of editing and production experience to the project. Nancy is the person we thank for allowing us to participate.

In preparing the various volumes for the printing press, 1st printings of 1st editions have been secured. The good news is that hardcopies of these books have been found (a number of them, Robert’s personal copies). The bad news is that these are hardcopies, produced long before contemporary electronic print production methods were developed. The hardcopies needed to be converted to digital files before production could proceed.

And that’s where we came in. We did the conversions.

Every couple of months a box would arrive at our doorstep (well, actually to the shop). Contained in each box were 1st-1st’s. We actually had Heinlein’s personal copies of some of his books in our hot little hands. We would clean them, scan them and do first-pass editing (spell-checking, etc.). The completed files would be compiled onto CDs and returned (along with the hardcopies, alas) so Nancy and Andrew could work their additional magic.

We did 32 titles in the series. Our names won’t appear anywhere in the credits; our roles were minor and downstream. Still, they were our roles. We did it. And there is a degree of quiet satisfaction that comes from knowing that we had a part in preserving the work of the Grand Master.

Thank you Robert, for the work you gave us. Thank you Virginia, for preserving it. And thank you Nancy and Andrew, for allowing us to participate.

Codici Segreti

2009-09-14T11:04:00.005-04:00

A week or so ago, the more-or-less daily mail delivery brought us a happy little package from HarperCollins Publishers.

Does it sound too high-falutin’ to say that HarperCollins is our publisher? Perhaps. It is not quite accurate in any case. More properly, I should say that HarperCollins was our publisher.

Pam and I were fortunate enough to have signed a multiple book deal with HarperCollins several years ago. Under the pen names of “P.J. Huff and J.G. Lewin” we wrote four books of popular history: How To Feed An Army, Witness To The Civil War, How To Tell A Secret and Lines of Contention: Political Cartoons of the Civil War. In conjunction with The Smithsonian Institution, HarperCollins was the publisher.

The genre was “popular history”, which means the books were long on stories and short on footnotes. They were all accurate, of course. Various curators from The Smithsonian read the pre-publication drafts and made suggestions and requested changes; we needed their approval before going to press. Everything we said required documentation and we were prepared with at least two sources to backup the facts and conclusions we made. Still, the books were designed to be fun reads, and not serious, ground-breaking works of history. (Although I pride myself as having been first to make the connection in print between Watergate's "Deep Throat" and the so-called "Smoking Gun" tape.)

Writing the books was a fun exercise. And we made a few bucks. But not a lot, actually. The contracts stated that HarperCollins would pay us an advance against future royalties. But in order for us to actually get any future royalties, the books would need to sell-though their initial print runs. That makes sense. The publishing company is in it for profit, after all, and you can’t expect them to give away money if they’re not making any. Maybe if we'd had an agent we could've gotten a better deal. But that wasn't as important at the time as just getting a deal.

None of the books sold-through. One of them, Witness To The Civil War, did generate additional revenues. It was featured one month by the History Book Club and Easton Press bought the rights (from HarperCollins) to produce a beautiful leather-bound edition. We didn’t get anything extra for that, other than a copy of that edition (now on display inside the shop), and, perhaps, some bragging rights.

But it was all a pretty wild ride.

How To Feed An Army got us on national television when the Food Network did a show on military cookery. We were on for all of about 90-seconds. But…we were on.

And, when How To Tell A Secret was published, we did a national radio tour. For a period of about three weeks, we were guests on radio shows across the country. Over the phone interviews with upwards of 40 radio talk shows. One was at 5:30 on a Sunday morning (live, or as live as I could be at that hour), but most were mid-day. And they were in some pretty big markets…Boston, Philadelphia, Denver, Los Angeles. One interview was supposed to last 15-minutes, but went on for the better part of an hour-and-a-half (we were a pretty big deal in Cleveland that afternoon). It was all kinda fun.

The last of the books, Lines of Contention, was published in November 2007; just about two years ago now. And while all are still available on Amazon.com, chances are you won’t find many on the shelves of the national chains of book sellers. And that’s OK; they’ve run their course.

But that’s also why the package from HarperCollins was happy. For it contained authors’ copies of Codici Segreti. It seems that an Italian publisher, AVALLARDI, bought the reprint rights of How To Tell A Secret and issued it in Italian.

Yet another notch in the belt, as it were: international publishing. Again, we don’t get a nickel out of it. But that’s OK. We do get more braggin’ rights.

And I’ve just exercised those rights. Thank you for participating.

Time to 'bite the bullet'

2009-09-07T12:38:00.004-04:00

Our cabinet of curiosities at the front of the shop (I refer to it as my little museum of historical insignificia), contains several Civil War-era bullets. Both are lead. One appears to be a .69 caliber round shot; the other is a Minie Ball. They are moderately interesting in themselves, although not particularly uncommon in this part of the world.

What makes these two particularly interesting, at least to me, is that both carry teeth marks.

These bullets have a history. Someone, sometime, chewed on them. And that begs the question: why would anyone chew on a lead bullet? Or, in other words, why would anyone, literally, bite the bullet?

In common use, “to bite the bullet” means to bear down on a project, usually an onerous one, and just get it done. No matter how unpleasant the prospect is, you’ve got to just bite the bullet and do it.

The story goes that the phrase actually originated during the Civil War. On the battlefield, if a soldier was hit in an arm or a leg by a bullet, the bone would just shatter with shards and splinters of bone spreading in all directions. There was no way to repair the damage and the wound was actually life-threatening. The only remedy was amputation.

At the same time, anesthesia was rare. So when a soldier saw the surgeon approach in blood-splattered apron, he knew he was in for a hard couple of minutes. He would be laid on what passed for an operating table and his buddies would hold him down while the surgeon would wipe off his saw and begin.

Since there were no pain killers, the soldier would have a bullet placed between his teeth so he wouldn’t bite off his tongue or scream with the pain. Hence, teeth marks on the bullets.

It is a compelling story. It makes sense. It conforms to our notions of the Civil War and of the then-state of medicine. It conjures images of battlefields and of the times.

Turns out it is also wrong.

Civil War historian Janet Bucklew was our guest for "First Friday" this past weekend. She’s just written a book about Henry Janes, a country doctor from Vermont who served during the war. Janet, a Research Historian, is a veteran ranger at the Gettysburg National Military Park, and is also on staff at the National Museum of Civil War Medicine in Frederick, MD. You'd think she knows whereof she speaks.

Janet's presentation focused on Dr. Janes as a platform for discussing Civil War medicine in general. During the Q&A following her talk, she made a comment—almost as an afterthought—that belied the myth and burst my bubble. Soldiers never chewed bullets during the procedures, she said. The danger of swallowing was too great. Besides, there was anesthesia, so there was no real need.

The teeth marks probably came from pigs. According to Janet, the human jaw simply isn’t strong enough to cause the indentations in the bullets, while a pig’s jaw is. She said that swine would root around the battlefield following action, and would dine upon the corpses there and would at times wind up with a bullet in their mouth. That’s rather grizzly, but that makes sense.

Frankly, I like my story better. It certainly conjures a more romantic mental image.

I’ve tried to verify my version, but I can’t. The sources I’ve checked do repeat my version, but there are no attributions; in fact they all seem to be quoting one another, or talk about “common knowledge”. That’s simply not good enough when it comes to historical accuracy.

At the same time, I cannot verify Janet’s version either. But it does make more sense when you stop and think about it.

The problem with history is that you’re always studying someone else’s version of the facts. Even if you go back to primary sources, you’re dealing with someone’s impression or memory or view of what was said or what happened where. And you have to judge the source: how close were they to the event? Is their story self-serving or embellished? Are they telling the entire story or just what they want their audience to know?

So which version of the story do I tell when showing off our cabinet of curiosities? Maybe both, with an emphasis on history being what you make of it.

And that’s pretty much the point anyway, isn’t it?

So...we might have a ghost?

2009-07-09T13:54:00.005-04:00

Last night the crack ghost hunting team from PARA (the Paranormal Activity Research Association) took up residence within the confines of the shop to see who else might be in residence. Armed with audio and video recorders and a variety of electronic gizmos, they looked and probed and questioned and were generally open to communicating with anyone on the “other side” who may have been here.

I must confess to a considerable amount of skepticism about all this. I don’t believe in ghosts. And I honestly don’t think we’ve got one. At the same time, there are people I respect who tell me that I am 100% wrong on this score. So I’ve elected to doubt my infallibility, and follow this through to the end.

(In case you’re just now coming in on our paranormal exploits, you may want to read some of my other blog posts, from January 3 and July 7, for some background.)

We turned off most of the lights, and the stereo, and sat quietly. And we asked questions; simple, direct questions. Things along the lines of, “What is your name?” And “Do you like it here?” And “Do you mind answering some questions for us?” Each question was followed by a period of silence when we waited for an answer.

We did three different recording sessions, in three different areas of the shop: one by the Westerns and comic books, once in the Whodunits and once up-front near the coffee table. Each session lasted about 30-minutes.

Three different digital audio recorders were going during each session. The theory is that although we might not hear an answer, the recorders would. The files were to be downloaded into a computer and analyzed using special software. Any responses we received (called EVPs, or Electronic Voice Phenomena) would be isolated and enhanced.

I took some pictures of all this, and posted them on our facebook page. If you'd like to take a look, click here.

Kathy Rothenberger, the team’s sensitive member, said she was receiving a number of impressions. She claimed to feel a “psychic pressure” which indicated, to her, a presence. She said that she believed that there were actually multiple entities in here.

Much of this eminated, she said, from our “Blue Monster” display of military artifacts and political buttons. But not all.

She said that she was hearing a muffled conversation between men (two or more) and a woman. It was faint, though, and she couldn’t make out what they were saying…rather like the sound you’d hear from a TV set several rooms away. It sounded, she said, animated and jovial.

She also said that she was getting the feeling of some sort of medical emergency. She had the impression of bandages and either alcohol or ether and something (someone?) being crushed.

Brett Nease was the guy with the electronic gear. After we had finished the third session, he downloaded the audio from one of the recorders to his laptop, and started running it through the analyzing software.

One minute and thirty-five seconds into our first session he detected the first EVP. He found the second about a minute later in that same session.

I heard them. They are distinct and they do sound like a male voice answering a question… but they are pretty faint, and I couldn't make out what was being said. I've got to say that it did sound like the voice way saying something. According to Brett, more work needs to be done to hear exactly what is being said.

He’s going to do the work. He anticipates that by this time next week, he will have at least the preliminary results. I am to look for a report from them then.

When I get those results, I will pass them along.

And all this is to say: we might have a ghost.

Really? We do have a ghost?

2009-07-07T21:40:00.003-04:00

Earlier this year I was informed that we have a ghost in the shop. Two customers told me as much after they had actually interacted with it when they were shopping this past January. (If you care to check my blog post of January 3, you’ll find the story). Frankly, I hadn’t given it much thought since then. If we do have one, he’s never said anything to me and I am pretty OK with that.

But two weeks or so ago, our entity made himself known once again during our Horrible Saturday event in late June.

One of our invited guests for the day was PARA (the Paranormal Activity Research Association). These guys are a pair of York-based ghost hunters. Brett does his hunting with technology…special cameras and recorders and gizmos and such. Kathy does her hunting with impressions, since she claims to be sensitive.

Prior to them taking the stage, as it were, for their presentation, Kathy was looking around the shop. Just as she was reaching for one book, another slid/jumped/fell/flew off the shelf (you can pick the appropriate term) and hit her in the arm. It turns out, she says, that this is the one she was supposed to have. Kathy told me about the incident just a few minutes later as I happened to be walking past. At that point, I had not told her about the report I had already received on our alleged ghost.

She also told me that she believes that our entity’s name is Elmer. (That also happens to be my son-in-law’s name and, if he is reading this: Elmer, I swear that I am not making this up.)

This past weekend one of the ladies who first reported the entity’s presence came into the shop. I was bringing her up-to-date on what Kathy of PARA had told me. And she said,”Oh yeah! But I’ve forgotten…didn’t his name start with ‘E’?”

Pause.

In January she didn’t know a name. In January, she couldn’t tell me if our ghost was a he or a she.

And when she was in the shop this past weekend, I hadn’t yet said anything about the ghost being named Elmer.

I think it may be time for some spooky music.

What the heck is going on here?

We are going to attempt to find out. Tomorrow night PARA is coming to do a full-fledged investigation. They will be setting up after we close shop for the night and after all the distracting day-time noises are gone.

They’re bringing special cameras. And recorders. And gizmos. And Kathy.

And I will be there, too. I may not be excited about it, but I will be there. (If you should ever see a video, you will know it is me because I will be the guy sitting in the corner being very VERY aware of every noise and every flying book in the place.)

Stay tuned. I will keep you posted……

Mr. Adam

2009-07-03T16:56:00.004-04:00

A week or so ago we were working our way through another estate. We had boxed literally hundreds of paperbacks to bring back to the store. During the heat of battle, we don’t really stop to look at what’s there. The mission is to get it out of there, and then back to the shop where we could go through it.

