A Little Bookstore
When I was a child Sunday’s were lazy days. Most stores were closed. If you didn’t get your groceries during the week, you were mostly out of luck. You certainly couldn’t get alcohol on Sundays. For us, Sunday meant watching football, playing outside and reading, the reading being the chief pass time.
My parents piled us into the car on Sunday afternoons and took us to this little book store out on Edmund Highway. It didn’t look like much—
a small building that could have passed for a convenience store minus the glass windows in the front. It was owned by a couple who I only knew as Al and Laura. To get an idea of who they were, when I think of Al I think of Edward Hermann. Laura always reminded me of a white Uhura from Star Trek. Both of them were very nice.
Al and Laura didn’t peddle new books, they sold used books, which made the prices cheap, cheap, cheap. They had a great return policy also: you bring in a book, you get a credit toward other books. Each Sunday we gathered our books and comic books and turned them in. Then we used the credit to purchase more. In essence, it was a trade in system. There was a nice little perk to it: if you didn’t have money, all you had to do was trade in a book or two and you could get a book or two in return and not spend a dime.
Mom and Dad looked through the novels and my older brother and I always headed to the back where they kept the comic books. Dad always told us how much credit we received for our comics and we would pick out the same amount worth (with the occasional little bit over when we had extra money). I was into the vampire and horror based comics. I can’t remember what my brother was into.
After checking out, we headed home and spent most of the rest of the day reading comics (and later, novels). Sometimes, if we wanted to be nice to each other, me and my brother traded comics.
Going to Al and Laura’s store was something I looked forward to each week. I was always disappointed when we didn’t go. It’s a slice of my childhood I would love to revisit.
Al has since passed and I’m not sure if Laura is still alive. The store is long gone, taking with it one of the joys of my childhood.
Today, a lot of the old bookstores are gone. The brick and mortar places have given way to the digital era. There aren’t many Mom and Pop stores like Al and Laura’s, and I don’t know of any system like theirs: bring a book, get a book in return.
When we were kids, our parents had us reading, if not during the week, then every Sunday. Those lazy afternoons are where my imagination got its exorcise, where my love for scary literature was cultivated.
The reading population is dwindling, and as a writer, that’s a sad thing. It’s even sadder to hear, ‘I love to read, but I don’t have the time.’ Don’t have time to read? This is the world we live in. We read every Sunday for hours at a time.
I enjoy reading. I enjoy dipping into someone else’s world. I enjoy the harmony of words, the beauty of a well-written story, the coming to life of characters. I owe that to my parents and Al and Laura, the owners of a little book store on Edmund Highway. Today, I want to encourage you to stop at some point during the day (or maybe just on Sunday afternoons), grab a book, sit and read. Let yourself relax—the world will still be there when you finish.
Until we meet again my friends, be kind to one another.
A.J.
