Back Again!

 

               The door was open! Sending an invitation to anyone walking by, come on in! I can’t remember how long it has been since the last time I was here. The store had shut down sometime in March. I would drive by just to see if any lights were on or if the window display had changed. It always was closed, just like the sign on the door stated.

                Going up the steps, a gate just inside the door stopped me. A small table holding a supply of face masks and hand sanitizer sat beside the gate. There were two people inside the store already, perusing the shelves, the current occupancy allowed.  Arlan, the owner stood at her normal spot behind the counter.

                I was excited! I was back again. Back at City Books on Pittsburgh’s North Side. To me it seemed as if it had been years since I was there last. But that was only in my bookstore starved mind. The virus affected many things and that was one of them!

                While I waited, Arlan and I caught each other up on what had had happened to our lives over the past couple months. The shop had been re-organized, additional shelves had been added to the walls and the center had been opened up. The counter had been moved closer to the door and some arrows had been placed on the floor. Not all the books were back on the shelves yet, re-organization is a very involved process!

                One of the things we discussed was the sentencing of the two men who had stolen rare books from the Carnegie Library. They had removed books and resold them , books which could cost up to $8 million to replace! They were sentenced to three or four years of house arrest (because of the pandemic, talk about good timing!) and one was ordered to pay $55 thousand in restitution. Basically a slap on the wrist! Arlan said it wouldn’t have been much different even if there wasn’t a virus scare, they were both white men!  What a shame, this has happened before. Maps and plates stolen from old books, volumes destroyed in the process and the criminals received a “firm talking to”. Some have even continued on in their book selling careers. Book stealing is not a serious crime according to the fines and sentences passed out over the years. It doesn’t matter how much the books were worth.

                Her stock hadn’t changed much, it had just been re-arranged. Still, even though I had looked over these books many times, I still found a couple I didn’t remember. This is one of the wonders of bookstores; you can explore the shelves from top to bottom, ceiling to floor and still, when you return you will find books unfamiliar to you!

                It happened to me today. The Story of a Stanley Steamer by George Woodbury. Printed in 1950, it tells the authors story as he tries to find and then reconstruct a Stanley Steamer automobile. (A car,not a vacuum cleaner!) Pulling the book off the shelf I realized that this was THE BOOK I had to take home with me. I hadn’t seen it in any of my previous visits. I know I had looked through the shelves it was located on, it must have been hiding from me, it knew the time wasn’t right. It just wasn’t needed the last time I was there, I had been looking for something different. Today, the time was right, it was time to go home with me!

                Making it an even better find, when I opened the cover to check the publishing date, I saw that it was signed by the author, sixty years ago! You never know what will catch your eye when you open the door to a bookstore.

                I took a couple photographs and browsed a bit more, all the while the conversation between Arlan and me never slowed down. I paid for the newest book in my collection, said my good-byes and then returned to the brutally hot streets and headed to work.

                Leaving, I glanced at the world globe sitting on the shelf. It reminded me about the wonderful world of books and how every bookstore is a world in itself!

                Arriving at work a few minutes early, I stopped by the near-by stream and gave the book a once over. I started reading the first chapter and fell right into the story.  Before I knew it I had to leave that world and return to my own. It was time to go to work.

                The morning news had been filled with bad things which had happened around the city, illnesses and deaths. Preventative measures businesses were being forced to adhere to, regulations about mask wearing and whether restaurants would be able to allow patrons to eat indoors. Never the less, I was able to find something good today! There is ALWAYS something, a flower, a babbling brook, a sunrise or sunset or a newly opened bookstore! My day was off to a great start!