Nothing special...
Jan. 24th, 2009 01:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
deltamissI've been reading a book of American short stories. The book is old, used and obviously read often. It has a cloth cover that is now dusty from sitting on an open shelf for years and years. There is a gold emblem of an eagle and flag on the front. I love the book.
Sometime around 1967 I discovered a jewel of a place in my hometown. From the looks of it, anyone passing by would never know what was hidden inside. L & A Furniture was a fixture downtown on Cotton Row Avenue. The local owners sold everything from iron skillets and wheelbarrows to new and used furniture.
I had been inside the store many times, but around '67 (maybe it was '66) I noticed a sectioned-off place I'd never seen before. Maybe they had moved things around or maybe they had just created the spot. Either way, I found a place I'd return to time and again for several years.
The store had at one time been a cotton warehouse so it was basically a huge open space with concrete floors and brick walls. I don't know why I went into the store that day, but there on the right was a library of sorts. Four or five tall bookshelves had been placed along one wall with two jutting out into the room on either end to form a sort of U shape. Inside that nook I found gold...books with gold embossed emblems on the covers and gold leaf edges, all old. The owners had branched out into estate sales that included books. I was in paradise.
None of the books cost more than seventy-five cents; most were a quarter; a few only a dime. Some were worthless, even to a bibliophile such as I. Over the next few years I managed to collect thirty or forty books, most with cloth bindings, the majority having to do with grammar, literature or drama. Most of the books in my collection were published between 1904 and 1939, but there are a couple from the 1950s.
Some days during college, I would spend my lunch hour in the store...sitting on the ratty oriental rug, reading. By that time I had more expenses than money and couldn't justify spending even a quarter for a new book. Still, somehow, I always managed to secure one or two before the semester ended. ;)
Eventually, I moved nearly 200 miles away from home, and L & A stopped buying books. Now there isn't even an L & A Furniture Store. But I can still visit it in my memories...and the yellowed pages of the books I found there.
Sometime around 1967 I discovered a jewel of a place in my hometown. From the looks of it, anyone passing by would never know what was hidden inside. L & A Furniture was a fixture downtown on Cotton Row Avenue. The local owners sold everything from iron skillets and wheelbarrows to new and used furniture.
I had been inside the store many times, but around '67 (maybe it was '66) I noticed a sectioned-off place I'd never seen before. Maybe they had moved things around or maybe they had just created the spot. Either way, I found a place I'd return to time and again for several years.
The store had at one time been a cotton warehouse so it was basically a huge open space with concrete floors and brick walls. I don't know why I went into the store that day, but there on the right was a library of sorts. Four or five tall bookshelves had been placed along one wall with two jutting out into the room on either end to form a sort of U shape. Inside that nook I found gold...books with gold embossed emblems on the covers and gold leaf edges, all old. The owners had branched out into estate sales that included books. I was in paradise.
None of the books cost more than seventy-five cents; most were a quarter; a few only a dime. Some were worthless, even to a bibliophile such as I. Over the next few years I managed to collect thirty or forty books, most with cloth bindings, the majority having to do with grammar, literature or drama. Most of the books in my collection were published between 1904 and 1939, but there are a couple from the 1950s.
Some days during college, I would spend my lunch hour in the store...sitting on the ratty oriental rug, reading. By that time I had more expenses than money and couldn't justify spending even a quarter for a new book. Still, somehow, I always managed to secure one or two before the semester ended. ;)
Eventually, I moved nearly 200 miles away from home, and L & A stopped buying books. Now there isn't even an L & A Furniture Store. But I can still visit it in my memories...and the yellowed pages of the books I found there.