As we were going through it, some pretty interesting things started to emerge. The paperbacks were vintage; many of them pre-1960. This doesn’t necessarily make them more valuable (often it is just the opposite), but it does make them much more fun.

With all due respect to the artists and writers working today (and much respect is, indeed, due), there’s nothing quite like the sensational artwork to be found on a 25¢ paperback novel of the early 1950s.

So as I was sitting and sifting through the piles and enjoying the covers, I came across one that just made me stop and grin. It is one of the (now) lesser-known novels of a (now) lesser-known novelist, but it also happens to be one of my favorite books of all time: Mr. Adam.

Whenever we get one in here at the shop, it doesn’t last too long because I am always recommending it. “Pushing it” is probably a more accurate way of putting it.

It is very much a work of the Cold War. The idea is that one of the major powers conducts a nuclear test that goes wrong. Sub-atomic particles are unleashed and spread across the globe sterilizing every male, including the unborn in the womb.

All, that is, except one milquetoast scientist who happened to be inspecting the lower levels of a lead mine at the time of the accident. He is suddenly the only fertile male left on the planet, and he will be the father of the human race. He is Mr. Adam. And just as suddenly this guy is absolutely irresistible to every woman on the planet.

That’s how the book begins. What the book is about is what happens to him once the government gets their hands on him, tries to regulate him, and builds a huge bureaucracy around him. It is a very funny book.

It was authored by Pat Frank, who was best known for his post-apocalyptic novel Alas, Babylon.

He was born Harry Hart Frank on May 5, 1908 in Chicago. He started his career as a journalist and fought World War II behind a typewriter for the Office of Strategic Services (the OSS, precursor of the CIA) and the Office of War Information.

Mr. Adam, published in 1946, was his first novel. It sold over 2-million copies. And it was followed by Hold Back the Night, An Affair of State, Forbidden Area and Alas, Babylon. He also wrote and published a non-fiction book, How To Survive The H-bomb And Why, in 1962.

He made no bones about the fact that he wrote a book whenever he needed some cash. The rest of his time was devoted to liquor and women…not necessarily in that order. Apparently he was quite a lady killer in his day. There are reports of people coming to visit him who had to make their way through jungles of bottles and ladies (plural) in various stages of decency. And that was pretty much the regular state of affairs around his writing studio.

Alas, Babylon was a whopping success when it was first published in 1959. Fifty years later it is still a staple of high school reading lists.

Frank died on October 12, 1964.

Doing a quick search of the shop, I find that we have copies of several of his books in here. Some are in our Vintage Fiction area. Others are in Science Fiction. But this particular book is going onto the paperback rack at the front, near the register. I’ll put it there not because it is a place of honor, but because it will make it much easier for me to point it out to the next customer who comes in “just looking for a good read.”

I can’t think of a better book to fit that description.

Is My Wife In There?

2009-06-25T19:36:00.003-04:00

***RING***

I’m at the back of the shop working with a customer. Naturally. Just about as far from the phone as I can be while still being in the shop. I make my excuses and start moving toward the desk.

***RING***

I’m rounding the corner now, moving past the Science Fiction and Horror sections, and I pick up the pace. I don’t like to run in here (me running isn’t a pretty sight, and I am not in great shape), but I know that I only get four rings before the call goes into the answering machine, and most folks hang up rather than leave a message.

***RING***

Now I break into what passes for “sprinting” on my part. I fly past the vintage paperbacks (OK…”fly” is also a relative term), up past the cash register and get to the desk just as…

***RING***

“This is the York Emporium.”

“Yeah. Hi. Is this a used book store?”

“Yes, sir.”

“On West Market Street?”

“Yep.”

“Do you have romance novels in there?”

“Uh…well, yes we do.”

“Is my wife in there?”

Suddenly I know how every bartender in the world feels when they get a call from someone's wife.

“Well, uh, she may have been. Can you describe her?”

He does. And, yes, she was here. She had just left. Now what do I do?

This is a bit of a dilemma. On the one hand, I don't want to be caught in a lie. On the other hand, it certainly wouldn't be stellar customer service to be the cause of a customer (a paying customer, I might add) catching the ire of a husband. As a general rule, I try to stay on the good side of husbands. So.....I vamp.

“Well, yes she was here. And I've got to say that she really felt good about herself, sir. She bought a couple of books, but they are on sale this week and she saved about 35%. She only spent about 6-bucks. She said her husband would be proud of her because that was a lot less than she had spent last time and that she was going to bring him in before the end of the sale.”

“Oh! OK. Well...good. Thank you.”

“Bye.”

Maybe I should start asking folks if they need me to supply alibis. This could be a new profit center.

Horrible Saturday, for the love of pathos

2009-06-18T15:38:00.005-04:00

This coming weekend we’re hosting “Horrible Saturday”. It is to be a day-long celebration of the horror genre, and it will include author appearances and book signings (makes sense for a book shop), movie screenings, presentations and, of course, the Screaming Contest.

It really isn’t a convention, at least in the contemporary sense of the term. I don’t think we will have too many people in costume (although, having said that, I do know of at least one guy who is coming as the Grim Reaper) and we won’t be printing up special T-shirts of anything like that. It is simply a gathering of like-minded folks to enjoy each other’s company and, if we’re lucky, to scare the bejezus out of each other.

I am always struck, when I start putting one of these things together, by the range and depth of individual activities that we can schedule.

We have two local (Central PA) authors coming, for example. One of them, J.F. Gonzalez, is a true “up and comer” in the genre. Last year he made the decision to quit his day job and devote himself full-time to his craft. He’s already published a number of books and he’s got another coming in July (bad timing, that…we won’t have copies in time for this weekend). The other, John Maclay, is considered a true expert in the field. He’s an author himself, but he’s also been a publisher, an editor and a critic. This is fairly big-time stuff.

We’ve also got a film historian-turned-author in Fred Wiebel. Fred is the guy who tracked down a copy of a “lost” film produced by The Edison Studios. In 1910, they produced the first film based on Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein. Shot in glorious B&W, Fred has restored the film and put it on DVD. He’ll be telling the tale and showing the film.

Then there’s the Paranormal Activity Research Association. Ghost hunters. From York, no less. They’ve just completed a series of investigations into reported activities taking place in some of the historic sites in York County. And they’ve got photos and audio recordings.

And Kent Courtney, who is almost becoming a regular here, will become Edgar Allen Poe for the day, with readings and a discussion of the writer’s life.

Now, none of these folks will be making any money off this. Yeah, they may sell a book or two, but that would hardly be enough to fairly compensate them for their time. They’re really coming to make their presentations for the sheer joy of it. They love this stuff. They like talking about it. They like sharing it.

They’re planning to have a good time.

And so it is with every “genre” day we do here. We’ve already had our annual “Butternut and Blue” (Civil War) day. Later this summer, we’ve got “Sci-Fi Saturday” (August 15). And in the fall, our “Celtic Autumnal”.

Every day features a line-up of 6, 8 or 20 guests. Nobody makes any real money. But everyone has a good time.

We listen to presentations. We play games. We watch movies and eat popcorn. This weekend, we shall even scream a bit (a contest, with braggin’ rights to the title of “Best Screamer in York County” caps the day).

And the neat part is that I really don’t have to go seek folks to come and make presentations. It is all very Zen-like: I am merely open to them, and they come to me.

From where I sit, “Horrible Saturday” doesn’t look all that horrible to me.

Happy Birthday, Benny

2009-06-04T19:23:00.003-04:00

This past weekend, my Dad and I celebrated the 100th anniversary of the King of Swing.
All weekend long we played Benny Goodman in the shop and, honestly, he never sounded better.

Benjamin David Goodman was born on May 30, 1909 in Chicago. He was the 9th of 12 children born to a poor family. His parents were recent emigrants to the United States from what is now Poland.

He picked up the clarinet when he was 10, and by the time he was 16 he was playing professionally around Chicago with a number of bands, most notably the Ben Pollack Orchestra. It was with Pollack that he made his first recordings in 1926. Just as the Great Depression was getting under way, he made his way to New York and started earning a reputation as a solid session player.

He worked in Broadway orchestras (for at least one show he shared the pit with Glenn Miller), in dance bands and recording under his own name and as a sideman for other bandleaders (here’s some trivia: he was one of Red Nichols’ Five Pennies).

In 1934, NBC was putting together a regularly scheduled three-hour music program called Let’s Dance. They were looking for 3 bands to fill each slot: a “sweet” band, a “dance” band and a “hot” band. Benny put together a group, auditioned, and was selected as the “hot” band.

That was the good news. The bad news was that the program would air live, beginning at 9 PM. Benny’s “hot” band didn’t get on the air until 11; long after his target audience (high school kids) was in bed. The radio broadcast lasted just one year.

After the show was canceled, Benny took the band on the road, meeting with only modest success. Few outside the New York dance clubs had heard of him.

Until he got to the West Coast. The 11 PM slot in New York was an 8 PM slot in California and he was a hit. But he didn’t know that. When he got to his booking at The Palomar Ballroom in Los Angeles, his shows were booked to capacity (the ballroom could hold 4,000 dancing couples). It was a phenomenon. Unexpected. And unprecedented.

Newspapers across the country carried stories about this new craze. Hot music! Hot dancing (they called it “jitterbug”)!

Benny was an innovator. In addition to his Big Band, he had several smaller combos, including a quartet (Benny Goodman-Gene Krupa-Teddy Wilson-Lionel Hampton). To this day, in my opinion, no one was better when they played live.

His was also the first commercial band to mix white and black musicians on stage. That was a big deal in the 1930s. And long before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in big league sports.

My Dad and I didn’t agree on much musically. He liked Woody Herman (I thought he was OK, maybe) and Stan Kenton (I confess that I still don't get Stan Kenton). I rather liked Glenn Miller, and my Dad allowed that Glenn was certainly better than, say, anyone who played rock 'n roll.

But we did agree on all things Benny.

When I was a kid, every Sunday morning my Dad would put his Benny Goodman records on the stereo (the stereo that I wasn't allowed to touch, and the stereo that NEVER played my Beatles or Paul Revere and the Raiders records). That was my introduction to Swing. It actually was a pretty good introduction.

The world lost a giant in 1986 when Benny Goodman passed. I lost a giant in my world last year when my Dad passed.

Still, my Dad and I had a pretty good time together this past weekend playing Benny Goodman CDs here in the shop. (And, yes, I did crank it up just a bit.) Thank you, Mr. Goodman, for all you gave to us. And thank you, Mr. Lewin, for introducing me to all things Benny.

Let’s do it again.

Ted Hake

2009-05-04T22:10:00.005-04:00

It was a little over 25 years ago that I was in Madison, Wisconsin for a funeral. With some time on my hands on a Saturday afternoon, I was wandering around a Mall that happened to be hosting an antiques show. And there, off in a corner, sat one lonely little guy with a booth full of political campaign buttons.

I wandered over and I was hooked.

Here was a piece of history that I could afford. The buttons were fairly inexpensive. They were colorful. Each told a piece of a story. And each was a tangible link with the past.

So I bought about a dozen of the things, from various elections, and I was off the to races.

I was living in Massachusetts at the time and, wanting to know more about this facet of collecting, I visited the local bookshop. And there on the shelf I found a book that gave a little background and contained a lot of pictures, along with estimated values. It would serve as my major resource for years. I used it so much, in fact, that the pages came loose from the binding. So I gathered those pages together in a loose-leaf notebook. I still have it.

By the standards of the American Political Items Collectors, my accumulated history is fairly small—a little more than 2,700 pieces. Still, I like it and, much to the dismay of my poor, long-suffering bride (PLSB, © 2009), I still add to the collection. Picked up quite a few last fall, as you might imagine from all three major parties (Democrats, Libertarians and Republicans).

That tattered book came in handy as I poured over auction catalogs that I’d receive in the mail from this outfit in Pennsylvania. I couldn’t afford to bid on many of the items, but I could dream. And, actually, I did bid, and win, on occasion.

It turns out that the same guy who hosted the auctions wrote that tattered book. That was pretty neat. And it gave me a little extra confidence in what I was bidding on.

So now we fast-forward twenty-five years and I find myself in York running a used book and curiosity shop. And I make the happy discovery that the guy who wrote the book, and ran the auctions, is also in York.

It was probably a flimsy excuse, I admit, but I used it to make a phone call and invite myself over to his office. For the better part of 25 years I have been worshipping him from afar, as it were, and now I got a chance to shake his hand. And then I made the happier discovery that Ted Hake is really quite a nice guy.

Ted is a recognized expert in the field of political items and in popular American culture. Literally, he is he guy who wrote the book(s) on the subject. He has often appeared on public television’s Antiques Roadshow as one of the experts.

And I was really excited to learn that he had elected to bring some of his items into the shop and offer them to our customers.

Ted Hake! Right here! This is big-time stuff!

Looking at his display is almost like visiting a museum. He’s got original Mickey Mouse watches in there. Buttons celebrating “Lucky Lindy’s” solo flight across the Atlantic. Souvenirs from Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. Cowboy memorabilia (Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, Hopalong Cassidy). And political campaign buttons.

He fits right in with the “& stuff” in our “used books & stuff” sign out front.

So, yeah, I had my picture taken with him when he came to set up. Is that blatant hero worship?

