Tag Archives: life in the slow lane

Shelving What Matters Most

Posted on by
8

Last night, with about a hundred things to do to get ready for tonight’s murder mystery in the bookstore (starts at 7, if you’re in the neighborhood) I wound up culling our online inventory.

You know the drill; it’s a form of avoidance therapy we’ve all practiced, this sudden need to do a job that’s been sitting around for weeks and has nothing to do with the urgent things before you, but just at that moment the planets align and there could be no better thing to do with one’s time than….

…reconcile the printed inventory list of 452 books with the titles on the online shelf. Mostly these books are hard to find for some reason and thus in high demand. The list being very dynamic, it’s a tussle to keep the right books on that shelf. Hard to find cuts both ways.

So I went at it. With my husband one floor below me installing a floor for our new bedroom (took him only eight hours; we’re very proud!) and foster kittens sullying the mystery room with every passing moment, despite baking and cleaning and last minute “how did this get there” tidying to be done, I grasped the list of titles firmly and spent 2 glorious hours playing a game of solitaire with books.

Is the book on the shelf? Fine, mark it off the paper list. Is the book on the list but not the shelf? Search the bookstore section it should be in. Is the book AWOL? Make another list. After all, tomorrow is another day.

When it was over, the bookstore was in chaos. Piles of mis-categorized books on the table. Gaping holes in the online shelf where books were falling over, falling off. Dust from ancient tomes everywhere.

Most satisfying. I cleaned up the debris, then made a half-hearted start at my “to do” list for the murder. As it turned out, things weren’t nearly so awful as I’d supposed. Pick up a dog toy here, straighten a shelf there: twenty minutes, and the place looked good. Screw the baking; we’ll serve ice cream sundaes.

Work expands to fill the time allotted it. If I’d given it two hours, I’d have found two hours’ worth of tidying. But you know, the time spent among the books, happily alphabetizing and culling and imposing a sweet sense of order on a random corner of the universe – well, sometimes it just does a body good to putter. Let the mad world whirl by; the books and I had a grand evening.

Eulis

Posted on by
6

Yesterday a friend came by and said her husband was at the funeral parlor, one of his friends from the Mutual breakfast gang had died. The Mutual is the diner that time decided to ignore. Two eggs and coffee with toast are $2.50, and the booths are dark fake wood Formica. The staff are cheerfully surly and the regulars are mostly retired guys in seed caps.

Jack is a regular (but he wears a flat cap) so of course we were startled, and asked in unison, “WHO?”

Eulis was a Korean War Veteran, a long haul truck driver (as was his son after him) a loving husband and an attentive father. He made trips with his son John until about 3 months before the last stroke laid him low. Eulis was the only guy I ever knew who swore coffee tasted different in Styrofoam cups than in ceramic mugs.

Over the years Eulis never said much to me beyond, “Waaalll, there she is; how’s Mrs. Jack today?” Sometimes he’d say, “You know, your husband’s a fine man, Missy, a fine man.” And I’d smile and agree.

Naturally, Jack loved Eulis.

As we measured out our lives with Mutual coffee spoons, we watched Eulis walk tall and proud, then with a hearing aid, then a cane, and finally a slow, booth-to-booth shuffle, stopping to regain his balance with a hand clamped to each seat back.

His wife Annie was brilliant. “That the best you can do?” she’d goad him when he slumped or rested over-long. Annie used to be a nurse. She’d been married to Eulis many years, and she knew how to keep him standing to the very end. He was a proud man.

And a fixture to us, here in the community. Eulis was as much a part of Mutual mornings as the chipped ceramic mugs he drank from. His cap with the “Korean Veteran” lettering. His wire frame glasses. His quiet, tall presence.

About two months ago a mutual (Mutual) acquaintance came by the shop and said, “Wendy, you know who’d make a really good book? Eulis. He’s got some life story. And he’s such a nice guy. You should go talk to him. I think he’d do it.”

“Sure,” I said, my mind going to the slow shuffle I’d last seen him doing. Step. Hand clamp. Rest. Shift. Step. Annie behind him all the way, holding him up with her careful, aimed teasing. I resolved to find time soon.

There’s an African proverb that says, “When an old person dies, a library burns.”

In his obituary, Eulis made all his fellow coffee drinkers from the Mutual honorary pallbearers.