GROWING UP IN A BOOKSTORE

The children who visit our store are our favorite customers. We have seen many of them grow up right before our eyes. They go from running in the front door, around the cases that hold new releases, around the counter and straight to the toy box in the children’s section, to walking in cool and calm and strolling toward Harry Potter and The Hunger Games.

We engage and flirt and entice and tease the little ones every chance we get. Usually we can get the shy ones to at least smile, the talkative ones to tell us stories and the readers to admit that bookstores are one of their favorite things. Nice.

I had a particularly entertaining encounter with a little, probably about five year old, girl the other day.

We have a bowl of these little, about the size of a half dollar, Greenman tokens that we keep at the counter. This little girl was standing on the back of her baby brother’s stroller talking with me. We talked about all kinds of things, her brother occasionally pitching in. She saw the little Greenmen and picked one up. She asked me what it was. Her Dad, by that time, had come into the conversation and together we told her about the Greenman being a Celtic symbol that represented nature.  She asked a few more questions and Dad took over the answers. She seemed quite intrigued. She took the little green leafy face with the tiny nose and put it right up to her eye and stared at it. Then she looked up at dad with a quizzical expression and asked, 

“Are there buggers in there?” Dad started to answer her with some sense of logic then looked at me and shrugged.

I shrugged. “Could be,” I said.

“Could be,” he said.

She nodded and put it back in the bowl and seemed quite content that she had gotten all of the information she needed about the Greenman. So cute!

A couple of weeks ago one of the little guys I’ve watched grow from a six year old to a 6^th grader came in. We talked for a while about school and books he’s reading. I kept looking around for his mom. Soon another 6^th grade boy joined him. We all talked for a while and then I realized that my little customer wasn’t there with his mom. He was there with his buddy. For the first time!

I wanted to wrap my arms around him and say something idiotic like, “You’ve grownup!” But…thankfully…I restrained myself. Otherwise I might never have seen him again.      

One of the things that independent book stores, and only independent bookstores do, is man (or in our case woman) book tables at Writer’s Conferences.

We will be doing just that at the Central Coast Writers Conference at Cuesta College right here in beautiful San Luis Obispo, Friday, September 20^th and Saturday, September 21^st.

A Writer’s Conference creates a unique environment to get inspired, educated, rejuvenated. Writers do need rejuvenation. Writing can be…no…is a lonely endeavor. It helps to get together with one’s “community” occasionally. I’ve attended several conferences and this particular one several times. Each time I come away ready to sit myself down and put flying, inspired fingers to awaiting keys.

This year’s classes range from, Syn & Syntax, Adapting the Heroe’s Journey, Plot and Plant your Landscape, Self-Publishing, to Poetry and Writing. There are more than 30 classes to choose from.

I love that this conference has specially designed workshops for teenagers. I love seeing them walking around campus, usually in groups, usually girls, clutching their notebooks and I-pads. They seem so excited to be part of the experience. So excited to be part of the writerly world.

And, we do actually sell books. We have been pleased, so far, with our sales. Seems writers do still buy physical books. At least at conferences.  

And, any exposure or an independent bookstore is a good thing.

Looking forward to it!

  

   

  

An Unexpected Response

I’m sure I’ve said here before that I love my job. I work with a small group of folks who also love their jobs. I know it’s a cliché, but we truly do feel like family. We know each other well, share our joys and sorrows, get together outside of “work” from time to time. A lot of this comes from having a “boss” who treats us like valuable human beings. What a concept.

And, I usually walk, through a pretty field, in weather that is never truly cold or terribly hot, to a store that smells like incense and candles and is full of books. Doesn’t get much better than that.

From time to time, we get people asking us if we are hiring. Some people, after wandering around the store, ask as they are checking out, almost as an aside, if we have any openings. They tell us that working in a bookstore seems like a satisfying way to spend some time. This is true. It is.

Young people come in, mostly looking for their summer jobs. I will say here that I truly appreciate the ones who bother to put clothes on before they walk through the door.  Ack! My age is showing.

Our response to all of these inquiries is, “One of us will have to die first.”

 Ha! That really is what we say. People of a certain age get it and laugh with us. Younger people tend to look at us with shock. And then I have to wonder what is going through the brains behind those startled eyes. Are they thinking, looking at our older faces and gray (or grayish) hair, “Hum…maybe I won’t have to wait too long.” Or are they thinking, “I don’t want this job bad enough to wish anyone’s death. Besides, I wasn’t planning on staying past August anyway.”

“One of us will have to die first.” Pretty funny, we think. Maybe a bit cruel. And…possibly actually true!

Long Live The Pineapple Chunks!

Remember New-Age bookstores? Remember when there were so many bookstores around that they could actually specialize? Carroll and Barbara, the owners of Volumes of Pleasure, where I work in Los Osos, used to own a bookstore in Laguna Beach. They called it A Different Drummer. The store specialized in Women’s and Gay and Lesbian issues. VOP has a spiritual leaning but we carry everything from romance, crosswords, mystery and vampires books side by side with Ram Dass and Pema Chodron. You can't afford to specialize too much anymore.