Yes. Yes, it is.

Who's buried in Grant's tomb?

2009-04-27T13:37:00.004-04:00

Yesterday we hosted “Butternut and Blue” at the shop. It was the first of our “genre days” for the year. This one focused on the Civil War. There were re-enactors and black powder musketry firing in the parking lot (complete with a skirmish between Confederate and Union regiments), a talk and book signing by historian/author Scott Mingus, Sr., a sing-along of period songs led by Kent Courtney and a Jeopardy-style game testing general knowledge of the war. A fun time was had by all.

The question for the final round in the game was “Who is buried in Grant’s tomb?” I’ve posted the entire game on our facebook page.

Now, the question is interesting in itself. It was first made popular by that great American philosopher Groucho Marx on his game show You Bet Your Life. Groucho would ask the question, supposedly an easy one, to make sure each contestant would win something.
No one was ever to walk away empty-handed from a meeting with Groucho.

But it is a trick question. Grant’s Tomb is a mausoleum and, as such, no one is actually BURIED there. In a mausoleum, the remains are above ground. They are entombed, not buried. So the correct answer is that no one is buried in Grant’s tomb. However, both President Grant and his beloved wife, Julia Dent Grant, are entombed there. (Groucho would accept, "no one", "Grant", "Mrs. Grant" and all varieties of the above, as correct answers to the question.)

The story of Grant’s Tomb is an interesting one, too. There is such a place, of course. It is located on Manhattan’s Upper West Side and is open to the public and staffed/maintained by the National Park Service. This is fitting, since Grant signed the bill establishing the first national park (Yellowstone) in 1872.

Grant’s Tomb was constructed using private funds raised by subscription. More than 90,000 people—mostly Americans, but many from countries around the world—contributed to the fund. Pennies, nickels and dimes flowed in and some $600,000 was raised. That’s a staggering amount (it comes to more than $12,750,000 in 2009 dollars).

Quite a tribute to this man.

It is hard for us to imagine how big a hero he was. Today we have “superstars” and people who are famous for being famous. That simply wasn’t the case then. The only real form of mass communication was the newspaper, and at the time of Grant’s death in 1885 most newspapers didn’t have images; some published line drawings or etchings, but that was about it. (Photos didn’t start to appear with any regularity until the early 1900s.)

But Grant was a hero; the only one to rival his popularity was George Washington. He was certainly bigger than Lincoln in his day.

Grant, not Lincoln, was viewed as the savior of the Union. “Look at the flag. If there are more than 34 stars there, thank General Grant.”

Before the war, he wasn’t that much of a soldier (although he did distinguish himself during the War with Mexico). He was drummed out of the service because of repeated instances of intoxication. The then went on to became not-much-of-a- farmer and not-much-of-a-tanner. After the war he became not-much-of-a-President.

But he did have one talent that no one else seemed to have: he could beat Bobby Lee. And that was a hellova talent.

His funeral procession through the streets of New York City was more than seven miles long, and included 3 Presidents and virtually every member of Congress and the Supreme Court. His pall bearers included Union Generals William Tecumseh Sherman (a close personal friend from before the war) and Philip Sheridan and Confederate Generals Joseph Johnston and Simon Bolivar Buckner (another close personal pre-war friend).

All this is timely because (1) we hosted "Butternut and Blue" yesterday and (2) today is the birthday of Ulysses Simpson Grant.

Happy birthday, General. And thank you.

There's a book for everyone

2009-04-24T22:21:00.003-04:00

One of the satisfactions of the job of book peddler is matching the right book to the right customer. Someone will wander into the shop and when I ask if there’s anything in particular that they’re looking for, I’ll often get the “I’ll know it when I see it” response.

And that’s fine with me. I have no problem with folks wandering aimlessly around. What better place to wander aimlessly than a used book shop?

Tastes vary and that’s why we have sections on history, mathematics, romance, automotive repair, physics, vintage fiction, westerns and biography. And, while today you may have a hankering to work with trigonometric tables, tomorrow you might just want to sit down with a good whodunit.

So I really try to stock as wide a variety of subjects as is possible. But even I was a bit taken aback by this one.

Last fall we were cleaning out a stock room full of books that we had inherited when we bought the shop. There was some good stuff in there, and a lot of duplicates of books we already had on the shelves. But when we came across this one at the bottom of a box, I confess that I never thought it was going to sell.

I was all for donating it somewhere. With all the inventory we have, I just didn’t think we wanted to devote shelf space to something like this. But my poor, long-suffering bride (PLSB, © 2009) obviously is much more in touch with the real world than am I.

PLSB wouldn’t hear of us casually discarding such a work. She was convinced that there was a reader out there hungry for this book. I rolled my eyes and handed it over to her. If she wanted to add it to our on-line inventory that was fine with me, as long as I didn’t need to deal with it in the shop.

She was right, of course; she usually is (I will be the second one to tell you that. I’ll leave it to you to guess who the first one will be).

Tonight we received the order, and tomorrow morning we will ship Worm Farm Management off to a happy customer in Georgia.

There is a book for everyone.

Thorne Smith

2009-04-23T17:04:00.006-04:00

There are just too many mysteries written by someone named Smith. More accurately, I should say “someones named Smith,” because there seem to be a gazillion mystery writers named Smith. Not that Smith is a bad name; it is actually quite a nice name. But you would think that some of these writers would be clever enough to come up with another name, if only to differentiate themselves from all the other Smith-es out there.

I mean, if you’re going to have a “me too” name as a mystery writer, why not adopt something like Christie or Doyle or Grafton or something? That way, at least you might get some new readers…if only by mistake.

Yes, I do tend to have profound thoughts while shelving books.

And that was my general line of thinking yesterday as I was trying to jam yet another mystery onto the Smith shelf in our Whodunits section. And it was then that I came across a happy little accident: one of the Smiths didn’t belong there. It wasn’t a mystery at all and it had been mistakenly placed among the mysteries and it belonged somewhere else.

Two good things about that: (1) by pulling off the wrong book I suddenly had room for the new Smith, and (2) I came across a Thorne Smith that I didn’t know we had!

James Thorne Smith (1892-1934) was one of those urban sophisticate authors who seemed to litter the streets of New York City in the 20s and 30s. He was of a kind with James Thurber, Alexander Woolcott and Dorothy Parker. He is just not quite as well remembered as those others.

And it is hard to find a neat category for him. I may have to start an “Urban Sophisticate” section in here.

He wrote humor, but it came from a dark and sardonic place. His books were almost science fiction/fantasy,but they contained no space ships or time travel. Rather, the characters were always transformed into something they were not. There was usually plenty of drinking involved. And lots of sex. Some of it sly; some of it fumbling. And all of it more-or-less licit. But it was actually pretty racy stuff for its day (although it is pretty tame by the standards of some of the contemporary literature that comes in here).

“Like life itself,” he wrote of his work, “my stories have no point and get absolutely nowhere. And like life they are a little mad and purposeless…They are like the man who dashes madly through traffic only to linger aimlessly on the opposite corner watching a fountain pen being demonstrated in a shop window. Quite casually I wander into my plot, poke around with my characters for a while, then amble off, leaving no moral proved and no reader improved.”

Truth be told, this is my idea of a good read. A bit of mental floss at the end of the day.

His most famous work, perhaps the only one most folks remember today, is Topper. It involves the adventures of a banker (the title character) and two ghosts (who happen to be married to one another; one of whom continually engages in some spirited* flirting with Topper). In 1937, Hal Roach made it into a movie starring Cary Grant. Later, Leo G. Carroll became Topper in the 50s TV series. His other claim to fame was The Passionate Witch, published posthumously in 1941, that was the basis for the play/movie Bell, Book and Candle and, ultimately, the Bewitched television series.

The one I happened upon yesterday was Skin and Bones (1933) wherein photographer Quintus Bland undergoes a bizarre accident in his darkroom that sends him (and his dog) bouncing back-and-forth between flesh- and-bone to X-ray (i.e., skeleton) projections of themselves. It includes the usual drinking and morally-questionable behavior and rather spicy drawings. It wasn’t at a risqué level to get it banned, but prim country club matrons probably wouldn’t quite approve. Pretty good stuff overall.

So…welcome, Mr. Smith. Into which section shall I place you? Literature? Science Fiction? Morally-questionable? Vintage fiction?

Maybe I shall take you home, and thus provide yet another opportunity for my poor, long-suffering bride (PLSB © 2009) to cock an eyebrow and shake her head. She probably won’t quite approve.

I, on the other hand, shall approve heartily.

*Get it? Spirited...ghost. Well, OK. So I'm not Thorne Smith.

Of estates and painted porcelain

2009-04-14T11:13:00.003-04:00

I always feel just a bit ghoulish when we get a call to clean out an estate.

We get these sorts of calls with some degree of frequency…at least one or two a month. A parent or an aunt has died and the house needs to be cleaned out. Or a couple is retiring and moving to a smaller home or an assisted living facility. Whatever the reason, there is an attic or living room or basement full of books. And stuff. And something needs to be done with it all.

It is never a happy time. But it is something that needs to be done.

“Time to get rid of all this junk,” they say. “Why would anyone want to keep all this?”

It is usually a brave front. The person making the statement is often the same person who has taken responsibility for the cleaning out and is the same person who gave us a call in the first place. And this person invariably is a son or a granddaughter or close friend. It is a painful experience to sift through the relics of a life, or lifestyle, that is now past.

By the time we get involved, most of the really hard parts have been accomplished. We’re one of the last steps prior to selling the house or vacating the apartment.

The good part about this is that calluses have usually started to form over the really tender parts and a weariness has set in. They just want to be done with the whole thing. They want us to come and get it and just haul it away.

Usually, but not always.

There are occasions when we’re sucked into the process of closure. We’re told about the deceased or the one who is moving on; regaled with stories about his work, her family, their hobbies and travels, or Grandpa’s time in the army. And we can’t help but to envision this life that we’re evaluating and putting into boxes.

You can tell a lot about someone when you go through a bookshelf or a trunk or an attic. You can look at the books and tell at a glance whether that family preferred history or romance. Whether the books were well read or just acquired somewhere along the line. Whether they listened to classical music or show tunes or The Dave Clark Five.

And the certain amount of embarrassment when you come across that box of old Playboy magazines hidden away in a dark corner. (Funny how you never come across the collected works of Mark Twain in that dark corner.)

The ghoulishness comes in when you walk from room to room, asking if that old clock, or the record player, is available. How about that World War II uniform? “I’d be interested in that picture frame.”

Rummaging, and picking through the accumulated mementos of someone’s life.

“Do you want this?” we’re asked while being offered some trinket proudly displayed on a coffee table. It obviously was important to this household, but is close to meaningless to anyone else. We’ll take it, more to be polite than anything else. It helps to validate the life; maybe bring a little closure.

We’re doing one estate now. There have already been two protracted trips to the house. On the first, we pulled nearly 600 paperbacks out. Yesterday we returned for a second round and packed nearly that many hardcover books. There will be one more trip later this week to finish up. The questions were more for what we didn’t take.

“None of the records?” No, sorry. No one wants “The Many Moods of Bobby Vinton” these days. And I’m afraid I will pass on the 8-tracks, too. I just won’t be able to sell “A Boston Pops Christmas” on 8-track. But I will take the stereo. A silent nod of the head in sad, but understanding, assent. I’ve just disparaged an important element in someone’s life.

“But a lot of this is very good stuff,” I hasten to add. “We’ll find a good home for these books.”

I try to be affirming. It is the word of a professional giving an expert evaluation.

Now I’ve just got to figure out what to do with this porcelain figurine of a nondescript bird with “Miami” painted on the base.

Flames Beyond Gettysburg

2009-04-02T00:09:00.003-04:00

Ironclad Publishing has just sent forth Flames Beyond Gettysburg, the latest in their Discovering Civil War America series. The book was researched and written by Scott Mingus, Sr. (with help in some areas by his son, Professor Scott Mingus, Jr.). It is a retelling, in detail, of the John B. Gordon expedition in late June 1863.

Just what we need: another book about the Civil War.

I am not being facetious. This is just exactly what we need. For this book details a portion of the battle of Gettysburg that we don’t often see.

Gordon, commanding an element of the Army of Northern Virginia (Confederate States of America), had been detailed to proceed through Adams, York and Lancaster Counties in advance of the rest of Robert E. Lee’s force so as to (1) scare the bejezus out of Pennsylvania in general and Philadelphia in particular and (2) turn north and possibly capture Harrisburg.

Note the date: June 1863. That was about a week before a dust-up that took place just down the road from here in a little crossroads town known as Gettysburg.

It was Gordon’s forces that first captured Gettysburg and Hanover and York and Wrightsville, simply pushing aside any organized Federal resistance that was encountered.

It was Gordon’s forces that emptied barns and larders of horses and food, paying for most with Confederate currency (much to the chagrin of the local citizenry).

And it was Gordon’s forces that entered Wrightsville just in time to see the bridge over the Susquehanna go up in flames (Mingus rightly points out that, today, most travelers heading east over the river barely note the crumbling remains of the earlier bridge's supports as they parallel the current Veterans' Memorial Bridge along Route 462).

