1 day Ago
In 1976, I was 17 years old and had the most amazing job. I worked at a bookstore. A real bookstore with shelves rising up to the ceiling and an amazing ladder that moved on wheels all around so that one could access a cache of romance, mystery, Sci-Fi and Louis L’Amour paperbacks stashed at the top.
It was a magical time for me and perhaps the simple joy of being 17 and owning a red, 1968 VW beetle car purchased with $800 of babysitting money that I would drive back and forth to the bookstore contributed to the fond memories, but who wouldn’t feel that way? I have many more feelings about my four years working at B. Dalton Booksellers and they speak of a time when “going to the bookstore” could be a date night, a mission, an event. Lordy, I do miss those times.
I fancied myself a woman of great intellect and mystery with the bookstore job. Though still in high school, I had visions of majoring in English or journalism, living in New York or Boston, and becoming a writer. The kind of writer who had a fringe of bangs and a brooding expression on the back cover of her best-selling novel.
Parts of that did come true, eventually, but very few parts. I did end up with a sweet academic scholarship from the College of Charleston and have nothing but good things to say about the English department, especially the brilliant teaching duo of Drs. Bishop and Carolina Hunt, but the rest of the story is less glamorous.
The covers on my 34 books for teachers look less brooding and more schoolmarm. Still, the bookstore shaped my life in so many ways. I think bookstores did the same for many of us and I wish that was still the case.
If you can imagine it, there would be a line of folks waiting for us to unlock the doors to our magical kingdom in Northwoods Mall. People were determined. They had lists.
They purchased hefty bags of books. They special ordered titles. Now, that was a project, the special order.
We had a desk in store center, with a state of the art micro-fiche machine. There were also heavy red and green books from publishers, to assist one in hunting down treasures new and old. There was no Internet and phone calls cost money, so booksellers were charged with finding titles without assistance, great training for future grad school research.
I could find anything for anyone. I was the youngest on staff and the best book detective. It was my gift.
I’d find the desired book, fill out laborious forms, in triplicate, take a deposit and put the order in a box for the manager to “send to corporate”. It could take weeks. Nobody cared because it was so exciting.
I loved the Tuesday night shifts when I was charged with “making the calls” to let folks know their orders were in. It was like Christmas every Tuesday. You see, people loved their books and their bookstore.
I came to know certain fan bases, like clubs with secret handshakes. Remember, in Charleston, South Carolina at this time, we had one of the largest Navy bases and shipyards in the world. Those sailors loved to read.
Submariners especially, would come in when they got a paycheck and buy a dozen or more titles to take on deployments. As I recall, there were two camps: the Sci-Fi guys who were addicted to all the Dune books and many of the classic authors in that genre, like Robert Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, and Edgar Rick Burroughs and the Cowboy Sailors who collected Louis L’Amour and Zane Grey.
Some of them would ask me out for coffee, but I wasn’t allowed to talk to men other than for bookstore business or my fiercely protective Catholic mother would make me quit the bookstore and I couldn’t chance it. Mary’s spies were everywhere. There was always excitement stirring about at B.
Dalton. The release of a self-help bestseller at that time was cause for celebration. The junior staff would build towering pyramids of I’m Okay, You’re Okay and The Road Less Traveled and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy .
There would be balloons and special bookmarks and tote bags supplied by the publisher’s reps. It was crazy. Lines around the store.
But few things were as highly anticipated nor as memorable as a book-signing. And nobody had greater star power than the late, beloved, iconic Pat Conroy. I was fortunate to be on staff for several events.
I even got to bring him coffee in 1976 when The Great Santini hit the market. What a story! Of course my affection for the tale had nothing to do with the fact that both of us hailed from large, Catholic families dominated by angry military fathers and long-suffering, dissonantly pious mothers. Conroy’s visits to the bookstore created a visceral energy and joy among fans that captured the best of what it meant to be a gathering place for reading, thinking, and sharing a love of books.
One seldom hears a couple talking about their romantic first date at the Bookstore or a dad promising his kids to “stop at the bookstore” if they are good or a harried worker asking to leave a bit early to pick up a special order that has finally come in at the bookstore. Now, we have the internet and all sorts of other temptations and alternate universes but we cannot replicate the sights, sounds, and even scents of a good bookstore. So many have no idea what they are missing and so I reminisce with the “Bookstore Blues”.
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