Here I Am, Take Me or Leave Me !

When the old Polish bookseller in Boston approached my father about "teaching the boy the book trade, because he's kind of smart," I was thrilled. I would no longer have to ask for an advance on my weekly one-dollar allowance to buy my Earl Derr Biggers' "good Chinaman" books or my Sax Rohmer "heathen Chinee" reading matter. What did I know ? I was thirteen years old, learning a trade, and getting paid in books. And all I had to do was work at learning about books. My mother and uncle were hand bookbinders, my dad a hand compositor, and I had learned to run a letter press at age nine, so at least the smells were familiar, and pleasant. I didn't know then about the duck bread. The first day on the job - a Monday after school - I went to Tony's book store and received five dollars. In change. My instructions were clear and simple: "This money is for books and car fare. Bring me back three feet of good history by Friday night, and walk as much as you can. Go to the junk shops and churches. Look for books. Don't argue about price. We'll work a little when you get here on Friday." With a few improvements, that's been my life for the last fifty years.


I spent thirty-odd odd years in Federal Service, and hardly a week went by without my doing some scouting, collecting, accumulating, amassing, and peddling to real book dealers. And, I didn't have to worry about duck bread. Oh yes, that was my work on Friday night during my apprenticeship: bring the shopping bags of the week's books to the bookstore, set them down, and then walk to the Wonder Bread bakery thrift store two streets away to beg for "bread to feed the ducks." Then, because car fare was a nickel, walk with my Master to his house, carrying two huge sacks of out-date bread to feed the damn ducks in the neighboring pond. I'm sure that Tony also ate many a duck bread sandwich during the week.

Towards the end of my civil service career, a good friend and great bookseller suggested that I go into a group shop to see if I could tolerate the daily cares and woes of a bookseller. In 1987, I was accepted into Imagination Books, a local landmark in Silver Spring, Maryland, whence came a large number of credible book dealers in the Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area. My real education began there. I learned about customer and non-customer service, thieves, cherry pickers, and even harlots. I learned that some booksellers are dishonest. Membership in the Washington Antiquarian Booksellers Association taught me even more, as I met many of the luminaries of the local book scene, most notably, of course, Allen and Pat Ahearn. The good dealers shared their knowledge; the bad I ignored, and they me. Due to the sale of the leasehold after several happy years, four partners opened a new group shop in Silver Spring: Silver Spring Books, where I stayed for another ten years before moving to Laurel, Maryland to open my first solo store, the original Greyhound Books, on New Year's Day, 2000, ten years to the day after the opening of Silver Spring Books. After five good and enjoyable years of yet another general stock bookstore, my wife and I culled our holdings but still managed to ship some twenty tons of better books to Las Vegas, our vacation spot of choice. The booksellers of the Las Vegas Valley welcomed us with open arms, helped, and even in some cases adopted us into this community of about a dozen fine bookstores.  Nous y sommes, nous y restons.