I Will Fish No More Forever

Late last Wednesday afternoon, I was hugging myself, knowing that I had just set in place the last of a carefully choreographed series of events that would result in the orderly departure of almost 4,000 used books from my bookcases and, in turn, the bookcases themselves. I congratulated myself on having managed all this with minimal interference to my new job and finessing the details down to the point that I would only need to take three hours off of work (time I had already made up, no less) to get it done. I had spent several nights in a row at the bookstore and had gotten all the new books off the shelves, stacked them in the floor in a way that wouldn't interfere with the removal of the book cases. I had gone to bed Wednesday night wiped out, but with an overwhelming sense of relief that things were finally happening.


Thursday morning at 8 o'clock, the thrift store employees who were supposed to be taking all the used books away decided they couldn't manage it. It was just too much. Never mind that I had very carefully explained the scope of the task beforehand. Never mind that the same guy had vehemently insisted that not only could they do it, but that it would be done in time for the book case people to show up at 10:30. Never mind that he had shown up at the store at 7:45 with two guys and a truck, and I had someone there to meet them as we had discussed. I made it to work at 8 a.m. only to get the call that my carefully laid plan had just fallen apart.

A melee of frantic book and shelf moving, a too-long truck, a busted light on the building across the alley, denials by the truck driver over the light, many hours and much sweat later, I said goodbye to the book cases. It was striking how much care had gone into placing them, just so, into the building, contrasted with how little care had gone into slinging them willy nilly into the back of a semi to jostle across Virginia to their new home in West Virginia. I was left with 6500 books stacked on the floor, so I decided to open the store ONE MORE TIME on that Saturday to try to rid myself of as many of them as possible.

So what does this have to do with fish, fishing, or the price of tea in China? After this flurry of late-week activity, we got up early Sunday morning and went out on the Swift Creek reservoir for some much-needed relaxation. I've never really been much of a fisherman as an adult--somehow it seems kind of self-serving. Who am I to kill worms and inflict pain on a fish just to amuse myself? It doesn't seem fair. So mostly I just lay around, drive the boat, look at the wildlife or swim and let other, less moonbeamy people fish.

But on Sunday, moody thing that I was, suffering from the collective exhaustion of several weeks of doing two jobs, and the recipient of a brand new bream buster pole, I decided I'd do some fishing. My book-weary hands were too stupid to do anything that required manual dexterity, plus I hadn't seriously fished in several years, so it took some doing to set myself up with a rig. By the time I settled down to fish, Beth had already gone around the bend to fish her own spot.

I experienced a minor moral crisis when it came time to put the worm on the hook. I am not a vegetarian, but I have a hard time inflicting pain on any living thing when there's no good reason. I managed to reconcile myself with that concept by promising the worm that his life would not end in vain. I spoke it out loud: I would take any legal sized fish I caught home, clean it and eat it.

I only had a few minutes to wait. I felt a tug, saw the cork disappear, and snatched up a little bluegill about the size of half my hand. I pulled it on into the kayak and saw, to my horror, that the poor bastard had swallowed the hook. An existential crisis ensued. I tugged on the hook. I looked again, it was still buried. I searched my limited tackle for pliers. None. I tried emergency surgery with a fish stringer. To no avail. I burst into tears. The fish stared at me accusingly. I had, after all, promised. I trailed the poor fish behind me and set out across the lake for where Beth had disappeared. It was like the canoe chase scene from Last Of the Mohicans. I was crying and rowing for all I was worth. By the time I reached her, all I could do was sputter and bring the hooked fish (with its accusing eyes) around for her to look at. She shook her head and said she couldn't do anything for it.

I do not recommend having a breakdown in a kayak. After I cut the line and let the fish go to what I am sure was a starvation death, I drifted out in the middle of the lake and cried me a river. Not only for the fish, but for the bookstore, and for the realization that I, like so many others, can't always keep my promises.

Return to Normalcy

Warren G. Harding (who is, to the best of my knowledge, the only President to date who has sported a middle name of Gamaliel) ran for office in 1920 on the "return to normalcy" ticket. The war-weary country swept him into office, along with a Republican majority in the Congress. While I am not a particular fan of Warren Harding, I can understand the attraction of his promise for the country at the time. I've bounced around from upheaval to upheaval over the past few years, and I'm just about ready to sew up the borders.

