Happy to Be Hauling Books!

It’s not that I have a lot to say today, but here I am because I am so happy to be back out to the sales again after the summer hiatus I’m fairly crackling with joy! I haven’t been to an FOL, but I did go to two productive estate sales this past weekend. After looking at the ads for the mostly disappointing local sales we decided to venture farther afield. So Friday morning we pulled out of our driveway at 6:30 a.m. to be there in time for a 9:30 opening. It was strange to know no one in line, but that got remedied quickly enough because I’m a talker (yeah, really, I am sometimes). The first guy I talked to was a book guy (but not a dealer), so we chatted about industrial designer, Viktor Schreckengost’s, book, a book in his collection that had been signed and inscribed by the author to two different people at two different times, I. M. Pei, and various other fun stuff. I actually even allowed myself to engage in conversation with another guy who IS a book dealer about the state of the book world while we picked. Now THERE’’S a first!

Normally at a book sale I am yakking away in line, but as soon as that door opens I’m focused like a laser But three walls of books, all older, enveloped us and it was just the two of us looking, so we chatted while we perused the titles, showed each other which were book clubs, and ended up having a pretty fun time. Our tastes weren’t the same anyway, so it was no big deal. I bought about fifteen early 20th century theology books in like new condition for the antiques mall, plus three more that wound up being good enough to go online, and three WWI histories, also for the mall. By today’s standards that was a fairly big haul! Meanwhile Eric ran around gathering up some (expensive) goodies of his own. The first was a curio cabinet with a light which we can use at the mall to secure smalls, and should have acquired 22 months ago when we first opened up. Sad to say, it’s beginning to look like I “lost“ an antiquarian set – Memoirs of General Grant – though how a huge, thick, two volume set could be whisked out the door in the summer with no one seeing it is anybody’s guess. But I’m not going to get into THAT. I’m happy today and I’d rather stay that way. Eric also got a gorgeous, very high quality set of bronze bookends, replicas of the Lincoln Monument that weigh twelve pounds combined! In the new lighted cabinet they’re truly DAZZLING, though you might not guess it from the photo above. We were flying out the door Saturday morning to get over there with the new items before it got busy, so I snapped a quick photo on the kitchen island before Eric packed them.

But getting back to the far-away sale …. After we loaded our PT Cruiser with all the goodies (even the cabinet fit!) we headed over to Peninsula to a sale owned by a local artist. Art books abounded -- literally they inhabited every nook and cranny – and yet they were all stunningly common. Many were too new for the mall, so I switched gears and snapped up art catalogues instead. I did buy two art books, one of which was signed by the author at the Boston Mills annual art show not far from there. But that was pretty much that. Still – a very good day and great fun, though I did miss a Rockwell Kent from 1937 that my antiques dealer friend Darwin scored two hours after we left! But it’s okay. I’ve had it before and you do see it from time to time.

At the mall we were presented at the desk with a note from a person who’d stopped by the booth and wanted to sell us some books.I called her and we have an appointment for Thursday afternoon. I have no clue whether or not there will be anything we can use (You will note that I refrained from saying “anything good”, though I came dangerously close!.) She, like most people, said she had “a lot of stuff”, “this and that,” “too much to even remember.” I’m trying not to be negative here, but experience has shown that these phrases are code for “I don’t have a darn thing anybody would want, but I’m taking a shot at it anyway!” We’ll see soon enough.

Sunday found us shivering in the frigid air at the Medina Flea Market where I found three very good books. You can find interesting paper there sometimes, but not a lot of books. One is about Freemasonry from the late 1800’s in excellent condition. The second is a first edition of the housekeeping book Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote with her sister. The condition is good, but not great, on that one, though the good news is that the problems are confined primarily to the spine bands – the interior is clean and bright. The third book is an oversized soft cover local history published in 1906. I’ve never seen it before and can’t find a comparable online. It’s not perfect on the outside, but the inside, other than first page, is clean and bright and it’s tightly bound. The freemasonry already went to the mall, but the other two will go online as soon as I can find out more about the latter.

So there’s my good book news. But there's still one more thing to whirl and twirl about. The bath will be finished today! I extracted a promise – the cross your heart kind -- from WBC so I’m trusting him to deliver. Once he finishes that and hangs the new closet doors in the bedroom the second floor of the house will be mine again. I can hardly wait.