And it is Mingus’ book that tells the tale. He brings to life the names and the faces encountered in the old photographs found in archives and libraries in South Central Pennsylvania.

He does it with enough detail to satisfy the nit-pickers. He does it with enough source notations and scholarship to satisfy the professional historian. And he does it with an engaging and flowing style to satisfy even the mildly curious reader.

Not only did I enjoy the ride that Mingus takes us upon, I learned some things about tactics and operations. I also learned some things about the people in this part of Pennsylvania.

It turns out that all the good guys didn’t wear blue. And all the bad guys didn’t wear grey.

I am probably not giving away a surprise ending by revealing here that Harrisburg did not fall to Lee’s army. But what was surprising--at least to me--was how they were stopped. For that, you’ll have to do the research yourself…or read the book.

In addition to reading about the expedition of 150 years ago, Mingus invites us to make our own expeditions by laying out six distinct driving tours. Hop in the car and take the book along and you’ll get to see where raiders roamed and battles (such as they were) took place, stopping along the way at farms, railroad junctions and town squares.

This isn’t his first tome about the Civil War, and I very much hope it is not his last.

I recommend it. And I am looking forward to hosting Mingus as he leads us in a discussion during our upcoming "Butternut and Blue" day later this month. Before that, he will be signing copies during this weekend's York Book and Paper Fair.

The book is available from The York Emporium and via online sites (Amazon, ABE, Alibris, Blblio, and others). Suggested retail: $23.95; ISBN 0-9673770-8-0

There are details, and there are details.

2009-03-29T09:07:00.003-04:00

Three days to go before the start of the Spring Sale. Less than a week to the York Book and Paper Fair. I’m running around the shop shelving books, pricing stuff, coordinating new dealers, printing programs, sending out news releases, trying to clean up.

There is almost too much to do. I’ve been moving around bookcases and shifting entire sections. I’ve got stock to put out ‘cause it just ain’t gonna sell if it is sitting on my desk. And the web sites need updating. And sometime during the next couple of days, I really want to sleep. Sleep would be good right about now.

I will admit to being a bit frazzled. The details are piling up and I am not a detail kinda guy. On the whole, I’d rather just sit down with a cup of joe than do just about any of this.

So yesterday afternoon I was heading toward the automotive section with an armload of books to put away when I am approached by a young lady. She's a regular customer, and I've kidded around with her before when she's been in. So, I smile by best kindly-old-bookpeddler smile, really hoping that I can just point her toward a bookcase and keep moving.

“I have a big favor to ask you,” she says to me.

Uh-oh. This isn’t going to be a 2-second conversation. I want to help, but I have other priorities, other details, at the moment. I really don't have the time for big favors right now. Still, she's a customer and looking a bit nervous. So I set the books down on a display case and give her my full attention.

“What can I do for you?”

“Well,” she said. “See that good looking guy over there?”

I nod.

“He’s asked me to marry him.”

“Congratulations!”

“Thanks." She actually blushed a little. "We were wondering if it would be OK with you…uh…”

Oh, boy. Here it comes, I think. She wants a job. Or a special discount. Or something that is going to cost me money.

“We wanted to ask you if it would be OK if we shot our engagement picture in here. We love this place and we think it would be perfect.”

Suddenly I wasn’t quite as frazzled. Suddenly the details didn’t seem all that important. Suddenly the automotive section would wait.

“Of course. We would be honored.”

We both smiled.

And we set our own date, she and I. I made a mental note to make sure we had cake available.

That’s a detail I just don’t mind.

Yesterday I Will

2009-03-27T22:15:00.002-04:00

Every summer The York Emporium used book and curiosity shop in downtown York, Pennsylvania hosts Sci-Fi Saturday. It is a day-long event where writers, publishers, scientists, academicians and buffs get together to celebrate the genre, explore new directions, eat popcorn and generally carry-on.

It is not a convention in the contemporary sense of the term. There aren’t a lot of folks wandering around in costume, for example. There are no big name stars of television shows or movies attending and signing autographs.

But it is a lot of fun.

Various guests will speak on a wide range of topics. “The Philosophy of Science Fiction”, for example. Or “The Writer’s Life.” Or “How To Play a Vulcan Harp.” All have been the subject of presentations in recent years. A NASA scientist addressed the group during the 2008 gathering on the challenges of establishing a permanent base on the Moon.

It was during the 2008 Sci-Fi Saturday that a writing contest was announced. The idea was to give budding writers the opportunity to try their hand at weaving an original tale.

Entries weren’t limited to science fiction, or even fiction for that matter. But imaginations were encouraged to run just a little wild. The rules said short stories, one act plays and poems were all welcome. The only real restrictions were the requirements that all entries be original and all fit the common title, Yesterday I Will.

Word of the contest spread through stories in a host of newspapers, blog entries and web sites. A camera crew happened to be on-hand when the contest was announced and they recorded the initial reading of the rules. A video of this momentous event was placed on YouTube and it garnered more than 3,000 viewings.

And the entries came. The organizers of the event had initially feared that the entries would be few (“What if they gave a contest and nobody came?”), but these fears were unfounded. While the majority originated in Central Pennsylvania, by no means were all confined to this region. More than a dozen states were represented. Alas. no “off-world” entries were received (maybe next time?).

A team of judges that included professional writers, professors of literature and booksellers reviewed the submissions for (1) readability, (2) connection with the theme, (3) originality and (4) overall impression. Each submission was given a score between 1 and 10 for each of these criteria. The judges worked independently. The entries were blind (that is, no names were associated with the entries when they were reviewed). Only the Editor (i.e., me), who did not judge but who coordinated all this, knew who had written what, or who had received what score from what judge.

For what it may be worth, here is my wholly biased review: this thing is pretty good. There’s one play, a host of poems and some really good short stories.

The finished book, we learned today, is just about done. The printer reported that it has been printed and will be bound and shipped next week. And that’s just in time for the official launch during the York Book and Paper Fair next Saturday (April 4).

Damned exciting stuff.

And no one is more excited than our authors. I’ve been sending emails and making phone calls to the winning writers this week to let them know of the plans and the response I’ve been getting has been more than gratifying. These guys are really excited.

Now, I don’t know if anyone is going to make any money on this book. The writers aren’t being paid. I’ve ordered copies for sale in the shop, of course (let’s hope they sell!) and we’ll have it up on the major online sites (Amazon, Biblio, Alibris, ABE, etc., etc.). With luck, we’ll break even. Hopefully the publisher will make a buck or two so they can pay the printer.

But all of that, frankly, is beside the point.

Any and all expenses have been paid in full by the writers. Their enthusiasm has more than ample compensation for whatever efforts we put into this project.

We’re going to do it again.

When Sci-Fi Saturday comes around again this summer, we will announce our next writing contest.

Stay tuned…..

Fasnachts

2009-02-23T22:05:00.006-05:00

In New Orleans, on the day before Lent begins, they have a party called Mardi Gras. Folks put on funny clothes and wear silly masks. Young ladies attempt to earn beads. Young men, reputedly, are fairly eager to distribute beads. From the pictures I’ve seen, it would appear that everyone has a pretty good time.

But here in Pennsylvania, we do things a little differently. We don’t go in for funny clothes or silly masks around these parts. And it is still far too cold for ladies to earn beads here (although I suspect that young men would still be willing to distribute them).

Here, Shrove Tuesday (the day before Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent) we don’t do Mardi Gras. Here we do Fasnachts.

Frankly, I had never heard of these things before moving here a little over three years ago. But in this part of the world, they are a bona fide BIG DEAL. It is a Pennsylvania Dutch tradition to make these things and eat them on the day before the beginning of Lent.

(By the way, the term “Pennsylvania Dutch” is a misnomer. They aren’t Dutch. The term is a mongrelization of Deutsch, which is the German word for, well, German. But even that is misleading because there wasn’t a Germany when these folks came over. And the Pennsylvania Dutch aren’t necessarily Amish, either. Many of the Pennsylvania Dutch are Amish, but not all Amish are Pennsylvania Dutch. It all gets really complicated from here. Just take my word for it; you’ll sleep better.)

Now, Lent was a very serious time of year for these very serious people. It was a time of fasting and of self-denial. A period of preparation, in anticipation of the joys of Easter. In order to properly observe this serious period, all good things were to have been removed from the pantry for the duration. The duration being the 40 days of Lent.

But it wouldn’t have been right to waste all the good things. So, rather than throw them away, these serious people put all the good things into one big blowout. They made fasnachts.

The idea was to take all the sugar, all the molasses, all the butter, all the lard (one of the really good things!), all the honey and mix them together for one calorie-packed, artery-hardening, delicious lump of really bad cholesterol. Then, when you’ve got your lump really ready, you’d deep-fry it, and sprinkle the result with sugar.

My cardiologist would not approve.

These things are murder. They look a little like a doughnut, but they are not doughnuts. Doughnuts have holes, and there ain’t no holes here (why would anyone leave an empty space where there could be fasnacht-ness?). And traditional fasnachts are square, rather than round. This is because, I am told, it is traditional. That’s a good enough reason for me.

They weigh a bloody ton, even before they are consumed. After they are consumed, they weigh even more. Eat a couple of fasnachts, and you won’t need to eat anything else for 40 days.

Just for the record: cardiologist be damned; I do love them so.

On the off chance that I should be coming to visit and you’re at a loss as to what to serve, I offer here a traditional recipe. For a variation, add potatoes (I’m serious):

1 1/2 quarts milk
1/2-cup molasses or honey
4 quarts flour
2 tablespoons lard
2 cakes yeast
1-cup butter
4 eggs

Scald the milk, then after cooling a little stir in 2 quarts of the flour, to make a batter. Add the yeast after dissolving in lukewarm water. Beat well and let stand overnight to rise. Cream the butter; eggs, molasses or honey, and then add more flour and the lard. Knead well, adding almost all the remainder of the flour. Let rise and then roll out for doughnuts, and fry in deep fat.

After they’ve been consumed, you may do your penance.

The Blacklist

2009-02-21T22:14:00.008-05:00

Among the large group of paperbacks that came into the shop earlier in the week was a copy of The Bridge Over the River Kwai by Pierre Boulle. Set during World War II, it is a fictional account of British prisoners of war working on the Burma railway. It was a best seller when published (originally in French--1952; later in English--1954).

The movie adaptation of the book won 7 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor (Alec Guinness). Best Score and Best Screenplay (Adaptation) when it was released in 1957.

Credited as the writer, Boulle accepted the award with what was the shortest acceptance speech in Oscar history when he said, simply: “Merci”. It actually made sense for Boulle to say that because he was, indeed, French. And he spoke no English.

And that inconvenient little fact would have made it very hard for him to write the screenplay to a movie filmed in English using American and British actors.

Actually, he didn’t write it. Carl Foreman and Michael Wilson did. These two guys were Hollywood heavyweights. Foreman wrote, among other things, the 1950 film version of Cyrano de Bergerac starring Jose Ferrer and the 1961 blockbuster The Guns of Navarone. Wilson’s credits included the Christmas perennial It’s A Wonderful Life (1946), along with Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and Planet of the Apes (1968).

But Foreman and Wilson had to step aside for Boulle because they both had been blacklisted. Their names could not be publicly associated with the film, for this was the height of the Cold War. Sputnik had just been launched. Along with Senator Joe McCarthy, America was looking under the bed for Communists.

Wilson admitted under oath that he had been a member of the Communist Party in the late 1930s; worse, he had refused to name “fellow travelers”. Foreman had refused to testify altogether. As a result, they had been banned from working in Hollywood.

They actually had some pretty good company. Composers Leonard Bernstein and Aaron Copeland were on the list. Bandleader Artie Shaw was there, as were folksingers Burl Ives and Pete Seeger. Actors Lee J. Cobb and Zero Mostel. Even Gypsy Rose Lee (and you had to know things were getting serious when red-blooded American boys were accused of thinking about Communism when looking at Gypsy Rose Lee).

Nearly 300 people from the entertainment industry—television, radio, recording, theatre and movies—were fired from their jobs and prevented from getting new work by the blacklist. If they did work in the American industry, it was without credit and for significantly reduced wages. Many went to Mexico or to Europe to work there; others left the entertainment world altogether.

And no one had broken any laws. Without doubt, all had a Constitutional right to free assembly and free speech. It wasn’t illegal to be a member of the Communist Party.

The really screwy thing was that many of the people weren’t even Communists, or even Communist sympathizers. They had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or knew someone who was. Or appeared to know someone who was. It was really out of control.

The blacklist lasted from, roughly, 1949 to 1960. It began to crumble when Dalton Trumbo, a truly gifted writer, was given credit for the screenplays to Exodus and Spartacus, both in 1960. The sky didn’t fall, and slowly it melted away.

But it left ruined lives and disillusioned people in its wake.

Pierre Boulle wrote other novels after Bridge Over The River Kwai, most notably Planet of the Apes. He died in 1994 at age 82.

Carl Foreman moved to England in the 1950s and continued his work there. He was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in recognition of his accomplishments. He died in 1984.

