B&B - Books and Bridges

 With the promise of a sunny day, Ann Marie and I took a short drive on Saturday. We ended up in Steubenville, Ohio where we visited a bookstore. BookMarx had been on our “to do” list for a while and this seemed like a perfect day for the trip. What the heck, a trip to a different state to visit a used bookshop, of course it sounded great to me!

    We followed rt. 22 into the West Virginia panhandle, and it wasn’t long until we were coming around the bend and seeing the Veterans Memorial Bridge which would take us into Ohio.

    The bookstore is situated in an old brick building. Like many old cities, Steubenville seems to be having problems with filling its storefronts. There were a lot of empty lots and vacant stores in the town. Inside the store, it was all we could want. The owner was friendly and had no problems with me taking pictures. “If you need any help, just ask!” But when I asked a couple questions, he merely reverted to his computer for the answers. 

    I found two books, just after he had told me they didn’t have anything dealing with iron furnaces, by exploring his books. One book I had already and the other didn’t interest me. It just goes to show what you can find by browsing! Computers are great, but don’t let them stop you from searching. That’s one of the fun things about bookstores!

    Set on nice wooden shelves, scattered between three rooms, there was plenty to keep us occupied. All the books are on specific shelves, ordered by subject matter. There was a nice sized local section that had a nice variety of tri-state books.  This is where I found the two books mentioned before. There was a children’s area with a huge black cat that was happy to be petted. Religion plays a good part in their business; there was a large religious section in a separate room in the back.  We enjoyed roaming around the store and seeing what was there.

    I asked the owner one more question as we were preparing to leave. “Do you have any books on books?” For this query, he got up and took me over to a shelf I had missed. On that shelf, I found two books which I added to our purchases.

    One of the books was titled, Ballads of Books, Chosen by Brander Matthews. A hardback printed in 1887, it is a collection of poetry dealing with books, reading, libraries and such. It's in good shape considering its age.

    The second book is titled Infinite Riches by David Magee. Co-titled The Adventures of a Rare Book Dealer, the book was published in 1973. It is a hardback and has the dust jacket. It is in good shape with only a couple very tiny tears in the paper cover.

    I also picked up a thin book called A Thoreau Gazetteer, which contains 23 different maps, all pertinent to Thoreau’s writings. I’m sure I’ll enjoy reading all of these books!

    We paid for our purchases and talked for awhile with the owner who told us he had sold the store and would soon be moving back to Alabama. A few buildings down from the store, we found a nice coffee shop where we refueled our caffeine supplies before hitting the road again. 

    We crossed over into West Virginia on the historic Market Street Bridge. This was built in 1905 and has grating as a road surface. The tires sang as we crossed the Ohio River. 

    Once we entered West Virginia we headed south on rt. 2, passing the Wabash Railroad bridge. What make this bridge interesting are the finials which sit atop its towers. It is a long cantilever bridge, built in 1904, back in the days when utilitarian structures were made to look appealing. It is owned and used by the Wheeling & Lake Erie railroad. At one time it had a pathway on it to allow pedestrians to cross over the river. Sadly, this is no longer allowed. (You know I’d be up there!)

Old postcard

    We turned east on rt. 27 which after entering Pennsylvania turned into rt. 50. We followed this to Bridgeville. We had a little bad luck with restaurants as we stopped at two different establishments for lunch. One which advertised itself as serving breakfast and lunch all day had closed at 11. (AM) The second one we came to was closing at 2, looking at my watch, it was 1:55. We laughed, a lot, and then found another place to eat.

    Soon after, we came through the Fort Pitt Tunnels and entered the city, home once again.