The Book Stores I Miss.

My weakness has long been books.  I think the explanation goes back to my childhood.  My parents were wonderful about taking me to the library to check out books.  However, they saw little reason to buy books when you could get them at the library. That logic followed me for a long time.  As a high school English Teacher, libraries were available.  In law school I did not have time to read for pleasure, nor did my legal practice offer much free time.  

Some of my antique books

However, I gradually began to create a library.  Once it started, I soon filled the house.  I tried to be strict with myself about buying books, but I failed.  We added bookcases, but books hid under the furniture.    

However, this blog is not about my tidy hiding places for so many books.  It is about those wonderful bookstores that are now nearly extinct.  Remember those bookstores that had all kinds of books, new and old.  The joy in those stores were the odd old books, or the wonderful discovery of a book you loved as a child, or books once unaffordable, or discovering that an old movie was first a book.  

Of course, now you can look online.  New and old, they are neatly organized and inventoried to locate in a moment, with price and the book's condition. It is not the same as discovering something you didn't know you wanted until the moment you saw it on the shelf.  Those bookstores are disappearing.

Today I found an old clipping I had saved for some reason. A newspaper man was interviewing the proprietor of the oldest bookstore in Fort Worth, Texas.  The proprietor was Brian Perkins, and the name of the store was Barber's Bounty, although haircuts were rare.  At the time I first clipped this article, the Fort Worth Star- Telegram said it was Fort Worth's oldest bookstore.  The reporter, Tim Madigan,  described it as "a paradigm of literary clutter, with books of all genres spilling from the jam-packed shelves onto floors, chairs, tables and stairways."  Most of his books, between 80,000 and 100,000,(the number being a guess Perkins he admitted, since he had never counted them. Although the Barber Chair was rarely used, Perkins claimed he could give a customer a haircut if they asked. 

 He explained how the bookstore evolved:  "I've paid for my building.  I've paid for my house.  I don't have that motivation to be up on my toes anymore.  I've enjoyed coming to work every morning.  I'm down here six days a week almost always.  That's a lot of days.  I feel at home.  I kind of look around and see wonderful stuff.  

His "stuff" included Sherlock Holmes original editions (1894), a signed Amelia Earhart, a signed Stephen King, and a Latin script printed in 1561, the back cover crumbling.  He admitted, "I like people to see my books.  I don't like them to buy too many.  But I hate to just buy them and stick them away where nobody will see them."

There aren't many bookstores like the one that Brian Perkins once had, but what fun it must have been to wander through his unique collection.