Is My Wife In There?

***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

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

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

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?

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

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

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.