Whew. I'm wiped out. It's a good
thing today was a Logos day because after watching the season finales of
Grey's Anatomy, The Blacklist and Scandal one right after
another, I don't know that I have the energy to write anything else but a
recap of the day! (FWIW final scenes of Scandal were the best
of the 3.)
I had a lovely chat with Sandy for about 30
minutes. She and her wife are going through major landscaping and
she's a better man than I am, I have to tell ya! While we were talking
a guy who looked like our kids' friend Kag was eavesdropping and
occasionally adding a comment himself.
A middle aged man bought 3 literature books
and then an older man came in, kinda shaky, wearing a visor and glasses that wrapped
around his head and came apart at the nosepiece in the middle. Not
only did he have regular glasses, but also sunglasses on top of his head.
He wandered around for awhile and was finally joined by his wife, a thin
woman wearing a navy dress and a straw hat. She bought 2 bargain books
(one of which was a book of golf jokes) and a book on the Old West.
As for him, he said he had some books to
donate and then went on and on about the eclectic nature of his collection
and how he had already donated some to a library in England. The
problem was that he was so soft spoken that I only understood about 1 in 5
words and at one point I said "yes" to something and he was surprised that I
had heard of that book. Oops! Busted!
While he was lecturing me, a guy came in with
20 books to be donated.
A woman bought a bargain book and counted out
her pennies to pay the $1. She was one penny over! While she was
counting her pennies anther old man paid for another bargain book. For
a minute, because of the hat and his grizzled appearance, I thought it was
the soft spoken man back again, but it wasn't.
A guy came in looking for an out of print
book. It always amazes me that so many people come into the store
where we have, for the most part, one copy of each book (some are multiple
copies, but those are rare) and they expect me to check a database to
see if we have a certain book. Do you know what a nightmare
trying to keep a database of all those books would be??? They also
assume that because I work in a book store, I know every book ever written
and which books every author has written. Fortunately I do have my
smart phone, so I can check...and even Amazon hadn't heard of the
book this guy was looking for.
A woman came in wearing flip flops. She
had the weirdest toe I'd ever seen. It kind of stood straight up next
to her other normal toes. I wondered if she could wear anything but
flip flops! She was looking for a book by Henry Pressman, a new to her
author but didn't find anything. She did buy a bargain book, and then,
when she checked the cookbook section, bought another book, on award winning
recipes from the Gilroy Garlic Festival because she found a recipe for
garlic basil bread pudding (which sounded delicious). We started
talking about garlic and she told me that taking just one garlic clove a day
had cured her of her upper respiratory problems.
I shared with her the story of the woman I
once worked with who was really into garlic and had lots of it at
every meal. The problem is when you eat copious quantities of garlic,
you don't just have garlic breath (which I don't mind), but you excrete it
out of your pores and the excreted garlic smells nothing like garlic
breath. In fact, working with her I would sometimes get nauseous just
smelling her and moved my desk to an open window so I could get some fresh
air. I don't think she ever realized how bad she smelled and I didn't
know her well enough to tell her, and she was an otherwise lovely lady.
An English woman rushed in looking for the
credit card she had left behind, which Susan called and told her about.
She found it and went on her way.
A couple came in. He looked like a
college athlete -- maybe rugby, judging by the clothes he was wearing.
He bought a Steinbeck book, and then his female friend bought a different
Steinbeck, saying she had never read him before. Oh what a lovely
adventure she is about to embark on, if she enjoys his writing as much as I
do.
A young man with a backpack was looking at
the science fiction books toward the front of the store when a friend of
his, passing by, saw him and came in to chat. Ultimately she bought a
book of the Arabian Nights and he bought two books, one a Bible and the
other a book on religious doctrine (presumably he did not find those
in the sci fi section!)
An older man wearing wrinkled clothes,
slouched in, moving slowly, dragging his feet, and letting his arms hang by
his side. He was very pleasant and reminded me of my paternal
grandfather in his later years. He got a book off a shelf and sat down at the front table
to read. After awhile a woman looking very much like our San Francisco
friend Wilma in about 20 years sat down next to him and got her own book to
read. Eventually they put both books back and left without buying
anything.
My friend arrived shortly after 5 and was
delighted to find an old book, printed in the early 1930s. It was
about Toulouse Lautrec and was written in French. He doesn't read
French, but the book was in very good condition, was only $4 and had great
etchings in it. I told him now he could invite people up to see his
etchings.
My last customer was looking for books by Lee
Child. She was unsuccessful but bought a mystery about the Knights
Templar. Were there always books about the mysterious Knights Templar,
or was that a craze started by the success of Dan Brown? Re Child
books, I told her that Walt and I decided that if you eliminated the
sentence "Reacher said nothing" from Child's books, you could cut the length
by one quarter. She laughed and agreed with me.
Walt went off to "Celebrate Davis" when we
got home. I stayed at home because I remembered it was lots of booths
set up in the local park by many businesses to give you crap with their name printed on them.
You can also buy over-priced food there (the good stuff is usually gone by
the time you get there), but it's a great place to meet
friends (though the last time I went I didn't see a single person I knew,
other than those manning a couple of the booths)
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