Tag Archives: ban pornography

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.

Found in Translation…

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The lady translating my book from English to Korean emailed a few days ago with several questions. We had a good time sorting out idioms and idiosyncrasies, but I knew I was in trouble when HyoungEun emailed a second time to ask: In chapter 23, does “Fuquay Avenue” have something to do with porn? (Am I missing something here?) Or is it just the timing that made Mr Beck laugh so hard?

After cleaning up the coffee I’d spit across the keyboard, I reflected on why, in fact, Jack and I had laughed so hard. For those of you who haven’t read Little Bookstore, you’ve gotta get through Chapter 23 to know what we’re talking about. We couldn’t get outta that town fast enough. (Although I am reliably informed by a sweet reader who recognized her home turf that it has some really nice shopping AND a lovely Middle Eastern restaurant just a few streets over.)

Then, in an attempt to answer HyoungEun’s question, I sent her this response (I have replaced the word in question with ‘eff’ because, quite frankly, about every three days someone finds my blog by searching for “Fulton Ave Books” and “redheaded Wendy porn.” (I have NO idea!) I get enough porn-related search phrases as it is. It would be nice if Google and Yahoo would stop sending inquiring dirty minds my way. There are some lonely, unhappy weirdos out there, and I only wrote about Evansville once!)

HYOUNGEUN: Oh I’m laughing so hard my computer is shaking. Fuquay is a little too close to a word in English that is considered very vulgar. Eff means having sex but it connotes a rather joyless and loveless, merely physical, experience. Bored people and professional sex workers eff. The rest of us make love, or have sex. So Fuquay was a very French sounding way of saying eff and it was in the middle of those lovely mansions and spelled out on a wrought iron street sign, like it was trying to be really classy and wonderful, and it was just this street sex nasty term. (And totally unexpected, just after all those porn shops.) That’s why it made Jack laugh so hard.

HyoungEun sent back a swift response: Oh, of course I know what eff means! (Seen a lot of NC-17 movies. Ahem.) … I should’ve asked this from the start, cause I’ve been searching Google (and Yahoo and….etc.) the whole time and Google God failed me again! They say ‘If you are desperate, you go to Google result page2.’ I went much farther than ‘page2.’

That poor kid. What will the cookies on her computer be doing tomorrow? Will she have to explain anything to her boss? Call me if you need back-up, HyoungEun! I know what those search engines do. It ain’t pretty.