Michael Wilson continued to work, usually without credit, in the industry. He is known to have written the screenplay (uncredited) for Planet of the Apes and received belated credit for his work on Lawrence of Arabia. He died in 1978.

Foreman and Wilson finally received their Oscars, posthumously, in 1984.

So, if you choose to watch the Oscars tomorrow night, you may want to keep in mind that what you see on the screen isn’t necessarily real.

And if you think censorship is dead...think again. It isn't dead. It can happen again.

MAS*H

2009-02-17T23:41:00.004-05:00

Here in Pennsylvania, we seem to put great stock on the predictions of Punxsutawney Phil. On February 2 every year we all tend to gather around to see if this little guy is going to see his shadow. This year he did and he said that Spring is still 6 weeks away.

I’m sorry, Phil. I beg to differ.

In a used book shop we have a much better way of telling how close we are to Spring. What we do is judge the number and size of the boxes of books that people bring to us. There is a direct relationship here, and I think it merits scientific study.

Here’s how it works: the closer we are to the beginning of Spring, the higher the level of cabin fever. The higher the level of cabin fever, the more frustrated folks get with the clutter about the house. The higher the level of folks’ frustration, the greater the desire (particularly on the part of the female versions of folks) to clear the clutter. The greater is this desire, the greater the number of folks (particularly male versions of folks) who lug boxes of books into the shop.

There’s a direct and consistent proportion here. I’ve no doubt that a mathematical formula could be discerned (although it would have to have a multiplier for the “nag” factor).

And based on what I’ve been seeing over the last week or so, I’d say that Spring is just around the corner.

That’s good news, because we’re getting some really good stuff.

This past weekend, for example, I pulled a copy of M*A*S*H out of a box of paperbacks.

An interesting book, with an interesting story.

It was written by Richard Hooker (a pen name, actually; his real name is Richard Hornberger) and was based on his experiences as a doctor with a M*A*S*H unit during the Korean Conflict. He was with the 8055th.

When he wrote the book, he had a hard time getting it published. Truth be told, a nearly impossible time; it was rejected by just about everybody. So he got some help with the original manuscript and, reworked, finally managed to get William Morrow & Co. to send it forth. And there the story would have ended, for it was somewhat less than a best-seller.

But a Hollywood producer named Ingo Preminger (brother of Otto Preminger) read it and saw its potential. He bought the film rights and hired Ring Lardner, Jr. to write a script. Robert Altman was brought in to direct such notables as Donald Sutherland and Elliott Gould. And in 1970, 20th Century Fox brought it to theatres. (It had some stiff competition, up against Patton at the same time.)

The movie was a hit and was nominated for five Academy Awards including Best Picture (it only won one, for Best Screenplay). It was such a success that two things happened: (1) the book suddenly became a best seller and (2) the studio decided that maybe it could do something with the sets and props it already had, so they sold CBS on the idea of a TV show.

By this time, Hooker had pretty much lost control of his original story and his characters. He hated the show. Coming on the air as it did in 1972, it was a thinly-veiled attack on the Vietnam War. That wasn’t Hooker’s intention at all.

The show dropped a number of the original characters, developed others out of proportion to their importance in the book (Major Frank Burns, for example, barely makes it through page 49) and created others out of the thin Korean air (there is no Corporal Max Clinger in the book). And the Captain Hawkeye Pierce of the book wouldn’t recognize the man of the same name of the TV series.

So Hooker retuned to his typewriter and produced an entire series of fairly silly and utterly forgettable sequels, starting with M*A*S*H Goes To Maine, and continuing with M*A*S*H Goes To Las Vegas among others.

The TV show, some 251 episodes, ran from 1972 through the 1983 season…or 11 years, roughly 3 times the length of the Korean Conflict itself. The final episode was watched by more than 105-million people, the largest audience in history. Commercials cost more than did Super Bowl ads that year. And it spawned even more spin-off shows.

So, I confess, I grabbed the paperback and brought it home with me Sunday night. I had read it shortly after the movie appeared (yes, I am that old), while I was still in high school. And I read, and thoroughly enjoyed, the silly sequels while I was in college.

I finished the re-reading earlier this evening, and will tell you it was like visiting an old friend. I’ll bring it back into the shop and put it on a shelf tomorrow (one of the good things about reading a used book is that when you’re done, it is still a used book and the value hasn’t been diminished).

And the really good news is, with Spring just around the corner, more new-old books will undoubtedly be arriving every day now.

Hail Lupercus!

2009-02-13T21:45:00.003-05:00

The other day I was restocking and generally cleaning up our selection of vintage greeting cards (the York Daily Record, in a piece a year or so ago, referred to them as “cheeky” greeting cards, and I thought that a little unfair. They’re from the 60s and 70s and some of them are a bit risqué and…well, OK, they are cheeky). Anyway, as I was looking at some of the sly Valentines I got to wondering about the holiday. I knew it was ancient, and certainly worthy of chocolate, but I wasn’t quite sure how sweet it really was.

First of all, according to the folks who keep track of such things, this is a pretty big deal for the greeting card industry. It ranks #2 for cards bought and sent (behind Christmas). I was a bit surprised to learn that women buy nearly 85% of all Valentine cards. There may be a deeper meaning here, but I am not sure I wish to pursue that line of inquiry. (I know that I have bought my share and always on time, as my sense of self-preservation is fairly well developed).

It turns out that the holiday has gone through a number of transformations over the years. The most recent is the shortening of the name, from “Saint Valentine’s Day” to just “Valentine’s Day.” We seem to have lost the connection with the saint and his feast day.

Actually, with the saints. There are (were?) three different saints with the same name and no one is really quite sure which is the one we’re celebrating. Most sources point to a priest who, about the year 270, was beaten to death upon the order of Roman Emperor Claudius II. The execution took place on February 14 (how they are able to set the exact date but not the year is a little fuzzy).

The story goes that the Emperor had banned all marriages that he hadn’t approved (and taxed). But this one, rather romantic, priest defied the edict and performed marriages in secret. True love, apparently, was more important than taxes (at least at the time). For his actions Valentine was sentenced to death. He died, therefore, in the cause of love. (Awwww……)

Well, maybe.

Frankly, it all seems a bit fishy to me. None of this was written down until the year 1493, some one thousand, two hundred and twenty three years after the fact. And those were not one thousand, two hundred twenty three years of happy enlightenment. I think the story may have gotten a bit garbled.

I also think it is no coincidence that the Romans also had a festival about this time every February in honor of the god Lupercus. Now, Lupercus was a minor diety who the Romans had co-opted from the Greeks. The Greeks called him Pan.

The Roman festival entailed an animal sacrifice after which the men who were inspired by their religion ran through the town, either naked or scantily clad, carrying whips that had been dipped in the sacrificial blood. The ladies of the city, also in a religious frame of mind, would accidentally-on-purpose get in their way. The men would sprinkle blood upon them as a way of furthering their fertility during the coming year.

(By the way, if you substitute beer for the blood and change a few other little details, it sounds like a Saturday night in York. But I digress.)

At the end of the running and sprinkling of blood (and, presumably, giggling), everyone wound up at a temple where two urns had been prepared. One held the names of the teenaged boys and the other held the names of the teenaged girls. A priest (not one of the Valentines, to be sure) would pull names at random and boys would be paired with girls. This pairing would remain in place for a year. Since teenaged boys and teenaged girls haven’t changed all that much in 2,000 years and since one had to appease the gods, the pairing would be, shall we say, total. And repeated. Often. Throughout the year.

To this day, there are those who maintain that this beats the heck out of a pot-luck supper after church.

When the Christian Church came to prominence, oh ‘long about the year 270 or so (does the date sound familiar?), a change was made. All this naked-sprinkling-while-giggling, not to mention repeated god appeasements, wouldn’t do. Hence, the appearance of a martyr to love. As an homage to the ancient ways, Cupid still seems to be hovering around. And rather than pull a name at random out of an urn, we now send cards. This is called progress.

I swear by the god Lupercus am not making any of this up.

Well, not much of it anyway.

Now…might I interest you in a vintage cheeky greeting card?

Number 2,499

2009-02-11T16:49:00.003-05:00

Sometime during the night tonight we shall pass a milestone. Earlier today we shipped book #2,499 that had been ordered through one of the on-line services. If all goes well, we will receive an order for number two thousand, five hundred tonight.

When I stop and think about it, I come to the conclusion that it is really quite an accomplishment. We haven’t really been involved with that aspect of the business all that long; a little over two years, perhaps. And we really only got religion about it a year or so ago.

I saw “we”, but it really is my poor, long-suffering bride (hereinafter “PLSB”) who does all the work on this phase of the business, and to her go the accolades. She sifts through the inventory that comes into the shop and decides which books are to be fully catalogued and put on the Internet. Truly, she has a better feel for this than do I. And it is she who keeps the records straight, takes the orders, does the packing and makes the daily schlep to the post office.

PLSB is good at it and she enjoys it. And she has, with good reason, mandated that I pretty much stay away from it.

Well, that’s not quite accurate. In all fairness, I should say that she has actually mandated that I stay THE HELL away from it. A wise woman, my PLSB.

But I admit that I am of two minds about this business of selling books online.

On the one hand, of course, I am more than happy to cash the checks from Abe, Alibris, Biblio, Amazon, Barns & Noble, et. al. It is not quite “found” money. But it is certainly bonus money.

We maintain two distinct inventories. The larger is the one in the shop and it numbers upwards of 300,000 titles. The online inventory, now numbering around 3,000 titles, consists of the more esoteric titles and they generally are significantly more expensive. Whereas the average book in the shop will sell for between $3 and $4, the online average is in the $12 to $15 range (with more than a few listed for $75 to $100 or more).

So, yes, I am happy that my PSLB has developed this business and that she is shipping books to Australia, Russia, South America and throughout the United States (all this just within the past week, by the way).

The problem I have with online sales is really two-fold. First, I would kinda like to have some of these in the shop, even if they don’t sell. We keep some of the more rare books under lock-and-key here, and I think they’re probably safe. And they are certainly neat to look at. But that’s a lousy business decision. Still “neat” is rather high on my list of priorities. (“Eating regularly” ranks a little higher, which is why they’re online.)

The other is a more philosophic reason. Perhaps I am a bit of a Luddite in all this, but the purist in me would rather someone come into a book shop, any book shop even if it is not mine, to find reading material. There is something to be said for poking around the shelves of a used book shop in search of a treasure. There’s the aspect of working just a little bit to find what you seek…the thrill of the hunt and all that. There’s also the aspect of browsing and making the happy discovery of a title that you hadn’t known. Perhaps a little-known work by a favorite author or an obscure title on the topic of interest.

It is a romantic notion that I fear is rapidly going out of style.

Last night I committed an act that brought me square up against my misgivings by posting a direct link from our website to our online inventory: http://www.theyorkemporium.com/bookstore.html

One stop closer, I suppose, to the end of civilization as we know it.

So…here’s to Number 2,500! I hope it is something fun. And here’s to my PLSB! She is certainly something fun.

And here’s to my continuing to stay THE HELL away from the online business!

The Haunted Bookshop

2009-02-02T21:29:00.005-05:00

Not a lot of people remember Christopher Morley anymore, and that’s a shame. He was a man of letters who gained fame during the first half of the 20th Century. Novelist, essayist, editor, journalist. He was one of the founders of the original Baker Street Irregulars (a group dedicated to examining and celebrating the minutia of Sherlock Holmes). He was also the guy who made many of the selections for the Book-of-the-Month Club.

Among the novels of the native Pennsylvanian (he was born in Bryn Mawr in 1890) are two that work in tandem: Parnassus on Wheels and The Haunted Bookshop. Both have as a central character Mr. Roger Mifflin, a peddler of used books. In the first novel, the peddler goes from town to town in a horse-drawn wagon. In the second, he has settled down to run a used book shop in Brooklyn, NY.

But this is not just any book shop. It is a haunted book shop. Haunted not by run-of-the-mill ghosts, but by “the ghosts of all great literature.” I don’t want to give the plot away, but I will say that these ghosts do play a part in solving a mystery.

Morley was obviously a romantic when it came to used book shops. Here’s a passage from The Haunted Bookshop that proves my point:

“The bookstore is one of humanity’s great engines, and one that we use very imperfectly. It is a queer fact that most of us still have the primitive habit of visiting bookshops chiefly to ask for some definite title. Aren’t we ever going to leave anything to destiny, or to good luck, or to the happy suggestion of some wise bookseller?

“We have ready access, in the bookshop, to one of the greatest instruments of civilization; and yet none of us—neither publishers, booksellers, nor customers—have yet learned more than an inkling of what that place can accomplish.

"In every bookstore, small or large, there are books we have not read; books which may have messages of unsuspected beauty or importance. They may be new books, they may be of yesterday, or of long ago.

"The store where you found this volume exists in the hope of knowing—and learning—about books. There is no habit more valuable than that of dropping into a bookstore occasionally to look round—to look both inward and outward.

“We have what you need, though you may not know you need it.”

Personally, I couldn't agree more with the above. (I particularly like the bit about the "wise bookseller"... as if there were any other kind). I've put this passage on a poster and have it hanging in several spots around the shop.

