Waking Up the Sleepers

Okay, then – back to Saturday’s estate sale. We do these frequently, but this one was a totally different experience due to its location in Wooster, a fair-sized college town more or less stuck out in the middle of nowhere. For years we followed what Eric always called the Two Hour Rule. Two hours was the maximum amount of time he was willing to wait for a sale to begin. But then competition increased, lines got longer, and the Two Hour Rule morphed into the Three Hour Rule. Sadly, we sometimes fall short of it though because somebody is ready to leave on time and somebody else is not – and, no, it’s not the way you think it is either! Anyway, this time we hit the road at six-thirty a.m. sharp and arrived forty-five minutes later to find that we were actually FIRST, an event worthy of a rousing rendition of Hail, Hail the Gang’s All Here by the College of Wooster Marching Band.

Fifteen minutes passed and the number of buyers grew to three and in an hour to four. They gave out numbers at nine and there were maybe 20 people then, an hour before Show Time, but the bulk of the crowd didn’t pile out of their cars until minutes before the door opened. Turns out, they don’t have estate sales in Wooster and no one understood the protocol. They thought it was a garage sale in the house. Oh, the house! Rarely do I fall in love with the house -- only once before have I ever had this experience – but as soon as I got on the front porch(the size of the verandah at Tara) my mind shifted into decorator mode. Lose the color of the door, repaint the porch floor, get some big urns for flowers ….

Focus, focus, FOCUS! House love was dangerously trumping book love, so I repeated the word to myself like a mantra. By the time the handsome door swung open I was back in the groove, promising myself a leisurely architectural tour after the books were chosen. The house, a 1920's vintage beauty, was huge, probably 3000 square feet, so imagine the shock when they announced that they would let in five people at a time -- FIVE, only two of whom, Eric and I, cared about the books! This, my friends, is the stuff of which dreams are made. Except there was one small problem -- though large in number, the books were so bad and the prices so ridiculous even Marian the Librarian wouldn’t sing. Here’s a perfect example -- a book club edition of Steinbeck’s Cannery Row with a badly torn jacket priced at $45! And that’s just one. The rest were so banal I can’t even remember what they were. We chose a few so-so titles from the $5 shelves to justify the trip and Eric went to check out while I walked around the house in a Martha Stewart swoon. We met up back in the book room twenty minutes later and were about to leave when I decided to have a second look.

Sadly, the books had not improved while I considered how to turn five bedrooms into three and a master bath, but I did find one that I’d missed the first time. It was a children’s book – series fiction stuff printed cheaply on high acid paper – but it caught my attention for the simple reason that I had not seen this series before. After all these years I’ve pretty much seen‘em all – the Submarine Boys, Danny Dunn, the Little Colonel, Ruth Fielding, Honey Bunch, the Vassar Girls (I do like the Vassar Girls), Grace Livingston, etc.. But Poppy Ott and I had never been introduced. The condition was very good and it had a nice jacket, but still … did I really want to pay $5 for Poppy Ott & Co. Inferior Decorators? Not so much.

“Oh come on, live dangerously,” Eric urged.

I wavered, put it back, took it out again, gave it another look. And this time a small voice in my head whispered, “Yes.”

So I bought it and it turned out to be the only good book we got. Not only is it fairly scarce, but it’s also desirable to collectors of kiddie lit, selling in the $75-$150 range.

Which brings me to the subject of sleepers, books that don’t jump up and down shouting “Pick me, pick me!”, but rather doze languidly on the shelf until something tells you to wake them up. I don’t know what to call that “something”, but it’s worked for me for years if I just be still and let it lead me. Occasionally, I’m wrong, but nine times out of ten the voice – my friend and customer, Sunday Morning Joe, calls it bookdar – delivers the goods.

So then, this story actually has a moral. Always take a second look and keep your bookdar on high frequency.

Oh, and maybe listen to your spouse once in awhile!

P.S. I just noticed something. Isn't the book's title funny under the circumstances? The Universe sent me a laugh and it took me four days to get the joke!