Books, Books and a Jug Band

Surprise in a jug

I was surprised last week at the archive. That’s an extremely hard thing to do these days, especially while I’m in Los Angeles. I mean, the day we moved into our first place in Venice, a guy on a unicycle wearing a pink Spandex unitard and a little cape rode by yelling ‘I’m Pink Man.’ Turns out he wasn’t the actual Pink Man who operates out of San Francisco. This specimen was a local Venice denizen trying to horn in on the franchise. But you get the point. It’s not that I thought that the librarians where I work wouldn’t or couldn’t sing. They struck me as either the Peter, Paul and Mary type singers or closeted Headbangers. I really wasn’t expecting a jug band. They didn’t have washboards, but they did have mandolins and a slide whistle. There was much in the way of knee slapping. I was very surprised as the Librarian at the center of it all (he’s a cross between Grizzly Adams and Santa Claus) hardly every speaks. See him belting out a jaunty tune was quite a surprise. As were the jugs.



There isn’t much noise at work. Loud conversations are rare. But work at the Archive has been, for the most part, very interesting and satisfying. Right now, I’m digitzing a special collection of very old (we’re talking pre-Mayflower voyage old) books on trade from the big players of those days (England, France, Spain, Italy and the Netherlands). I believe I can read the term Table of Contents in 8 languages. What good is that? Who knows? The fate of the world may turn on my finding a table of contents in Sanskrit. I haven’t scanned the oldest documents at the Archive. We have a center working on the Dead Sea Scrolls. I know the London Center scanned the Book of the Dead. I don’t think anything other-worldly happened to them afterward. During last week’s conference call, no one from that center was chanting about Imhotep. Jon thinks it’s because no one READ the Book of the Dead when it was scanned. That must be it. Horror movies are never wrong about these things. Where was I? Oh yes, old tomes. I think the funniest thing I discovered were civil codes from the 1600s carefully laying out when it was permissible for passengers on a ship to sue the shipping line if they fall victim to pirates. Since I have found evidence that these laws were still in international law books as late as the 1920s, I doubt they were ever repealed. Thus, survivors of the Somali pirate attacks could hire one of attorneys who appear on daytime TV ads, to go after the careless ship owners who were in dangerous waters and not in a convoy. This is the stuff that goes through my head while at work.

Passages
Borders Book Store #93, 3rd Street Promenade closed its doors for good in January. Those of us who worked there have decidedly mixed feelings. There was a lot of evil cackling, to be sure. Some bitterness remains at the customers, the management, the corporate structure and even the fixtures. But, there is some sadness at the loss of yet another brick and mortar bookstore. Jon argues that it wasn’t really a bookstore at this point. It was more like a gift shop that sold some books. The depth of the inventory had changed considerably. The last time I was there, I couldn’t find a copy of The Great Gatsby. ‘Nuff said. I mourned the store’s demise back then. The company should have never abandoned its original mandate – a community bookstore with the prices of a chain. Borders expanded way too quickly (during my time there, a new store was opening every month). The Amazon.com completely panicked Borders. After they came along, it was one hair-brained scheme after another to try to keep its market share. They diminished the number and types of books they carried and abandoned the idea of full-time, knowledgeable staffers there for the long term. I’m saddened because it was a really great bookseller at one time. I have some wonderful memories of that store. I met some of the best people I know there (like Marie and Craig and Phil who were at our wedding). Marie and I learned about independent publishing working for Borders. My fondest memory of book signing was at a Borders. This one was in Philly while I worked for the Center City District. Peter O’Toole was signing a memoir at the Rittenhouse Square Borders. I just had to see him in person. He did not disappoint. Mr. O’Toole was there with a fine glass of booze and a cigarette awaiting the throngs when I arrived. The timid staff was trying to gently get him to not smoke and drink. He dismissed them with a very cultured ‘Oh, do go away.’ Then, he winked at me. It was fabulous. We would have never tried to take his stash at store #93 -- as long as he shared with us -- just kidding.

Our memories at store 93 are mostly ghastly. There were the various naked homeless people washing up in the bathrooms. They were never the OZ kind of naked or even the nudist camp kind of naked. It was gruesome kind of naked. Sometimes, they’d use the bathroom by going outside of the bathroom door next to the back office doors. My favorite of the homeless was not bathroom related. Mine was the one covered in gasoline and carrying an open cup of gas right in front of a group of VIPs from corporate headquarters. They no longer questioned our contention about having the weirdest clientele in the chain. We beat out the Manhattan stores for bizarre by a mile. We also cornered the market on privileged and often abusive customers who felt very entitled to everything. I won’t miss them at all. Though I met Star Trek's Patrick Stewart there (a co-worker nearly got injured over my wanting to wait on Captain Picard). Barbara Streisand had pretty good taste in book but made her husband pay for them. And Ted Danson looked for me long after I quit as he believed I was his personal shopper. Ah, memories. We tried to get a reunion group to go for one last visit, but I worried that Craig’s idea for a proper farewell would end in arrests. Thus, I said adieu from home.