Morley spent most of his working life in and around New York City. His home, on Long Island, has been preserved as a park and is available for touring. I fear not many people do anymore; I confess that I have not. He died in 1957.

Anyway, I bring all this up because we happened upon a couple of copies of these two novels while we were cleaning out an old inventory closet earlier this week. I’m really hoping that these won’t be hanging around long.

"Give me a book that will change my life."

2009-01-29T13:34:00.003-05:00

“Give me a book,” he said, “that will change my life.”

He was a student at one of the local colleges, in his junior year (that’s a guess). I’m not sure of his major, although he did tend to gravitate to the psychology and philosophy shelves. He’d been in the shop before. Not really a regular, but I do remember seeing him once or twice.

And today he seemed to be on a bit of a mission.

“I need to get motivated. What I am doing now isn’t working, and I need to find something else that will move me into a different direction.”

“So give me a book that will change my life.”

That’s asking rather a lot from a book. But he was serious, so I thought I’d give it a shot.

Maybe I should have handed him a treatise on differing philosophic or theological world-views. Maybe I should have given him something on Einstein or Dr. Albert Schweitzer. Or The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran; that’s a big one. Or just told him to read almost anything by Shakespeare. But I didn’t.

Nor did I ask him a lot of questions; maybe I should have. Instead, a vision of another college junior looking to change directions flashed into my head.

Suddenly it was 1975 again. That was my third year in a little private college, and perhaps the most confusing year of my life. Many of the universal truths that I had simply accepted up to that point somehow had dissipated. Unfortunately, nothing had as yet appeared to take their place.

So I was looking for a change of direction at that point, too. It wasn’t a panic thing, but it was certainly a quest.

But not a quest for someone else’s answers. I was looking for my own. I didn’t want anyone to tell me what to think or what to do, and I honestly didn’t want to know what someone else had come up with. This was something I really wanted to figure it out myself.

And it all revolved around a simple, yet somehow eloquent, question: “Huh?” That pretty much fit every situation where I found myself.

So, I will admit: I was projecting my own quest upon this earnest young man. For all I know, he just wanted instructions for a better way to do his laundry. That’s not what he got.

Instead, we went to the Science Fiction section and I handed him a book that I wish someone had handed to me.

Good science fiction starts with an absurd premise (obviously, we cannot travel between the stars). But if you accept that premise, everything that happens afterward flows naturally (if we could travel between the stars…what would we find? Who would we find?).

What is important about science fiction is not the story. Rather, what is important is the very act of accepting the absurd, for this act of acceptance requires a profound suspense of disbelief.

More than that, it requires non-linear thinking. Thoughts and ideas and concepts racing between stars or bouncing off, and perhaps breaking, the boundaries of space and time. New concepts of what is, and is not, and what could be, real. New constructs; new ways of evaluating our own space and time.

And it is precisely non-linear thinking that my young customer was seeking (although he may not have realized it). I wasn’t about to give him a new direction; he probably would have rejected, wisely, anything along those lines that I had suggested. Instead, I was going to give him a new way of finding his own direction.

I handed him Time Enough For Love by Robert A. Heinlein.

Heinlein was probably the best who have written in this genre, and this was (in my opinion) his best work. (I won’t tell you the plot. But I will say that if you don’t know it, I envy you for what you have yet to discover.)

If all goes well, he may have just spent the best $3.50 of his life.

On the other hand, he no longer has change to do his laundry.

Either way, his life just changed. That's my job.

Did you forget the one thing I asked you to do this morning?

2009-01-25T15:25:00.005-05:00

My poor, long-suffering bride triggered the deer-in-the-headlights response (that is a technical term) from me this morning while I was rushing around getting ready to come in and open the shop.

“Did you forget the one thing I asked you to do this morning?”

It is a perfectly legitimate question and one that my poor, long-suffering bride was well within her rights to ask.

It is also a question absolutely fraught with peril. There are undertows here, with momentous implications and deeply significant meanings into which the unwitting may blunder and there be impaled, forevermore, by a rash, unwise or otherwise innocent response.

Truly, it was a thing of beauty.

Let us stop for a moment here to examine the danger. If we parse the question we may more fully appreciate the awesome power wielded with so little effort by my poor, long-suffering bride (hereinafter, “PLSB”).

“Did you forget…” Obviously, the answer is "yes", otherwise the question would never have been asked in the first place. Just as obviously, one cannot just blurt out this answer, lest the battle be lost without a shot being fired (although the experienced husband will know at this point that the battle has, indeed, already been lost). But it is a signal, and most husbands who acknowledge a PLSB will immediately rise to the balls of their feet (this is known as “assuming the position”) in anticipation of what is to come.

“…the one thing…” Dear, Holy Mother of God! PLSB only asked one thing of me and I have already forgotten what it was! The wise man has already started to review every word that may have passed between him and his PLSB since the breaking of dawn. This is a natural and utterly useless attempt to reconstruct the past. Studies have shown this process to be akin to one’s life passing before one’s eyes in the moments before imminent death. It is usually accompanied by the feeling you get when you lean too far back and your chair and you almost fall over but just catch yourself at the last moment.

“…that I asked…” Read: “I do so much for you and ask so little in return and you just don’t care enough to pay attention to anything I say and what I want just makes no difference to you at all and if it doesn’t fit in with what you want to do it has no meaning at all you schmuck.” There is simply no acceptable response, verbal or non-verbal, to this. You cannot run; you cannot hide.

“…you to do…” See “…that I asked…”, above.

“…this morning?” The day has barely begun, but you might as well give up because it is all downhill from here. Accept it: you will be lucky to get dinner tonight.

All of this, of course, goes through your mind in a matter of milliseconds: weighing options, judging outcomes and playing-though various scenarios. Hence, the deer-in-the-headlights response.

In the end, of course, there is only one acceptable avenue open to you. You must let your shoulders sag, bow your head in mute acceptance of your eternal thoughtlessness, and go do the dishes. It probably isn’t what PLSB asked you to do, but it won’t hurt.

I am reminded of an episode of You Bet Your Life:
Groucho—“Are you married, Georgette?”
Georgettte—“Yes, I’ve been married to the same man for thirty-one years.”
Groucho—“Well, if he’s been married for thirty-one years, he’s not the same man.”

Oh, by the way, absolutely the LAST thing you should do is blog about it.

Our Inaugural connection

2009-01-20T09:23:00.009-05:00

Perhaps it is a bit tenuous, but we do have a connection with the inauguration of the 44th President.

The story starts in 2004. In Illinois a heated race was taking place for an open seat for the US Senate. Republican candidate Jack Ryan was making a strong bid for the slot, and it looked like he has a pretty good shot at it. The Democrats had put a relative unknown against him and Ryan was pushing hard. He had to, after all this was Illinois and although it was the "Land of Lincoln", the GOP was far from a powerhouse there.

And, of course, Illinois had Chicago where Republicans were never strong. Big Jim Thompson, once mayor, had famously told his constituents to "vote early and vote often." And stories still circulate about the dead rising from their graves to vote for Kennedy in 1960.

But Ryan was doing alright with the voters and the polls. It wasn't going to be easy, but he had a shot. Until, that is, the news media (specifically, The Chicago Tribune) started to demand that certain sealed court records be opened for inspection.

Ryan had been through a messy divorce a few years earlier. As part of the final decree, it had been agreed by both parties that the documents relating to visiting rights be sealed. Everyone involved thought it best to keep some things private, if only for the sake of the kids. The news media didn't agree. The Tribune sued to have the documents opened.

The judge sided with the newspaper and opened the records. It seems that during custody hearings where visiting rights and alimony payments were determined (and where all parties are, of course, scrupulously honest and forthright) Ryan's wife claimed that he took her to sex clubs and pestered her to perform sex with him in public. Ryan denied the charges. He said they had gone to an avant-garde club in Paris during a romantic get-away, but neither of them felt comfortable with the proceedings so they left.

Opening the records of this acrimonious divorce led to a rather bizarre twist: a sex scandal involving a husband and wife in which nothing happened. Or, in other words, licit sex had not taken place! Scandal!

It was a big deal. So big, in fact, that Ryan was forced to withdraw from the race short weeks before the election. The Republicans were left without a candidate, and were forced to scramble. At that point, the Democrats were all but assured of winning the seat.

The Democrat candidate was Barack Obama. Yep, he won and went to the Senate.

Ryan's wife was actress Jeri Ryan. She is best known for her role in Star Trek: Voyager as Seven-of-Nine.

Where do we come in? Well, Seven-of-Nine stands greeting customers in our bathroom.

Now it could be plausibly argued, I suppose, that Barack Obama might have won the Presidency if Seven-of-Nine hadn't been standing in our bathroom. But that is far from a certainty. Do you honestly think that Mr. Obama would want to take that chance?

Live long and prosper.

What a long, strange trip...

2009-01-18T10:28:00.012-05:00

The big topic of conversation in the news media this week has been the President-Elect's trip to Washington. He took a train from Philadelphia, stopping in Wilmington, Delaware to pick-up the Vice President-Elect so he would draw parallels to the journey taken by then President-Elect Lincoln. "Re-create the train ride," the Associated Press said. "Replicate the ride," said CNN. CBS news said he was "Tracing the route."

This didn't seem quite right to me, so I wandered over to our Civil War section. (Doing research is not a challenge in a used book shop. I don't have to go to the library or do extensive online searches. I just have to take a look at the shelves.)

It turns out that about the only similarity between Obama's trip and Lincoln's trip is that the cities of Philadelphia and Washington are in roughly the same geographic locations.

Lincoln's journey began in Springfield, IL on February 10, 1861 and lasted fourteen days. His route took him to Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Columbus, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Buffalo, Albany, New York, Trenton, Philadelphia and Harrisburg. It wasn't the most direct route, but the purpose wasn't so much as to take him to Washington as it was to let people see him. This was an era where those running for the highest office in the land didn't campaign, thinking it was unseemly. The candidates would stay at home and utter periodic platitudes while their minions would be loud and boisterous and make all kinds of wild claims. (Today, of course, such claims are made by the candidates themselves, in addition to the minions.)

Anyway, Lincoln's train would stop repeatedly during each day--6, 8 and sometimes a dozen times--and Lincoln would speak at each stop. Sometimes he would merely step out onto the back platform; sometimes he would disembark and address crowds (as he did at Independence Hall) or the state legislatures (as he did in Harrisburg).

The trip was not without drama. On the day he set out, for example, a resolution was introduced to the House of Representatives meeting in Washington that called on Lincoln to acknowledge the existence of the Confederate States of America as a free and independent country and to receive its ambassadors as fully-credentialed diplomats from a foreign power. (The Confederacy had already met in Montgomery, AL; had adopted its Constitution and had elected Jefferson Davis of Mississippi as its President. Indeed, Davis would take his oath of office while Lincoln was on this trip.) And, while in Philadelphia, Lincoln symbolically raised a new flag over Independence Hall. That ceremony went well until the flag caught on something and was ripped asunder while Lincoln was tugging on the rope.

But the most disturbing element of the trip happened out of public view in Harrisburg on the evening of February 22. Lincoln decided to forgo any public appearances south of the Mason-Dixon Line. It seemed that people wanted to kill him there.

Delaware and Maryland still allowed slavery within their borders. There had been tavern talk in Delaware, loose and ill-defined, about a plan to stop the train, pull Lincoln off and hang him. It was a threat, but probably not one that would actually be acted upon.

That was not the case in Baltimore, where there existed a dedicated and well-organized plot to kill Lincoln as he made his way through the city. The conspirators had it pretty well worked out how they would surround the President-Elect and shoot him in the Baltimore station when he was changing trains. That stage had been set and all was in readiness. Allen Pinkerton, who was working on another case, learned of it and took steps to thwart the plan.

What Pinkerton did was convince Lincoln to depart from his schedule and travel incognito on the night prior to his published schedule. The tale involves a forced shutdown of communications (telegraph wires from Harrisburg went dead early in the evening and several newspaper reporters were actually held at gunpoint in a hotel room to prevent them from broadcasting the story), a special train silently screaming through the rural Pennsylvania night, a disguised Lincoln slipping through the sleeping city and into the station in Philadelphia accompanied only by Pinkerton and a single bodyguard, and a blacked-out coach driving through the streets of Baltimore in the wee, early hours of the morning. Lincoln actually arrived in Washington with the dawn, unexpected and unannounced, on the morning of February 23. He showed up at Willard's Hotel, less than a block from the White House, a little after 6 in the morning.

The newspapers had a field day, since few believed that a plot actually existed. Fantastic and wholly-inaccurate stories of the affair were published, with glee, much to the amusement of the general populous. Cartoons, such as the one reproduced here from the March 9, 1861 edition of Vanity Fair, made Lincoln a laughing-stock.

So, the elements of similarity between the current President-Elect's trip and the then President-Elect's trip seem to be limited to the cities of Philadelphia, and of Washington, and something about a train.

When all this was pointed out to a spokesman of President-Elect Obama, his reply was that today we choose to acknowledge the positive aspects of our history.

Well, it is a new day and maybe that's the way it should be.

Still, selective reading of history....? Cui bono?

