Tag Archives: Jack Beck

Arachnophobiblia?

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As I come from a Northern European country, my experience of scary creepy crawly things is fairly limited: Margaret Thatcher, mostly. But I had a baptism of fire (actually fire ants) when I first arrived in the US. I discovered not only fire ants but banana spiders and other six- and eight-legged critters I never was able to put a name to, because they didn’t exist in the Old World. Suffice it to say that I’m a lot more nervous about these things now that I live here permanently–and since I learned that Tennessee, which is on our bookstore’s western flank, is home to almost every kind of poisonous spider known to humanity.

 

So when I was suckered into upgrading our bookstore’s basement (see my previous post) so we could put “another few bookshelves” down there, I was aware that there were a few straggly cobwebs. It seemed likely that there might even be an occasional confrontation, but it wasn’t until I began to replace the windows that things got serious.

As I installed each new window frame, I sprayed expanding foam into the crevices. After finishing the first two, I went up into the house to have my lunch. On my return, I was confronted with a whole herd of spindly legged spiders with swollen white joints and bodies hanging in the webs.

 

These things looked seriously scary, like evil snowflakes, but they weren’t moving. My assumption was that the foam had driven them out of their hiding places and perhaps given them a rather nasty death. But Wendy, being an academic, decided that ‘crowd sourcing’ on FaceBook would give us a more definitive answer.

 

Our neighbor and bookstore cleaner extraordinaire, Heather (while on an excursion in Asheville, even) found a match to the picture I’d posted of our spider. Lo and behold – it was officially named a Cellar Spider, and the white stuff was a fungal infection! I’m kind of sorry for them, having just got over a nasty cough myself, but don’t feel as guilty as when I thought I’d zapped them with the foam.

Now I wonder, did they catch this infection all at once or were they born with it inside them and it gradually developed? They are different sizes and yet they all have it; here’s what appears to be the tribal elder –

 Image

 

I should finally say that I’m generally amenable to spiders (as long as they’re not right in my face) as I know they keep less desirable beasties under control. However, Wendy, normally a circle of lifer and a gentle Quakerish soul, is terrified of spiders and has now decided the basement bookstore elements are mine to supervise. I feel more work coming on….

Two countries separated by a common language

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Jack blogs about language woes

I’m really not good at remembering names of customers (and not much better at faces). So I have a fall-back position of asking anyone who comes in if they have been in before or if they are looking for anything in particular. That’s when my secret weapon comes into play – my Scottish brogue! It usually produces exclamations of delight in return, people asking where I’m from, saying their great-grandfather came over from Scotland–although not always. Sometimes it results in blank looks or very confused responses, like “Hunh?”

It took a while before I was able to work out what was wrong, but finally the penny dropped. It wasn’t the accent so much as the vocabulary.

I frequently say that it’s a pity the Founding Fathers didn’t stipulate that everyone in the US would speak Sioux or Cherokee or another indigenous language. That way anyone coming here from the UK would realize that they’re in a foreign country and not assume that they understand the locals (or vice-versa). For instance I used to say, “The book you just ordered will be here within a fortnight.” The customer would stare, then mumble, “so – my books will be here in four nights? Could I pick them up the next morning?”

It seemed that writing the date of delivery would be easiest, until I realized that in the UK, we write the day first, and it is month first in the US. Still, this did clear up why my church kept singing Happy Birthday to me on May 2nd instead of February 5th.

A wee antiques shop lies not far from our bookstore, and people often ask how to find it. Directing someone to “turn right at the bottom of the steps and walk a hundred yards up the pavement” garnered funny looks as well. In the UK the sidewalk is called the pavement and the pavement is the road.

Then there is the issue of the fresh shortbread I make; I once extended a plate to a woman with the invitation, “Care for a biscuit?” She looked very suspicious.

But not as suspicious as the lady whose phone number I was writing down last week. When I misheard her, I found the eraser didn’t work. So I said, “Oh, one moment, madam, my rubber is malfunctioning.”

She hasn’t been back since, that woman.