Like most aspects of being in business for myself, the bookstore's denouement has been both more time-consuming and more costly than I anticipated. When I decided to close the doors, I didn't really stop to consider that I could be left with, literally, thousands of books on the shelves. I was too proud to discount the new books any more than 50%, reasoning that I could send them back, and refusing to give the vultures who were circling, waiting for the 90%-off fire sale, the satisfaction. And this is, on a theoretical level, true. I CAN send the books back for credit from my distributor. The question is, when exactly do I plan on doing that? Since I started my new job, I've begun a 40 minute daily commute, dove headlong into a demanding new position, and tried to deal with 9-5 type bookstore issues before 8 or after 6. This weekend, I'm in Norfolk for drill. It reminds me a lot of my shipboard days, during which I grew to resent such normal, mundane tasks as laundry and toenail maintenance. I've got a buyer for the shelves who wants to come pick them up Thursday night, but no buyer for the books. And as much as I would love to recover the money I've hemorraghed over the past 18 months, I'm going to draw the line at dragging several thousand books into our basement.

I called this week to set up a haircut appointment with a woman who used to cut my hair at the Navy Exchange when I was stationed in Norfolk on active duty. She was a lively little Filipino woman who bantered constantly and almost always cut my hair too short. Still, I knew what to expect, and I liked having a regular "stylist." She had left the Navy Exchange just before I left active duty to establish a salon with her sister in a little shopping center in Virginia Beach. When I called, her sister said she didn't work there and hadn't for several months. She wouldn't tell me where the woman had gone, but I already knew where to find her. I got my hair cut by her this evening at the Norfolk Navy Exchange. She'd gone back to her normal, and I understood it perfectly.

Closed Due To???

I understand human nature, I fancy even better than most. Extended time spent floating around on the open ocean on a 500-600 foot long hunk of steel with 300 folks of varying ages, backgrounds, education and personal hygiene levels gave me that much (along with really bad habits of wanting to eat pizza every Friday and wear flip flops in the shower). Add to that over a year of seeing ALL kinds of people come in and out of the book store and I pretty much have a BS in, well, B.S. So it should come as no surprise to me, nor should it be particularly upsetting, that my going out of business sale has been like blood in the water. The chum bag shaken into the water from the boat stern. The death throes of the slowly dying animal. To the tune of, the website got 2-3 times as many hits as before, and I did more business in the six weeks between the initial announcement and today than any other six MONTH period to date. I've managed, for the most part, to stay philosophical about this. I reason that people in general are going through economic hard times and want their money to stretch as far as possible. So, while they may not buy a new book at regular cost, they might be able to reconcile one at 50% off with their budget. While they might not be able to find the store for, oh, I don't know, fifteen months prior to the going out of business sale, the big sale might provide the impetus to call or check the website for directions.

But enter the offer of free books for teachers, and things reached the kind of fevered pitch seen only approximately twice in retail America: Cabbage Patch Kids and Tickle-me-Elmo. Okay, maybe the X-box too. Last Saturday was my first day of the offer, and it was the first time I'd ever had more cars in the parking lot than the tattoo parlor during mutual business hours. If statements to the effect of, "I'm sorry I didn't know about this sooner," were nickels, there would be no reason for me to go out of business. In fact, if only half the people who came in the store last Saturday, yesterday and today had come in even once during the 15 months I was open and bought one or two books, there would be no reason for me to go out of business. This in spite of the fact that I sent multiple emails, flyers and announcements out to all Petersburg teachers through the same channels that I sent the free offer. This in spite of the fact that I offered through those same channels teacher and student discounts, multiple free literacy programs for kids and over 6,000 used books at bargain prices. Either something about the word "free" really makes people sit up and take notice, people regularly ignore emails from the school district's administrative offices, or the what's in it for me factor wasn't high enough before.

