Tag Archives: Quakers

Our First Bookstore Wedding

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It’s been quite the month here at Tales of the Lonesome Pine New and Used Books. We’re in full-on publicity mode for the Oct. 2 book launch, have got Andrew the shopsitter comfortably installed, and just packed up Big Stone Celtic Festival.

Now we are very much looking forward to this Sunday, when we host the first ever bookshop wedding. Rachael and Wes have decided to tie the knot, and they’re doing it on our shop floor, as part of our monthly Society of Friends meeting (aka Quakers).

It’s very sweet. Here’s a pic of Wes and Rachael marching in the Big Stone Celtic parade Saturday past. They’re the ones in yellow tees, just walking out of frame.

Stuffing 45 or so guests into the shop may prove a challenge, but this is why Jack put some of the shelves on wheels–a practical tip we picked up from other bookshops during the Booking Down the Road Trip last Christmas.

It will be a Quaker ceremony, with the Presbyterian pastor from up the road–who knows Wes and Rachael from the monthly ideas discussion group they attend together here–officiating over  government requirements involving licenses and signatures. The couple will be wearing street clothes, flowers limited to the usual Quaker tradition of having a plant on the table– symbolizing life and growth and thanks for God’s bounty–and the staff cats as bridal attendants.   (Owen Meany is beside himself at the prospect of getting to carry the ring. We have practiced not swallowing it.)

And beneath the planning and the paperwork and ceremonial elements, something like a heart beats. We are so proud that Wes and Rachael chose this place, where–as they often say–they found a community to belong to and a faith they could sustain and be sustained by, to make this life commitment. The fact that Wes has been a worker bee here on many days when we needed a pinch-hitter means he knows our regular customers as well as Jack and I do. He’s part of the team that makes this a Third Place for everyone else.

So we’re very much looking forward to what could, if one wanted to wax sentimental, be described as a baptism of love washing over the books and the bookstore’s core people. And we’re excited; weddings are just plain great, especially when couples see them as a community display of what they already live privately. Wes and Rachael belong together, and the bookstore–physical books, Quaker society, and customer community–belongs to them.

It’s a full circle.

So Un-Necessary

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Right after Jack became an American citizen, we bought a pick-up truck. It was the natural next step.

Plus, we’d made several trips to haul books from assorted locations, buy lumber for Jack to build new shelves. I’d spotted a couple of really great chairs at a yard sale but had no way to get them home, etc. A pick-up truck, we reasoned, was Necessary.

So when I spotted a cool blue Chevy on the intranet at my college, Jack called the person selling it, and a deal was struck. But the truck showed up with an AS IS sticker on the window.

Turns out, the person selling it was not the owner, but a dealer … with a certain reputation.

You have heard the phrase “He’d steal the dimes from a dead man’s eyes?” Yes, such behavior may be Un-Just, even Un-Necessary, but it is not unknown–unfortunately.

We bought the blue lemon, drove it five miles, and had to have it towed to a repair shop. The Auto Repair Order says they installed: 1 engine, 6 spark plugs, 1 thermostat, 1 water pump, 1 throttle cable, 1 tranny cable, 1 tranny front pump seal, 2 motor mounts, 1 oil filter adapter gasket, 1 air filter, 1 alternator, 1 temperature sensor, 1 battery.

In short, we got took. Un-Just-in so many ways, and Un-Necessary, yes, but not illegal, because the man not representing the dealership who sold it to us said “as is” and shook hands with Jack.

Do you know something? I would a thousand times rather be married to a man like Jack, who gets taken because he believes someone who shakes on a deal would not deliberately be trying to get as much money for as little as possible, than be married to a man who would commit such an act and then go whistling home to his bed. And I would give ten times what we paid to repair that blue lemon to know that such men would not legally be able to do such things to someone who truly can’t afford it.

Since we can’t have that guarantee, we did the next best thing: invited a handful of friends over for a Blessing of the Truck ceremony. Each friend, representing a different religious tradition, said a prayer and sprinkled the truck bed with water. (We had watering cans for the Presbyterians and buckets for the Baptists, so as to be properly ecumenical.) With much hilarity, we dedicated our little blue lemon (now named Blue Bubba) to the glory of God and the good of humanity, and for communal borrowing among friends, erasing its past as the pawn of people more interested in money and screwing others than good workmanship and happy living.

And we had a lot of fun splashing each other, too.

If you want to see the rest of the Blessing of the Truck pictures, they are on

https://picasaweb.google.com/118133767331964566859/TheBornAgainTruck