Ticket to Ride
Transported by a book
By Patricia M. Walker
I like to troll thrift stores for books. It’s always an adventure, and at 50 cents apiece, you can hardly go wrong. If you do, you can simply re-donate. No harm. No foul.
Occasionally you reach for a book that looks interesting and find the joke’s on you, because when you open it, you discover it’s one you donated months ago. Standing there looking at your own name and the little stamp you mark your books with, you feel strangely proprietary and a little ashamed all at the same time. Worse, it’s just possible that the book is looking back at you with an accusatory stare, as if to say, “How could you give me away? Don’t you love me anymore?”
More interesting, however, are the times you find other people’s names and marks. Or an inscription that says: “To Glenn, May this first Christmas as part of our family bring you joy, George and Grace, Christmas, 1993”; or “M. A. Crichton from Mrs. Pyle, Christmas, 1938.”
Then, too, there are the stamps along the deckled edges or on the title pages that say Estes Valley Library — Withdrawn; Vermillion Public Library, Vermillion, South Dakota; Dowse Memorial Library, Sherborn, Massachusetts; Rivoli Township Library, New Windsor, Illinois; Fort Loramie Jr./Sr. High School Media Center; West Slope Community Library, Portland, Oregon; or most exotic of all, U.S. ARMY RVN SPEC SVC LIBRARIES APO 96243. That’s when you know the book has a life of its own, a story to tell. You hold it in your hands, leaf through the pages, trying to imagine exactly how it got here. What circuitous path did it follow to wind up on this shelf, perhaps thousands of miles from where it started?
Sometimes, there are even clues, relics of another reader’s life, hidden among the pages — a receipt from a bookstore in the Denver airport, a flier for “Buddhism and Meditation” from the Rameshori Buddhist Center in Atlanta, or a small ivory card printed in pale blue with a drawing of a young Chinese student at his desk and the words “If found please return to,” but with nothing filled in.
Best of all are the bookmarks — Decitre Librairie Papeterie in Lyon, France; Arcadia Books in Spring Green, Wisconsin; Golden Braid Books in Salt Lake City; Frenchmen Art and Books in New Orleans; Lunenburg Bound Books and Paper in Nova Scotia; Eighth Day Books in Wichita; the iconic City Lights Books in San Francisco; and much closer to home, Blue Ridge Books in Waynesville, North Carolina.
Of course, the stores they represent are indies and not thrift stores, but you love them all the same. You can just visualize the people who work there, how the books are arranged, the comfy sofas and chairs, the jingle of the bell as the regulars come in the door. You wonder if they’re still in business, and if so, whether some day you could — would — pack your bag and go there.
How you would walk in and say hello to the woman or man behind the counter; tell them you’ve come all these miles because of the bookmark you hold in your hand, a bookmark you found in Manhattan Transfer by John Dos Passos or The Red Notebook by Antoine Laurain, or The Buffalo Hunters by Mari Sandoz or Blondes, Brunettes and Bullets by Nils T. Granlund; or a thousand possible others.
And you are absolutely certain they will smile and be thrilled that you have come so far to visit their store. Then they will offer you a scone, show you around, pull volumes off shelves for you to admire. And you will buy something, new or used, not only because it’s the polite thing to do, but because you really do want that Penelope Lively or Kent Haruf or Philippe Claudel that’s sitting right there on the shelf. Besides, there’s always room in your luggage. PS
Patricia M. Walker is a retired teacher/purchasing manager/financial services administrator who was born and raised in Chattanooga,
Tennessee. She wrote her first novel when she was 9.