I get that opportunism is common to all mankind. It's part of what makes us human, kind of like opposable thumbs. And Lord knows I would do some of the same things--in fact, I did, when I was getting ready to open the bookstore. I scoured the Norfolk/Virginia Beach area for the best bargains, went to all the big sales and loaded up with as much for as little as I could. I know this on a cerebral level. That didn't stop me from having a sick feeling in my gut as people gleefully rummaged through the bargain bins of my children's room, picked out their free books and rolled out, seemingly without a second thought. I couldn't help but wonder if they stopped to consider the cause and effect of, hey, if I had come here a couple of times, maybe this little store could have really made a difference in our community. Not once, as a sort of going out of business swan song, but repeatedly. There are a lot of people in Petersburg who got that. I will miss them as if they were family. But there are a whole lot more who did not. And that's why my doors are closed.

Book Store Up For Adoption

Now that I have a job, the process of letting the book store go has ramped up in urgency. I don't know my start date yet, don't even have the formal offer where human resources will presumably draw up a salary and benefits package and I will either accept or negotiate. At least, I assume that's what will happen based on tidbits I've been able to gather from others who have gone through a similar process (and some sheer conjecture). This is unmapped territory for me, as it is my first non-military job as an adult. One thing I've learned during my Navy years about the government bureaucracy bus is that the wheels turn slowly, and sometimes it stops in the middle of the road for no apparent reason. But, I do know that I will be starting a new job, most likely before the planned end of my old one.

So, now that the end is in sight, the need to marry the good books up with good owners has become increasingly pressing. I have no compunction about the only so-so books that make up half my stock. They can go wherever, and I couldn't care less. But the good ones, I consider it my job to find them homes. One of my book club members came in yesterday and said her mother was looking for some specific children's books, and I just about fell all over myself trying to cajole her to tell her mother about two of my favorites. I just can't imagine shipping Giraffes Can't Dance and The Two Bobbies back to the cold, impersonal distribution warehouse. Some kid HERE needs those books! They need to be handled, read, loved, drooled on. So I've adopted something of a used car salesman tactic of shamelessly promoting my personal favorites. So what if he came in for a vampire novel? Surely he has a niece who is starting school next month and will need to have Splat the Cat read to her to help calm her fears. Splat the Cat, by the way, has a mouse for a best friend, which I find very cool. That babygrandmama who came in for a couple of classics? Please, take this interactive Dog book. One of the pull tabs makes a dog lift his leg and pee, for God's sake! Don't even get me started on the art section and cook books.

In the last few days, I've been trying to come up with ways to get people to come down and let me do a psychic reading of their literary tastes and pair them up with books that they need. This may or may not involve a Vulcan mindmeld, and I am only half-kidding. A regular customer suggested that I run a book adoption promotion yesterday. If the animal shelters can do it, why not? Anybody out there have any other ideas?

Ideally, someone from the community would make me an offer on the whole store--inventory, fixtures and all--take it out to the main street and reopen. They'd have to take their lumps for a year or two, but I believe they'd then move on to firmer ground. I think this idea can make it under that scenario, and I do believe Petersburg needs a book store. The combination of main street visibility, historical tourism, a pedestrian friendly downtown and the BRAC influx would eventually stabilize the money in-money out ratio. I just don't have it in me to start over like that. But if anyone out there knows someone interested in that scenario, I'd love to talk with them.

Job Hunting

It may be that looking for a new job is the most humbling thing I've ever done. I used to think that I was pretty darned employable: by virtue of prior military experience, what I flatter myself to think has been excellent performance in a wide array of assignments, current location in a military town, veteran's preference, yada yada yada. That was before the wheels fell off the juggernaut of the American Speculation Machine and Starbucks started requiring a Master's Degree to serve espresso drinks.

So it is in this oppressive economic climate that I have toiled over my qualifications and sweated out dozens of cover letters. I've rewritten my resume no less than 100 times, each time in response to a specific set of job requirements. I've carefully culled key phrases from the announcement, dissected the description to the point of splitting atoms, stuffed the application with all the position specific phraseology that's fit to print. For all this, I've only made it through the Army's Resumix computerized system one time, and I have yet to hear from the hiring official for an interview. It occurred to me the other day, after the umpteenth electronic rejection, that the federal job hiring process is vaguely reminiscent of calling Verizon customer service (i.e. I experienced in each repeated failures to find a way to interact with a human). Say two for new hires. I'm sorry, I didn't understand you. Transferring to main menu. Say two for new hires. I'm sorry, you're not qualified for that menu option. Please call again when you have your doctorate.

