Tag Archives: Wendy Welch

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

Dust and Ideas

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Someone asked me recently, “What’s that lovely smell, the one you get in old bookshops, made of?”

Dust and ideas, as near as I can tell. And it’s not nearly so esoteric as one might think.

This past Friday some synchronicity appeared when two very different pals from the book world forwarded information on book smells. Lara in Canada sent the above photo about a new (quite nicely packaged) perfume called “Paper Passion.” And my agency, Harold Ober, tweeted this link:

@bookstorewendy: As the authority on Old Book Smells, what do you say to this analysis? mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives…

As the mentalfloss article states, old books carry “a combination of grassy notes with a tang of acids and a hint of vanilla over an underlying mustiness.” Yes, we all agree that the smell of books presents their history–and that it’s a pretty nice smell, to have inspired a perfume!

The vanilla-and-acid analysis is poetic, and as Charles Lamb said, “A book reads the better which is our own, and has been so long known to us, that we know the topography of its blots, and dog’s ears, and can trace the dirt in it to having read it at tea with buttered muffins.” Plus, I have this somewhat silly idea that old books are heavier because they take in not only smells from their readers, but weight, from their readers’ minds.

As a college student I often helped a friend who worked in Psych Services check the meeting rooms before locking up at night. Sometimes when we opened the door of one of those little counseling cubicles, the heaviness of what had been discussed in there lingered on the very air. I don’t mean “vibes and aura” stuff, just that there was a palpable (usually dark) residue in those rooms.

Of course, not all thoughts are ponderous and ominous like thunderclouds; some are featherlight, airy as sunbeams. No matter which, it just makes sense that people reading books, pulling ideas out of them, leave a little of themselves behind–be that the breath of thought or the breadcrumbs of lunch.

All those leftovers contribute to the book’s smell, its appearance, its personality, if you will. This is something bibliophiles know and respect. In our bookstore, we often see people stop just inside the door and take a big sniff. And we know he or she is honoring the long history of humanity’s eternal library, inhaling that wafting odor of dust and ideas.