Category Archives: Big Stone Gap

Special Ice, Special Moments, Special Friends

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Some of the characters from Little Bookstore gathered last night to share birthday wishes for our friend Tony. Retired from a water-based Armed Forces career to become a Presbyterian Pastor,  Tony’s seen everything the world can throw. Twice.

But Tony and his wife Becky provided Jack and me with a new experience: artisanal ice.

Walking up to their house last night, we encountered William (of William and Isabel) who said they’d just returned from a trip to Wise (a town about 25 minutes away) to bring “the party ice” to Tony and Becky’s house.

I envisaged sculpture, perhaps a magnificent angel in pale lime sherbet, rising with outstretched wings from a punchbowl. Since it was snowing here, and the roads had that dangerous sheen of black ice, fetching “party ice” from so far away had to be a mission of intense importance.

Nah. They went to Sonic, because “Tony and Becky like the way the ice is all the same size and crushed round to fit in glasses.”

Uh…. okay. So we went to the party and had a lovely Italian meal with Sparkling Spritzers served over Specialty Ice.

And it was nice ice. But I blog about this moment because it’s how we roll, here in Big Stone. We do not question our friend’s need to have specialty ice for her husband’s birthday party; we procure it. (Isabel says they got hot dogs while waiting in line, so it was kind of a fun outing.)

Nor am I surprised that Isabel and Will braved the roads for Becky, because Becky has been there for all of us at least once. Back when Jack and I took our first vacation in five years, and a kitten got into the plumbing between our first and second floor, I called home to check progress and another friend reported, “All is well. Becky sat upstairs in your bathtub, meowing to the kitten with a tin of tuna, until it came out.”

A woman who does this for others gets party ice when she asks for it. And so the circle turns.

One of the chapter quotes in Little Bookstore is from Epicurus: “It is not so much our friends’ help that helps us as the confident knowledge that they will help us.”

Yep.

Curse you, Christian Fiction!

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Those of you who run bookstores will understand whereof I speak. You will laugh knowingly at this question.

WHY THE HELL ARE THE CHRISTIAN FICTION SHELVES ALWAYS DISORGANIZED?

The people who shop Christian fiction tend to fall into a certain demographic: female, circling retirement age on one side or the other, sweet, watching their pennies, and looking for the latest of some series. I’m waiting for the day when a writer realizes the market for Christian Amish fantasy space exploration novels is still wide open.

Don’t get me wrong; I read Christian fiction, some for enjoyment, some for sarcasm factor. C. S. Lewis changed my life, but I’ve also enjoyed an occasional aga saga (that’s a British term for a domestic novel) here and there. We’ll not talk about the Left Behind series; observation suggests that opening such a dialogue is the fastest way to start a fist fight at a church’s fellowship supper.

But it is not so much the writing as the selling of them that I now query: if the customers are sensible, quiet, gentle people, then why are these bookshelves so eternally … untidy? As in the B’s are visiting the Q’s and the pocket romances are sliding behind the Gilbert Morrises? (And that’s a BIG space to hide behind; he’s got his kids writing now, sigh.)

One night I spent two hours re-alphabetizing, stacking, assigning “this far and no farther shall your boundaries be” spaces to Okes, Morrises, and Dekkers, feeling vaguely Genesis 1 about the whole thing as I parsed into order what had already been created.

I went to bed with those books lined up straight and tall as soldiers in the army of the Lord (not the Joseph Kony one). A few days later I brought a stack of new acquisitions over to shelve, and it looked as though someone had taken a leaf blower to the place. Bs and Q’s openly fraternizing, pocket romances hanging with Copeland westerns…..

I glanced suspiciously at a mother-daughter combo, Mom a dignified woman bent with age in a twin sweater set, saying “read that one” as her daughter, blond highlighted hair sculpted into perfect little “I am a teacher” waves, moved a stack of books from her arms one by one back onto the shelves.

Willy-nilly, in random order. They looked up and smiled at me in a friendly way before returning to their task.

It’s enough to make a bookslinger lose faith.