I've had some limited success with state job applications. I made it to the interview level for two jobs, only to hear a week later that the jobs are now subject to a temporary hiring freeze that may or may not last the rest of the fiscal year. So it's back to the drawing board. The good news is that, now that my job search is out of the closet, I've had multiple offers to help. It looks like I'm gonna need it.

The Book Pairer

Today I started the process of sending books back to my distributor. Because I'll be open for almost six more weeks, I still hold out hope for many of the books finding a home here in the community. So these were mostly titles I had multiple copies of, or books that I felt there was insufficient interest in to justify keeping around. It's not like I haven't gone through these exact motions before--culling the herd is a necessary and vital part of keeping a bookstore relevant. This was, however, the first time I'd boxed up a couple of cartons of books with no intention of replacing them on the shelves. And it may be that there are many things more forlorn than a stack of paperbacks whose covers have been stripped waiting to go to book heaven, but I'm hard pressed to think of them right now. There they sit, starkly naked reminders of my inability to pair them with a suitable reader. Failure written all over them, in so many words.

In some sense, I don't feel as if I've failed the community or even myself because this endeavor won't last, but that we have collectively failed the books and the ideas they represent. I know that sounds melodramatically moonbeam-ish, but I've spent most of the day today walking through the shelves as I culled books to send back, making mental notes of my favorites. And every time I come across a book that made me think a little longer and harder about what it means to be human, or helped me understand someone different from me, or transported me to another place or time, I feel the little pang of goodbye. These books, the good ones at least, have souls. As one of my older customers tells me every time he comes in, they're old friends. The Watsons Go To Birmingham is a little sassy, "Seriously? Couldn't you have done a little better by us?" To Kill a Mockingbird cajoles sweetly, "Come on, I've got something important to say and I'm relying on you to get me to the person I need to say it to." The Road, in typical minimalist fashion, grumps, "I trusted you" and lapses back into terse silence.

A very sweet regular customer came in yesterday and thanked me for giving her Garth Stein's The Art Of Racing In the Rain. She and her family had been here a few months ago and had been distraught because they had just put the family dog to sleep. She needed the book, I had the book, so I gave it to her and told her to read it when she felt able and bring it back when she was done. The book's narrator is a whip-smart, witty, wise-souled mutt named Enzo who believes that, once he's learned all there is to learn as a dog, he will be reincarnated as a man. It's a very sweet, well-written story that deals very sensitively with what it means to be human and to have a soul. Anyway, the lady came back yesterday to tell me the rest of HER story. She, herself, had been going into the hospital the next day for treatment of a very serious condition--this on the heels of the poor dead dog. It was almost too much for the family to take. She told me she had been overwhelmed by the simple act of me giving her the book. And I thought, maybe that was why I opened the bookstore in the first place. Maybe it wasn't to build a creative community gathering place or champion literacy or fulfill a childhood dream. Maybe it was because this woman would need this book on this particular spring day, and I needed to be here to pair her up with it. Several months of hard work, a fair amount of stress, a few tears and a couple of buckets of sweat in return for being able to be in the right place at the right time. I think that's a pretty good trade.

