Category Archives: shopsitting

For All Good Gifts, We are Thankful

Posted on by
4

One of the joys of running a small-town bookshop is how often people come in with stuff they just want to give you. Here are a few of our favorites:

  • Last week neighbors who winter garden stopped in for the first time ever, told us how much they enjoyed the book, and handed over a large plastic bag filled with… blue-green curly stuff. I admit freely that my idea of cooking is a lot of ingredients thrown into one dish, and no stirring, but our new friends thoughtfully added an index card detailing instructions on how to steam the kale to perfection. It was so delicious, shopsitter Andrew and I fought over the last piece.
  • Awhile back, Jack was feeling poorly and went upstairs to bed just before one of our regulars came in. Frank has two fixations in life: homeopathic medicine, and JFK’s assassination. He often stops by to gather reading material on both. When he discovered his favorite Scottish co-conspiracy theorist was tucked up in bed, he said, “I know just what he needs,” nipped out to his truck, and came back with a bottle of Nature’s Remedy Cayenne Pepper Pills. “Guaranteed to cure what ails you,” he said, thrusting them at me. “One tonight, one in the morning. I’ll check back to see how he’s doing.” (Jack recovered.)
  • A man who buys thrillers and western stopped in, looking sheepish, and handed over a paper bag. Inside, a canning jar was about 1/4 full of clear liquid, two dried apricots swimming in it. “It was full,” he said, “and I intended it for y’all, but my son stopped by and he found it where I had it hid in the cupboard.” Jack unscrewed the lid and lightning and purple snakes flew from the brew. He certainly enjoyed those apricots.
  • It’s a sad fact that we can’t take our yarn stashes with us when we go; many donations of a late loved one’s wooly goods have made their way to the bookshop, where the needlework babes spend a pleasant evening untangling them for the communal stash drawer.
  • One Spring day a child who lives in the neighborhood and likes to hang out in the shop walked in and handed me a shoebox. “I brung you a rabbit,” he said. Nervously, I shifted the lid an inch–to reveal a very tall, very stylish paper-mache rabbit sculpted by his small hands from newspaper. Around the base was painted “Bookstore Ester Bunnie.”
  • A woman who shops with us infrequently opened the door and said, “This was at a yard sale, and I thought of you because I wanted to buy it but I didn’t need it.” In her arms lay a beautiful black 1930s-era typewriter. She supervised its placement on a display table, stepped back, and smiled. “I knew it would fit in here,” she said, and marched out without another word.
  • Another woman walked in and handed me a lava lamp. “I didn’t want to throw it away, thought it would like nice in the children’s room here,” she said, beaming. My husband stared at the offending object. “Looks phallic,” he muttered. (BTW, do you know how hard it is to “accidentally” break a lava lamp? Took four tries.)

It’s good to run a shop in a small town. Mendy, who recently opened a local craft store, said she scored three pies, a potholder loom and a dozen brownies her first week.

The Smoking Bookgun (from the declassified Whalen files)

Posted on by
11

Sometimes people walk into Tales of the Lonesome Pine bookstore. I believe they are what keen observers of human society would call “customers.” These customers are a varied and mysterious breed. And while my previous training had suggested their intent was most often to “buy” things using “money,” I have been surprised by the variety of encounters possible within this scenario.

What follows is just one of the many stories from…

The Declassified Whalen Customer Files

A common story from people who have worked with titles, whether it be videos or books, is the customer asking after something that’s just on the tip of their tongue. And while they can’t quite remember the ISBN, title, genre, or author, there is always a single fact: The Smoking Bookgun (I’d watch a movie called that). It may be the book’s shape or size, or the main character’s maiden name, but they’ll definitely remember something.

Of course I now have those stories of my very own. In fact, I was tempted to thank the first customer who brought me my first Smoking Bookgun Mystery. But while I knew about these encounters beforehand, I was surprised by two new elements.

The first is how often the mystery ends up solved. People have come in with little more than a twinkle in their eye, but given enough time we’ll eventually find the right thing. My first guess after you say, “I’m looking for this book… it’s blue,” may very well be, “Oh, you mean Laguna Beach: Season 1 on DVD? Yeah, we’ve got that.” But humans have a remarkable capacity for seeking common ground and paring down large groupings into small. It turns out we’re all pretty awesome at it.

Plus, the Internet exists now.

So yes, it may have taken 45 minutes, but eventually I’ll get to mispronounce most of: “here’s your copy of Verlag Von Gerlach & Wielding’s Völkerschmuck! Auf Wiedersehen!” So it doesn’t matter if you’re not sure exactly what book you have in mind. Roll the dice. Your odds are better than you think.

The second element that surprised me was a novel new twist on the quest for that one book you heard about that one time at the family BBQ from your cousin who is totally in the CIA and carried it with him for like six months until the cover wore off and he could really use a new copy before flying off to I-Can’t-Tell-You-Where-Because-It’s-Top-Secret-Stan. I have now been asked on several occasions to track a book based on another fictional character reading it within a movie. That’s right, the only smoking bookgun is a fictional recommendation from Tom Hanks before he went off to make out with Meg Ryan or date a mermaid or whatever else Tom Hanks is up to these days.

Sometimes I can help with this. But if you want that one scroll that Gandalf was reading in the library in the Tower of Ecthelion, we probably don’t have it.

All this said, I make no promises and have no special powers. We may never find that one book that was about this big and about this thick. But I have now my own small contribution to the long and storied tradition of “customers not knowing what they want” narratives. With that complete, I look forward to your stumpers and promise not to respond with any variety of droll, knowing smirk.