Time for a libertarian rant

2009-01-16T12:14:00.003-05:00

We sold a hand fan out of the Blue Monster (our display case for military and historical insignifica) yesterday. It was a souvenir of the 1893 Harrisburg convention of the Women's Christian Temperance Union.

The Women's Christian Temperance Union was the group embarked on a mighty campaign against the evils of drinking alcohol. That campaign ended with the enactment of the 18th Amendment to the Constitution ushering in the grand social experiment commonly known as Prohibition. The aim of the experiment was a change in culture and behavior for the better. (The organization still exists, by the way.)

It did indeed change the culture and behavior of the population, but not necessarily for the better. New industries were spawned, not all of them strictly legal. It was one of the elements that gave rise to organized crime (Al Capone, et al, in Chicago and elsewhere). Liquor continued to be served in the White House (Warren G. Harding and Franklin Roosevelt in particular each had his own reserve; FDR in fact had a daily ritual drink late each afternoon, personally serving all who happened to be present). And on the neighborhood level, "speakeasies" (clandestine pubs) were born. (There was actually one of those in our building here in downtown York.)

I got to thinking about this last night when I saw that another well-intentioned group has embarked on yet another campaign to bring about a change in culture and behavior. The National Safety Board has formally announced an initiative to ban the use of cell phones while driving. These are the same good folks to got the ball rolling to change the laws and require that we all buckle up while driving.

Like the Women's Christian Temperance Union before them, the members of National Safety Council are well within their rights to try to get this done.

And I am well within my rights to resist.

Let's take seat belts as an example. Now, I am in the habit of buckling up. It only makes good sense for me to do so. But I strongly resent the fact that I am required by law to do so.

I worked hard to earn the money to buy my car. But I did, and I paid for it. Paid the taxes, too. And I've paid my fees to have it registered. I've paid my fees to get a license to drive. I pay for insurance on the car. I pay to have the thing inspected. And I pay the government even more taxes every time I buy gas. And I pay to park on a public road (that my taxes allegedly help to pave and maintain). I don't complain about it. I don't try to duck it. I pay. And I continue to pay.

So, where the heck does the government get off telling me that I must buckle my seat belt? It is my car. It is my front seat. The government didn't buy it for me, or help me to pay for any of the continuing costs. So what I do, or don't do, in the front seat should be my business. I have paid, dearly, for this front seat. It is mine. And I would very much like to invite the government to get out of my front seat. Actually, I'd like them to get the hell out of my front seat.

This is not a purely academic debate.

We are in an era of creeping "nanny government." There seems to be a belief among many that the government knows what is better for us than we do ourselves. We have seen in recent years legislative restrictions placed on all sorts of personal behavior: seat belt use, smoking/not smoking, gambling/not gambling. Next up will be cell phone use/non-cell phone use.

Where does this attempt at controlling behavior end? Where is the line?

I am not some ideological nut-case. I am really wondering...

Will the government decide what we can and cannot watch on TV? (Before answering, be aware that The Playboy Channel is prohibited by government regulation from a large number of cable systems around the country.) Will the government decide what we can and cannot read?

Instead of a "speakeasy", will this building one day house a clandestine "readeasy"?

These notions are not absurd. They are a logical progression of where we are heading. To quote myself: where is the line?

The answer is: there is no line. If you accept the concept that the government (federal, state or local) knows best about seat belts or gambling or cell phones, then you must accept the concept that they know best about what you should be doing...or thinking.

Maybe it is time to ban Huckleberry Finn again?

Somewhere, I suspect, the good and gentle founders of the Women's Christian Temperance Union are smiling.

Changing technologies & curiosity shops

2009-01-11T21:49:00.005-05:00

One of the biggest companies that you've probably never heard of quietly closed most of its doors and went away at the end of last month. It was a victim not of the economy, but of changes in technologies and consumer preferences.

Qualex, Inc. was a wholly-owned subsidiary of Eastman Kodak, not that was in itself evil (nor, frankly, much of a recommendation for sanctity). The organization came into being in 1988 when Kodak merged its photofinishing operations with those of Fuqua Industries. Kodak had been buying many independent wholesale labs for several years at that point. It had already acquired such outfits as Fox Photo and American Photo Group (the #2 and #3 in national sales volume) among others and, of course, they had their own Kodak labs (#4 in sales volume). Fuqua Industries owned Colorcraft Corporation (the #1 in sales volume).

On paper it made good sense. This new organization that had been formed by the merger developed the film that folks took to their neighborhood drugstores or supermarkets. The labs operated by Qualex (93 at the high-water mark) did most of this work throughout the country. There were a few other photofinishers (York had one in fact: Simon Photo on South Pine Street), but nationally, Qualex did the lion share.

With these labs, Qualex had annual sales of somewhere in the neighborhood of $1.3-billion. That's an awful lot of snapshots.

Well, the last of the Qualex labs that were providing service to the United States and Canada--all 3 of them--have closed. There wasn't enough film being shot in North America to justify keeping even those labs open. That business; pretty much that entire industry, has gone. People are now taking pictures with digital cameras or with their phones. If prints are made at all, they are made right at home. There is no longer a demand for film or film developing. It took about 17 years to go from 93 labs to 0 labs.

Kodak actually saw it coming and tried to hold it off for a bit with its PhotoCD© products. Introduced in 1992, the product allowed consumers to place their images onto a special CD-ROM. You had to start with film, but you wound up with a digital file. And that was the beginning of the end for film because once people saw how flexible digital files were, and how inexpensive they were to produce and save, there wasn't a lot of incentive to keep buying cans of film and storing negatives and beat-up photographs in old shoe boxes.

I got to thinking about all this yesterday when a customer came in and told me about a new machine he had seen online. It would do print-on-demand books, spitting out finished product from an assembled digital file. Download a file, push a button and 15-minutes later you've got a finished book sitting there. You might have to wait a little bit for the glue to dry on the binding but that was about it.

The machine costs about $125,000. It is big and it is clunky and it is ugly so not a lot of people are going to want one in their living room.

But.

The first PhotoCD machines cost about the same amount of money. It too was big and clunky and no one wanted one in the living room. On the other hand, a lot of one-hour photo labs wanted one in their shops in the malls. (Cue the spooky music now). Before long, you didn't need the full set-up and before long people wanted to play the home version of the game.

All of this begs the question: Will books go the way of film?

Of course, there is something to be said for holding a book in your hands. (That's the same something that Kodak used to say about holding pictures, by the way.) On the other hand, you are reading this on your computer and you are becoming accustomed to looking at your pictures on a monitor. And there is a whole generation now that has no idea of how to load film in a camera since, chances are, they've never seen it done (they're the same ones who do not know what a vinyl record is).

How long will it be before books are seen as the ugly, clunky things that need to be schlepped from place to place and then stored until/if they are ever needed again? Are we talking about 10 years? 15 years? Certainly not as long as 50 years.

Books as we know them now will most certainly go away. Publishers are already producing digital books ("ebooks"). And Google is working with libraries to digitize rare and out-of-print titles to make them available online (do a Google search right now for "ebooks" and you will find more than 58-million results!). The right device for reading this wealth of material hasn't yet caught the public's fancy. There is no iPod for books right now. But one, no doubt, is coming. And when that happens, the big specialty chains and a lot of the mom-and-pop shops will disappear, just as the record shops did; just as Qualex did. You (or your children or your grandchildren) will buy your books online and download them (sounds a bit like iTunes to me) to some special device. They will be stored for awhile; maybe deleted after a bit. A few might be printed and then discarded when no longer needed.

But the good news is that just as you can, today, find a little shop that will still have records or typewriters for sale, in another 10 or 15 years, you will find curiosity shops that still have used books.

My guess is that The York Emporium used book and curiosity shop will still be here. And you (or your children or your grandchildren) will stop by, in another 50 years or so...and I may still be behind the counter offering Tootsie-Rolls and stupid jokes and explaining the difference between a paperback and a hardcover and saying things like, "No, you don't need to plug it in."

I get presents

2009-01-08T23:01:00.005-05:00

Late Thursday afternoon, and I am tired. I'm sitting at my desk looking at the mess.

And it is a mess. Half of York County must have made a New Year's resolution to clean up the clutter, starting with the books. We're getting inundated. Without exaggeration I can say that I've sorted, priced and shelved at least a dozen boxes of books in the last two days. And, by actual count, 75 videos and no less than 3 dozen DVDs. And you can't tell. The front of the shop is a disaster with stacks of books on the counters and boxes of books on the floor.

So I was tired and a bit disgusted with myself for not having a nice, clean book shop and it was only about 4:30 in the afternoon. With the York Chess Club coming in tonight, I was looking at another 5 hours before I could head out.

It was then that two gentlemen walked in the door. "Burst in" would probably be a better description.

"Jim!"

"Guilty," I said in reply. I didn't quite remember him. It seemed to me that he'd been in the shop once or twice before, but I honestly didn't remember much more than that. He'd brought his brother with him this time (apparently he was in town for a few days' visit).

He grabbed my hand and gave it a shake. "I was here right before Christmas looking for a book," he said. "You didn't have it."

That, unfortunately, happens a lot. I have learned that it is one thing to have upwards of 300,000 books; it is quite another thing altogether to have the right 300,000 books. I am convinced that I can probably get rid of half my inventory because it will never sell. All I need to do now is figure out which half.

I started to say something about being sorry that I didn't have the book he wanted, but he just waved that off.

"I found it online," he said. "A used copy."

"Oh, good," I said.

"And I got one for you, too. Here," he said as he handed me a copy of Take Over: How Euroman Changed The World, a science fiction novel written by Dr. Arthur Niehoff. Dr. Niehoff is a retired anthropologist who, during a career spanning 47 years, did original field research in addition to carrying an academic load on various college campuses. At least, that's what it says in his biography on the cover.

Before this afternoon, I'd never heard of the book. Or of Dr. Niehoff.

I stood, mouth open, with the book in my hands.

"I've got to go. See you next time!"

The two of them walked out the door and left me standing there like that. I'm not even sure I thanked him.

All of a sudden, I wasn't quite so tired. And of the 300,001 books in the shop, I know of at least one that I will never sell.

The Stratemeyer Syndicate

2009-01-06T21:28:00.012-05:00

Trick question: True or false--Carolyn Keene and Franklin W. Dixon are one and the same person.

Carolyn Keene, you may recall, is the creator/author of the Nancy Drew series. Franklin W. Dixon holds that honor for The Hardy Boys.

The answer is: it's a trick question. Both Carolyn Keen and Franklin W. Dixon are pseudonyms, and they both belong to one of the most successful book packaging operations in publishing history.

A book packager is a company that produces books more-or-less on demand for publishers. The practice continues into the 21st century. The idea is that the company creates the book to meet the specifications of a given contract. For example, a publisher wants to put out a series of guides to the great outdoors or to the great cities of Europe. It might approach an organization with some credibility in the field (the Audubon Society or the Nature Conservancy, for example). The organization will agree to lend their name to the project, but they won't necessarily have the staff to compile the book. So a packager is contracted to do the actual work. This company does the research, writes the text, secures rights to the photos, etc. and pretty much puts it together for an agreed-upon fee. Once the book is published, the packager is pretty much done. Often it doesn't receive credit or even an acknowledgement.

In many respects, it isn't all that different from a ghost writer who will produce a book that is credited to another individual (wait...you don't think that John F. Kennedy actually wrote Profiles in Courage, do you?)

Anyway, Carolyn Keene and Franklin W. Dixon weren't real people. They were pseudonyms owned by The Stratemeyer Syndicate. It got its start in 1899 when Edward Stratemeyer launched a series of juvenile fiction called The Rover Boys. He wrote the books himself under the pseudonym of Arthur M. Winfield. (Stratemeyer was comfortable with pseudonyms; he had written a number of the Horatio Alger novels using that pseudonym.)

The first series was a hit, so he expanded into a second series called The Bobbsey Twins, written under the name of Laura Lee Hope. This, too, proved popular and Stratemeyer knew he was on to something.

He also knew that he wouldn't be able to crank them out fast enough all by his lonesome. So he got some help by hiring ghost writers. These men and women would be paid a fee to produce books in the series according to a set of rules (and names) dictated by Stratemeyer.

One of the rules was that Stratemeyer would devise the titles and the basic plot that the writers would flesh out. Another was that the writers were sworn to secrecy. No one was to know that there was no one Carolyn Keene or Franklin W. Dixon. In fact, a series of writers (usually moonlighting newspaper reporters) wrote under each name. Fan mail directed to the authors in care of the publisher was forwarded, and answering letters were sent by either "the assistant to" or "the secretary of" the particular author. And no one outside a small circle knew.

The number of series in the Stratemeyer Syndicate continued to expand. In addition to Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys, there were The Radio Boys, Ted Scott Flying Stories, Tom Swift (actually, Tom Swift, Tom Swift, Jr. and Tom Swift III each had his own series), The Happy Hollisters...more than 40 series in all.