The Argument For Buying Local

I started reading Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation yesterday, and, twenty pages in, it already has me thinking about a whole bevvy of issues. In it, Schlosser explores not only the history and make-up of our still burgeoning fast-food industry but, more importantly, what it has done to our cultural landscape. One of the arguments he makes is that the fast food phenomenon has effectively taken the local out of our localities. Through mass production standardization and national (and international) ad saturation, McDonald's et al have created a nation in which an alarmingly high percentage of available food choices wallow in fat-laden sameness from town to town.
Some of this, Schlosser points out, can be attributed to the car-crazy culture that came about as a result of the completion of the coast-to-coast Interstate system during the 1950s. The new transportation paradigm dictated a shift in thinking regarding speed, convenience and cost of food. Gas stations and restaurants sprang up almost overnight to service hungry travelers at exit sites. This, coupled with the increasing tendency in recent years for both parents to work, has created an almost insatiable demand for the kind of cheap, reliable food that fast food restaurants excel in.
What all this has to do with the price of tea in China is this: around the same time the minimum wage pool of workers was growing by leaps and bounds thanks in large part to the explosion of fast food popularity, the world was becoming smaller in many different ways. Lower cost, more reliable international transportation, vastly improved communications networks, unionized labor's consistent demands for higher wages and better benefits, and a less protectionist foreign policy resulted in the gradual outsourcing of virtually all product manufacturing for American consumption. Overseas manufacturers, not subject to the same labor and environmental laws as their American counterparts, essentially bargained American manufacturers out of existence. Large chains with tremendous purchasing power brought in quality goods at low prices from overseas, and small businesses were unable to compete. The average American, struggling to make ends meet on minimum wage or slightly better, saw only the bottom line, and who can really blame him? When faced with the choice of patronizing several local merchants and paying an average of 15-20% more for the family's weekly needs or opting for the one-stop shopping and significant savings of a Walmart, who can blame Joe Q. Public for choosing the latter?
But what is the real cost? At what cost do we continue to short-sightedly sell our country to China and India at the expense of our neighbors? Is it for a $7.99 pair of shorts? A $2.69 gallon of milk? A $150 phone that can tell us where the nearest Walmart is? And what are we doing with all that money we're saving? Assuaging our national guilt by buying bigger houses and more gadgets and the super-sized combo at the drive-thru? There has to be a better way, and there is. It may not be the least expensive or the most convenient way. It takes discipline, commitment and a willingness to see a bigger picture. But not so long ago, back before the Internet and globalization and big box stores, it was the only game in town. It involves people doing business with people. It invokes words like accountability, responsibility, integrity, ANSWERING THE PHONE. It's called buying local. It's not too late. There are still lots of opportunities to try it on, and you just might like the way it feels.

Great New Site

So, I'm not all doom and gloom today. I also wanted to share an outstanding addition to Petersburg's intellectual and cultural landscape in the form of a new website. If you haven't been yet, check out http://mypetersburg.net. This site was formed by a Petersburg resident to bring "the residents of Petersburg, Virginia any and all news, information, events, and discussions regarding our city." They are accepting websites to link through their main page and plan to advertise local businesses through FREE banner ads in the near future! Email info@mypetersburg.net for more information. The site features a main page, an events calendar, a discussion forum and a photo gallery. You can also follow them on Twitter and Facebook under My Petersburg. I look forward to a revival of lively discussions between local citizens regarding Petersburg's issues and challenges.

Things I Should Know Better Than To Do

When I'm honest with myself, it has always struck me as a strange combination: a bookstore next to a tattoo parlor. But for a long time, I naively thought it would be one of those quirky coincidences commonplace in Petersburg, an idiosyncracy that would, in fact, make it somehow more special. For several months, I shrugged it off when I arrived to find beer cans, empty cigarette packs, discarded food containers, used (yes, used) feminine hygiene products and/or the occasional wrecked car strewn about the parking lot. I may have said a few choice words, but I picked the trash up and wrote it off as the price of owning something used by the public. I lived with the gaggles of tattoo-laden smokers hanging out in the alley cussing a blue streak and apologized to my purse-clenching little old lady customers who braved what they perceived as something of a gauntlet to visit me. I dealt without complaint with the fact that my parking is regularly taken up by tattoo parlor customers who can't park in tattoo parlor parking because there are so many employees and other people who seem to hang out all day WITHOUT pay there. I watched without comment as taxi after taxi full of GIs parked in the driveway to unload and clogged all avenues of traffic flow while they went in to collect their $10 per taxi load reward from the tattoo parlor staff.

Let me digress here for a moment and say that it is not the majority of the folks who frequent the tattoo parlor with whom I have an issue. Most of them are decent, hard-working folks who would no more throw their trash down in the parking lot, as an example, than my average customer. I actually know and like most of their staff, and I do get some cross traffic from their customers, even if the majority of them only come in to get a print out of their desired tattoo.

