Category Archives: Big Stone Gap

The Redemption of Evansville

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Those of you who have read Little Bookstore know about the trip Jack and I made in 2011, visiting indie bookstores and small towns. One of these was a little place along I-64, not named in the book because every bookstore we tried to visit there turned out to be a porn shop.

Fulton Avenue Books was the only shop I mentioned by name in Little Bookstore. I had no idea at the time how (in)famous it was. About every three days, someone finds my blog through a search on “Fulton Ave Books,” or “Fulton Books Evansville,” or even “porn shops little redhead Wendy Indiana.”

(I have no idea, and I’m not about to Google to find out.)

But soon after my book came out,  a nice e-mail arrived from a lady named Betsy, saying, “I know where you were: Evansville, Indiana. I live there, and it’s not ALL bad! There’s a really nice Middle Eastern restaurant just one town over, and pleasant shops. We’re not just porn bookstores!”

I told Betsy it was a fair cop; yes, it was Evansville, and we’d actually tried FOUR stores, not just the two mentioned in my book, and she shot back an invitation that, next time we were out that way, she would buy us dinner at a great place in a cute part of town.

So when Jack and I realized that our trip to MariaJoseph Books near St. Louis would take us past the infamous Evansville, we let Betsy know.

“Saturday night dinner on us,” she responded. “We’ll show you the good stuff!”

Well, she and her husband Freeman and daughter Sarah showed us Newburgh, which is a little town right next to Evansville, full of quaint shops and cool bistros. And we had a lovely meal of goat cheese and curry and baklava–oh bliss. But we teased her that she’d had to come to the next town over for redemption–whereupon she hauled out a little gift bag and gave us chocolates (mmm, pecans) and lavender soap as well, both made in Evansville.

We had a grand time discussing Sarah’s teen sweet stash exchange with an online pal from Sweden (salted licorice not a hit with Sarah stateside; peanut butter spat out in horror in Sweden) and talking about the chances of survival for printed books and media. (We think they have better chances than peanut butter does in Sweden).

Would that all small towns in America had such staunch defenders as Betsy is to Evansville! Evansville, thou art redeemed–and scented pleasantly with lavender.

Book Trails

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You know those “where’s George” dollar bills in circulation? And the “book crossing” books released in airports and waiting rooms, with a stamp inside to show where it’s been?

Well, book trails are similar. Book trails are the marginalia, the inside cover notes, and the other writings of humans on the artifacts of gathered wisdom, left like messages in a book bottle for us to find.

Jack and I had several boxes of donated books come in from a family clearing out an old house. Think pre-WWII textbooks and reading club hardbacks from the 1960s. We regard such donations with mixed emotions, as 95 percent will be junk. BUT there will be some cool things in there – and there might even be one or two books we can actually sell.

This time, two books caught my attention. One was a 1942 Home Economics Text. In its sturdy green (grubby) linen jacket, The Book of Home Economics by Mary Learning (poor woman; her name was her destiny) stood out from the rest because of a coda inked on its cover.

Printed in such excellent penmanship that at first it looked like a continuation of the title, were the words “In Case of Fire, Please Throw In.”

Ah, anonymous fed-up student of the 1940s, we feel your pain. And we’re glad you found a way to fight back that left us howling with sudden laughter, seventy years later. I hope your grandchildren know what a hoot you were in school.

The other book was a bit more… poignant. Stolen Lives by Elissa Wall and Lisa Pulitzer was published in 2009 and is still selling briskly. It’s about young brides forced into polygamous marriages. This one was hardcover, had lost its dust jacket, and was seriously beat up.

But inside the cover, written in a large scrawl, I found: “Josh does not think I should be with Aaron. He thinks I am too good for Aaron but he doesn’t understand that Aaron is too good for me. He thinks everyone likes the people who like them. But we like who we like. I wish I didn’t like Aaron. Aaron doesn’t like me.”

I wish I could think of a better expression of empathy than “Ah, shit, kid.”

It reminds me of Dodie Smith’s wonderful book I Capture the Castle, wherein the young protagonist describes love as a game of Pass the Parcel gone horribly wrong. Everyone is in love with someone who’s in love with someone else.

Book trails: markers on our individual journeys, reminding us that many have trod similar paths–toward love, toward life, toward families, toward death.

It never hurts to look up from a book now and again, and smile at the people around you. We’re making our solo journeys together.