Mr. Stratemeyer died in 1930, but his Syndicate continued and was operated by his daughter, Harriet. She continued to introduce new series and, in the 1950s, she began to update the earlier books. Times were changing and teenagers listening to Elvis weren't really all that taken by reading about the exploits of air mail pilots (especially when they were written in the present tense). There was also the issue of awakening consciousness, and many of the books were no longer quite correct in their characterizations of various ethnic groups. The term "politically correct" hadn't yet been coined, but if it had it certainly would not have applied to the stereotypes and slurs that the books contained.

Harriet continued to update the series and in the 1970s, she decided to start producing the books in paperback. Well, the traditional publisher, Grosset & Dunlap was less than enthusiastic (they didn't do paperbacks) and they sued. For more than 70 years the secret had been kept (that's far longer than many of the secrets of World War II when you stop to think about it), but the law suit brought it all out into the open.

The secret was out! There was no one Carolyn Keene. There was no one Franklin W. Dixon. But there was one Stratemeyer Syndicate. And since they won the suit, there would now be modern paperbacks. They were enough like the original to please the parents (who actually bought the books) but realistic enough in contemporary references (no more roadsters, for example) to satisfy the young teens who would read them.

With Harriet's death in 1982, Simon & Schuster bought the Syndicate and continues to publish several of the series.

So, if you answered "yes" to our original question ("True or false--Carolyn Keene and Franklin W. Dixon are one and the same person."), you were correct. It is, indeed, both true and false.

Ian Fleming

2009-01-04T20:53:00.007-05:00

Ian Fleming came into the shop today, in a manner of speaking. We took in a nice selection of Fleming paperbacks. They are all of mid-1960s vintage, and that makes them almost 50 years old.

This ain't great literature, but they're all fun reads. And there is certainly nothing wrong with that. Fleming, by the way, was one of President Kennedy's favorite authors (just as the UK's Queen Elizabeth makes it a point to read each Dick Francis novel as soon as it is published).

And I've always found it interesting to see how good some books really are before Hollywood screws them up.

Fleming was an interesting guy all by himself. During World War II, he worked in British intelligence and, so the story goes, he got the germs of many of Bond's exploits from actual events. That's the story, anyway, and it sounds good to me.

But here's another story, and this one happens to be true. I first wrote about it in one of my books, How To Tell A Secret (HarperCollins was kind enough to publish that in 2007): At the onset of World War II, the United States had no single, coordinated agency for gathering or evaluating intelligence. Independent offices were run by the Navy, the Army and the State Department. And not only did they not work together, they didn't even talk to each other or share what information they had. So President Roosevelt turned to an old friend, William Donovan, and asked him to draw up a proposal for a unified nest of spies.

Donovan retreated to his townhouse in the Georgetown section of D.C. to devise what was to be known as the Office of Strategic Services (the OSS). This was the direct precursor of the modern CIA.

"Wild Bill" Donovan as he was called (but not to his face) had some help. The British spymaster in the US, William Stevenson (who later gained fame as A Man Called Intrepid), along with his aide, a naval commander, both worked diligently on the document. Their role, however, was kept secret. It wouldn't have been good politics to let the world know how much the Brits were involved in the development of the American spy agency. So no one really knows for sure how much of the OSS actually came from Donovan or from Stevenson or from the aide for that matter.

The aide's name was Ian Fleming.

It's kinda neat that the guy who wrote all those books about 007 with the license to kill and all those gadgets and girls (did I mention the girls?) actually had a hand in creating the CIA. James Bond was, like Fleming, a Commander in the Royal Navy.

Fleming wrote things other than the Bond series. His day job was on the editorial board of The Times of London, although he left that job and devoted himself more-or-less full time to producing books after the received the Presidential boost. His most commercially successful book, other than the 14 Bond novels, was Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (made into a movie starring Dick Van Dyke), juvenile fiction about a car that could sprout wings and fly or turn itself into a boat all in an attempt to catch the bad guys.

None of these books will be in the Classics section, and I don't think they made a Cliff Notes on any of them. But they are a lot of fun. And they did spark the whole spy-craze that included such characters as James Bond, Matt Helm, Maxwell Smart and the works of John le Carre and Robert Ludlum, among others.

Fleming died of a heart attack in 1964.

We have a ghost?

2009-01-03T20:21:00.001-05:00

Yesterday I thought that the neatest thing in the shop was an authentic "Lincoln for President" campaign button (see previous post). Today I am not so sure.

Late this afternoon two ladies were in the shop and after I had bagged their treasures, one asked if we had any books on the ghosts of York. I told her that we didn't at the moment, and then started to tell her about the imp that lives in Clark Alley (it runs right behind the shop) and a few other stories, and about how local author Leo Motter had told us all about them during last summer's "Horrible Saturday" celebration, and...

And then she said, "And of course you have one here."

She stopped me cold with that one. At first I thought she was joking, but she was absolutely serious.

"We have a ghost?"

"Yes."

"You're kidding me, right?"

"No, you've got one," said the other one.

I just blinked and looked from one to the other. They weren't kidding. My mouth, I am sure, was hanging open.

"Uuhhhhh..."

"He's friendly. He likes it here. He is very comfortable."

"It's a 'him'?," I asked.

"Well, I am not sure. That wasn't clear. But I know it is here because he brought me over to the section I was looking for."

These were two intelligent, well-read women, and they were telling me matter-of-factly that we have a ghost. And a ghost who knows his way around the store well enough to help customers find books, no less. But to these two ladies, this entity's presence was no more surprising than the color of our ceiling (white) or the composition of our counter (wood).

"You must be mistaken," I said. "The building isn't that old. "

"Oh that doesn't make any difference," I was assured. "It may have come in with a book or a video."

Great.

"It doesn't make any difference" the first one said. "It likes it here."

"And it will protect you," the second one said.

Protect me? Protect me from what? Now there was a question I didn't want answered.

"But I don't want a ghost," I said as they were walking out the door. "I really don't!"

I had no idea that we had a ghost. No one has ever mentioned it before...not that there's any reason why it would come up in conversation. ("How 'bout them Eagles? Nice day, isn't it? How's your ghost?")

I don't believe in ghosts. And I certainly don't believe that we have one who moonlights as a tour guide to The York Emporium.

But I will admit that when I did my final walk-thru tonight, and again right after I turned out the lights, I did take a quick look back over my shoulder.

{sigh}

The neatest thing in the shop

2009-01-02T21:39:00.001-05:00

The neatest thing in the shop right now, at least in my opinion, is an original campaign button from the election of 1864: Lincoln for President.

The button is copper-colored (I have no idea what the actual metal is) and slightly bigger than a quarter. Embossed around the edges is, "FOR PRESIDENT" and "1864." In the center is a badly faded photograph of Abraham Lincoln.

Unfortunately the image has deteriorated to such a degree that it is nearly impossible to see it. But if you twist it, and the light hits it just right, you can see the image of Lincoln (head and shoulders, looking left), that Alexander Gardner shot in his studio. It is the same image that's on the $5 bill. He's there.

The button is protected, of course. It is in special packaging with a stiffener (so it stands on its own) and in an acid-free, clear envelope. It is on display at knee-level, right by the register.

It certainly does have a bit of a "WOW!" factor to it, particularly since the Inaugural is just a few weeks away.

Many historians point to that election as one of the most important in the life of this Republic. It was the first to take place during a war, for example. And the issues were clear and the candidates (10 bonus points if you can name the Democrats' candidate without looking at the answer at the bottom of this post) each held different views. Lincoln wanted to win the war; the other guy just wanted to end the war and was willing to let the South go its own way. He was that generation's peace candidate. There were other issues, too, but that was the big one. The outcome was by no means a foregone conclusion. Indeed, Lincoln himself didn't think he was going to win. But, of course, he did.

This relic is one of those fun things that I bring into the shop, and secretly hope that no one will buy. It is for sale and the price is reasonable. Still, I am not sure I want to let it go.

Maybe I'll just bump the price a bit tomorrow.

(McClellan, by the way. Yep, that one: General George Brinton McClellan, who had commanded the Federal Army of the Potomac during the opening years of the Civil War, and who had been in charge during the disasters of the Peninsula Campaign and the bloodiest day in American history, the Battle of Antietam/Sharpsburg. He managed to carry New Jersey in the general election.)

Year 4

2009-01-01T23:11:00.005-05:00

Three years ago today, in what was probably not one the most fiscally shrewd--or prudent-- decisions ever made, Pam and I took over operations of The York Emporium used book and curiosity shop in downtown York, PA.

January 1, 2006: another day that will live in infamy? Well, probably not. In the grand scheme of things, it probably doesn't make a whole lot of difference to many people who aren't looking to me to feed them. Still, it was important to us.

I first "discovered" this mammoth used book shop about 16 years ago. I had been haunting used book shops for years by that time and I can honestly say that I had never seen another quite like it. A huge warehouse of a space (19,000 sq. ft., we learned later when we signed the lease), crammed with books. Wonderful books; treasures. I absolutely fell in love. And I had been making pilgrimages, at least one every six months, for years. I was living in New Jersey at the time, and I'd make the 3-hour trek. Later, when I had moved to D.C., I'd drive the 90 minutes north. And always I was excited--coming and going.

So when the opportunity presented itself--the opportunity to live there rather than just visit--we took it. Oh, we talked about it for a bit before we made the final decision. At least, that's what we told ourselves at the time. Truth be told, we had already decided; we were just trying to convince ourselves by those discussions that we were being rational and properly businesslike about the whole thing.

But I confess to you that there isn't a whole lot that is either rational or properly businesslike about running a used book and curiosity shop.

Both The Washington Post and The New York Times have run stories in recent days about the troubled book business. They've talked about publishers cutting back, or cutting out, new titles. About traditional bookstores--chains and independents--losing money or going out of business altogether (some big names, too). About the growing trend to sell books online, or to publish books electronically.

Well, as the great philosopher said, the times they are a-changin'.

But we're not going anywhere. Frankly, we're having too much fun.

I am convinced that there is nothing quite like rummaging through the shelves of a used book shop. You can come in looking for a specific title or a favorite author, and you just might find what you're looking for. But if you don't...when you get to the shelf where your quest would normally be, and it is not there, what awaits you instead might just be magic. It could be a title that you didn't know your author had written, or a book you never knew existed. That's exciting. That's magic. And I get to see that magic registered on the faces of my customers every day.

Yes, we will sell online (Pam has nearly 3,500 volumes listed with various services and she makes daily trips to the Post Office to ship orders). But we will continue to run our mom-and-pop, old school, going-out-of-fashion, brick-and-mortar shop.

Because there's magic here. And we're really looking forward to Year 4.

Raymond Chandler

2008-12-28T18:50:00.001-05:00

One of the good things about running a used book shop is that I get first pick. And for a thoroughly addicted bibliophile, there is no greater rush to be had than ripping through a box of books that has just walked in the door.

It was, therefore, with no little sense of anticipation that I unpacked a box of books about two weeks ago. Really good stuff here. And a rare gem!

Somehow, this customer was able to part with a copy of Raymond Chandler's Trouble Is My Business, a collection of short-stories by a master of hard-boiled detective fiction. The stories collected in this volume (published by Vintage Books, division of Random House, in 1988) were written in the 1930s and 1940s and were originally published in the cheap pulp detective magazines of the day. Such august tomes as Black Mask (H.L. Mencken's rag), Dime Detective, Detective Fiction Weekly and Detective Story Magazine are represented. Obviously, in addition to some pretty neat covers, these magazines managed to publish some pretty neat stories. (By the way, I stole the above picture from the cover of the volume).

So I've spent the last two weeks of December wondering why I haven't read more--or all--that Chandler wrote. I've already added him to the list of People-That-I-Wish-I-Could-Write-Like.

And this gets my vote for one of the best opening paragraphs of all time:

"There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot, dry Santa Anas that comes down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge."
--Raymond Chandler, Red Wind

Other great lines:

"She gave me a smile I could feel in my hip pocket."

"She was the kind of blonde that would make a bishop kick out a stained glass window."

Just between you and me, I am not quite sure what either of those lines actually mean. But I know what Chandler was saying. Neither of them would make it past a copy editor today.

It doesn't take too much imagination to hear Humphrey Bogart when you read Chandler. It would probably be harder not to hear Bogart when reading that aloud.

OK, so maybe I won't shelf this book in the "Classics and Literature" section of the shop. But I do think this one will go in the "Recommended" section, right next to Robert Heinlein. And it won't be there long.

50 Cents

2008-12-24T20:36:00.000-05:00

It was just a day or two before Christmas. I was in the shop, running around finding books for customers, putting out fresh coffee and generally being trying to be a good little bookseller, when a young lady approached me and said, "You probably don't remember me, do you?"

"No, I'm sorry," I said. "I don't."

"I was here about two years ago and I bought a pile of books," she said.

I nodded and smiled. (I try to do that a lot.)

"When you had written them all up," she continued, "I didn't have quite enough money to pay for them all. So you told me to take the books anyway. You said that I should pay you when I came back in."

"Oh."

"Well, I'm here," she reported. And with that, she handed me two fresh, shiny new quarters.

"Fifty cents? From two years ago?"

"Yeah."

I touched her arm and said, "You will sleep better tonight."

She smiled. "Yes, I will," she said.

"So will I."