But today, I'm pissed. A heavyset pair of women just cruised down the driveway in their Pontiac Grand Prix aiming for the choice lower tier of tattoo parlor parking adjacent to the door. When they saw there were no spaces there, rather than hauling their fat but otherwise able bodies back up the hill and parking a little further away, they decided it would be just fine to use my handicapped space. I went out to politely tell them that the space was reserved for handicapped and that if they didn't have a placard or sticker, I would have to ask them to move. One of them muttered something under her breath. I asked her to please repeat it and she reared back and belted out, "I SAID, you ain't doin' no business over here anyway." I stayed calm long enough to tell her that I appreciated the comment but that I would still need them to move the car. She replied that the other woman was "gon' move it." I thanked them both and told them to have a nice day. Then I came inside, went in the back and cussed my own blue streak. I can't say that I was all that angry because of the young woman's sense of entitlement or even the comment itself. I was more angry because I knew it to be true.

So let this be a lesson to anyone out there in cyberspace who is thinking of starting their own business. There are some things that would do well in such a location as mine. You might run a honkeytonk, or a little bistro, an Internet cafe, a laundromat, skateboard shop, a bike and boat shop or even a gym out here in the hinterlands next to the tattoo parlor. You will not do well with a book store, and the attempt will be an exercise in head-banging that will leave you with little more than a headache and a rapidly dwindling bank account.

The Would-Be Deerslayer

I don't know if I'll ever understand dogs. Harper Lee is probably the smartest dog I've ever been around, but even she shows no ability to differentiate between a dog biscuit and, say, the flea collar that Dwayne Grubb pulled off her neck only a moment before. We spent Sunday morning in the dog emergency room with a sometimes epileptic dog. Dwayne, as if not to be outdone, would not let us leave him home and insisted on riding along. He suffered a panic attack upon arrival, ducked his collar and ran down the middle of Cary Street for a few minutes before I corralled him and put him back in the car. We ended up spending a few hours and a hundred dollars for the folks at the emergency clinic to tell us, essentially, that they wanted to keep Harper overnight and make her poop.

By this time, Harper was fully alert and acting as if she had not swallowed an unspecified amount of neurotoxin the afternoon before. So, after much deliberation, we decided to take her home and keep a close watch on her. Long story shorter, she had a couple more mild episodes before puking up a big ball of rubberized plastic and getting back to normal. She was more tired than usual that night, but showed no more ill effects.

Fast forward to the next day, yesterday afternoon. We were deep in the swampy recesses of the Appomattox River Trail, picking off scores of ticks and scuffling through the fourth or fifth mile, when the bookstore dog picked up a trail. There ensued a chase scene that would have made Natty Bumppo proud. Harper Lee, fully recovered canine athlete that she was, had scared up a baby deer and was hard on its heels as it emitted the most pitiful, panicked bleating sound I've ever heard. Harper has chased adult deer before, thankfully without success, and we know from experience that we kind of just have to let those chases run their course. She eventually tires of it and comes back empty-pawed and contrite. But this one, we saw, and it was just a baby. Harper was about a foot behind its heels, and the forest was filled with the desperate cries of an animal fighting for its life. All of this conspired to chase away what little bit of prudence I normally have and send me crashing off through the snake-laden underbrush in an all-out attempt to get there before the worst happened. Harper barked excitedly, the deer bleated, Dwayne Grubb ran in bumbling circles trying to track. Beth yelled at me to stop running in deference to my trick back. Suddenly, it seemed all kinds of animals and people were thrashing around in the undergrowth. Then, it stopped.

There we stood: muddy, scratched up, gasping for breath, filled with the worst possible feeling of sick dread. I managed to get a leash on Dwayne Grubb (he's not much of a tracker, and circled too close to me one time). We called Harper repeatedly, started first one way, then the other, and then resigned ourselves to impotently pulling ticks off until she finally trotted back up, some ten minutes later. There were no signs of blood on her, so we could only assume the deer made it to the river and got away. I could have cried with relief. I understand instincts, I get that dogs were domesticated by man and that their wild ancestry tells them to hunt and kill and eat. I am not a vegetarian. I fish. I don't hunt, but I don't begrudge people who do and eat what they take their hobby or way of life. But a cerebral understanding of all that is a far cry from the immediacy of yesterday afternoon in the Appomattox River woods. I'm not sure I could have welcomed Harper back, walked with her, pulled ticks off her on the way home, if she'd come back with that little deer's blood on her muzzle. Thankfully, I didn't have to find out.