Sandy had had a busy morning, she was pleased to report when I showed
up at Logos at 2. There were lots of people there and the store looked busy, but it
turned out it was all her family. She introduced me to her wife, her daughter, and
her two grandchildren, a 6 week old little boy and a girl who told me that tomorrow she
will be 6½. Sandy was teaching her granddaughter how to work the cash register, two
purchase the two books the girl was going to take home with her. I was picturing
working with Bri to show her the same thing.
The baby needed to eat, so they retired to the front of the store
where Sandy and her wife stood in front of the Mom, who nursed the baby to take the top
off of his hunger. Took me back to my old La Leche League days!
My first customer was a guy who came in to buy one of the dollar
books from outside. He was very friendly asked me how things were going and when I
said "fine" he left the store happily.
The next customer, who bought nothing, was like your stereotypical
New York author/poet. He was very tall and thin, had shoulder-length curly hair, his
clothes were rumpled and he wore a scarf around his neck and sunglasses. He held himself
in the way you would see an actor playing the role would hold himself. He finally
left after about 30 minutes and met a kid, about 12, in a backwards turned baseball cap
waiting for him outside. They made an incongruous twosome.
A barrel-chested man wearing a NASA t-shirt came in hoping to see
Sammy, Susan's son's dog, whom he had seen the week before. He joked that
since Sammy wasn't there he didn't need to buy anything (though he did buy a
dollar book before he left). We talked about dogs and his cat and then, when he had
chosen a Jason Bourne book, we discussed Matt Damon's portrayal of Jason Bourne and Sean
Connery as James Bond and how while in the books the characters could never age, in the
movies the actors do.
At 2:30, a woman with a heavy backpack came in and settled herself at
the table in the front of the store, where she brought a stack of about six travel books,
looked through them, then put them back and took another stack to check. She was
wearing black tights and a long loose sweater which came to about her hip level and
scratched her bum as she stood looking around the store.
Two people, a man and a woman, came in independent of each other,
each with stacks of books for donations. When I moved them to the back room I was
surprised to see how many books were there already. They could open a second store
just from what is in the back room, as yet unpriced.
A professor type came in, looking like Michael Gross on Family
Ties. After a very long time he bought a book about Newspapers of the period
1700-1750.
At 3:00 a wonderful thing happened. The door opened and a woman
walked in and introduced herself to me. It was Sherry Klimek Hunt, who has been
reading this journal from the first couple of years. We also know each other from
Facebook, but we had never met before. She was in town to see her grandchildren.
What a deightful woman and what a good visit we had (I was glad that it was a time
when there were no customers in the store). We decided that when she is next in
Davis we will have to plan to get together for a longer visit.
Those who have not developed internet friendships can't understand the
special (and unique) relationship that develops between people who "see" each
other frequently on line. It's not the same as a real time friendship, but it's very
real in its own way.
After Sherry left, the store was completely empty for over half an
hour. My total sales to that point was $10.56. Not very good. But the
4-ish o'clock rush started, right on schedule. A woman who looked like Gilbert's
great-niece, Rachel if she were stretched to twice her diminutive height came in and
bought two fantasy books.
A gender neutral person came in, very tall, with black curls standing
very tall on the head. It wasn't until he spoke that I realized he was a young man.
Very striking looking. It was his first visit to the store and told me he was
"falling in love with it" and wanted to know about volunteering.
An Asian man came in asking for books by Nevil Shute, a name which
sounded familiar but I didn't know why until he bought "A Town Like Alice,"
which I had read last year. On that Nevil Shute!
A man who looks like Ned's friend KC will look in 20 years came in.
He was balding and his hair was white (and he needed a haircut) but he had KC's
face, with more wrinkles. He bought three textbooks, and got a good deal at $31.
He was followed by a man who bought 4 books from the "old
books" shelf. They were all published in the early 1800s and he got all four
for $17, which he said was the most he'd ever spent at Logos.
"My Friend" arrived right on the dot of 4. This week
he bought a book by Al Franken and a big coffee table book of photos from Carmel. And yes,
I screwed up his change again!
A girl spent a long time in the literature section and bought 10
boooks, mostly Graham Greene. She paid $55.
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