Years ago I worked in a family owned custom framing shop next door to a Metaphysical bookstore in a small center in downtown Malibu. I managed the framing shop, Deborah (who is still one of my closest friends) managed the bookstore. I have fond memories of she and I standing in front of our shops when things were slow talking about nothing and everything. She would tell me about her latest conversation with (because it was Malibu) Shirley McClain about her most recent new-age book and I would share my latest conversation with (because it was Malibu) Miles Davis about…well whatever Miles wanted to talk about. The shopping center was warm and friendly and all independently owned stores. We all knew each other and supported each other. By the time I moved away from Malibu it was already changing. The independents were disappearing and the chains were flowing in. Which in Malibu (because it was Malibu) were high-end chains.  

I have been reading lately that Malibu is fighting back against this onslaught. And (because it is Malibu) they have Dick Van Dyke as their spokesperson. Cool! Every town has the right to and should fight to protect their rural or small town to quirky or country or hip or whatever feel that the people who live there know makes it special.

In my novel Connie and Monique’s Power Trip, Connie, who owns a struggling independent bookstore in San Francisco, expresses an understandably jaded view of the American retail world, “…a big bowl of fruit salad with identical bite size pieces of apples, bananas and grapes, Walmarts, Starbucks, and Home Depots, floating around in a great white mass of ordinariness. A few chunks of pineapple manage to add the illusion of exotic flavor but they are quickly disappearing.”

Long live the pineapple chunks!             

Like many independent book stores around the country these days, we have to carry so much more than just books. We carry everything from clothing to jewelry to snack food to stone specimens. We also have a stubbornly difficult couple of shelves. Seems that no matter what we put on these shallow, low shelves in front of the register counters, nothing sells. But, for the little folks who visit us, these shelves are irresistible. They are, after all, at their eye level.

My little two year old grandson and his big brother come in to visit me on a regular basis. The two year old is at that age where he wants to touch everything, of course, he’s two. We work on this, like all good parents and grandparents. So, when he stands in front of these shelves and touches the chap-stick, tubes of sunscreen, or whatever else we try selling there, we say, “No, no. Don’t touch.”

Recently we changed up the shelves. We moved bowls of stones: rose quartz, malachite, lapis, amethyst, moonstone, fluorite, etc. to sit very prettily there. Yes, we realize, very tempting to little ones. On the other row of shelves we put boxes of chocolate covered cherries. Oh, the cruelty!

The last time my guys came to visit my two year old stood in front of the rows of bowls of stones, with his arms glued to his sides. He moved his head from side to side, scanning the shelves of irresistible trinkets. He repeated to himself, “No, no. No, no. No, no.”

His mom and I giggled at his monumental efforts to be a good boy. Then he turned the corner and came eyeball to box with chocolate covered cherries. He slowly raised his hands to chest level and clinched his little fists. “No, no. No, no. No, no.” he desperately whispered. He never touched a thing.

Such a good boy.

        

There is something to be said for continuity. Sameness. Our little independent bookstore hasn’t changed much over the years. We moved a few cases around. Changed lines of gift items and of course books we carry. Although we have many titles that we have carried for decades and continue to reorder.

A few years ago I took a trip to Baker, Oregon, a small town where I spent my earliest years. I was so delighted to see the little corner market was still there, still called Kennedy’s Market. I stepped inside and looked around at an inside that looked very different from what I had remembered. I was nine when we moved away. I started a conversation with the man behind the counter.

“I used to live across the street. I would come in here almost every day.”

“When?”

“Early 60’s”

“My dad owned the store in the early 60’s.”

A very strong memory hit me. “Did you work here then?”

“Yep.”

“Were you in your late teens, early 20’s maybe?”

“Yes.”

“You were my first crush. You got engaged.”

He nodded, a bit wide eyed.

“That broke my heart.”

“Really?”

We laughed. I wondered if he went home and told his wife a woman who had a crush on him when she was nine years old stepped into the store that day.

I hear people lament the loss of independent stores all the time. As well as bars where they used to gather to jam with fellow musicians and restaurants where they got the best milkshake. I know some of it is pure, good ol’ nostalgia for ones younger years. Some of it is lamenting what was unique to one’s past. Some of it is recognizing the value of something that is one of a kind.

  

Last weekend we had a memorial service for Barbara, one of the owners of Volumes of Pleasure Bookstore. Hundreds of people filled the little church in Los Osos. And hundreds more sent cards.

One of our regular customers organized a cookie chain. People who attended brought platters of cookies for all to share. Many of our regular customers came out to honor Barbara and comfort Carroll. Former employees came from other parts of the state.

It was a wonderful and heart felt “community” event. Yes, it was a memorial but it was also a gathering of the community and a testament to the impact that an independent store and that stores owners can have upon their community. Carroll and Barbara matter to people. What they have done to support our community has mattered. The service they have provided for over two decades has mattered.

Can we ask for much more from our lives than to have what we did with it matter? To one, to several, to our family, to our community, to the masses. However far our touch reaches, don’t we just want it to matter? In the end.

Just got me thinking.    

Go in Peace, Barbara.