My apologies for the downtime on Friday. My webhost’s sysadmin was on top of a mountain. Perhaps he was searching for that lost boy? I’m not sure, since I don’t know which mountain he was on top of. And he does crazy things like rock climbing as a hobby so he might have been up there for pleasure, not altruism.
At any rate, I have so much to write about that I can’t write. It’s a terrible, terrible state to be in. I could write about the craziness at work. Or the side-effects of my running… except that I’ve got another blog for that.
Today I planned on eating a modest breakfast or lunch, and then finding a quiet coffee shop with free WiFi, from which to write. I just wanted to enjoy some delicious caffeinated beverages and pour my thoughts out, and hopefully give greater shape to my vague idea of a novel. And maybe blog some (hey, like I’m doing right now! Yay!).
And in the course of walking around my neighborhood I walked past Wallace Books, a small independent bookstore. And, since my amorphous novel is set in and around Portland, I was thinking about the history of Portland, and that led me to think of books I know about Portland, and that led me to this series of books by E. Kimbark MacColl*, an historian and former adjunct instructor in the Graduate Program in Public History at Portland State University. Every time I go to Powell’s to see if they have the books, they either don’t have them, or they’re used but fairly expensive. Of course that’s to be expected since the books are both small-press and out of print, but it never hurts to shop around.
So into Wallace Books I stepped.
And was greeted by a graceful, slender, distracted but still beautiful brunette, in her 30s, wearing a dark brown long-sleeved form-fitting t-shirt, and a long skirt that appeared to be made of dark gray cotton candy. It was fleece-y and nappy and looked as if it would fall apart in a stiff wind or if it got wet. A young teenage (?) girl, blonde hair, was also behind the counter, but on the computer.
Sitting right next to the main counter was a table of books about Portland. How lucky is that? I scanned the titles but didn’t see the one I wanted. So I asked the gray-skirted woman if they had other books about Portland. She then led me back into the recesses. The store occupies an old house, and every room has been fitted with bookshelves overflowing with books. It’s a lot like my dream house, actually, except I’d want more comfy places to sit, and maybe a small kitchen, but otherwise perfect. The woman showed me the section on Portland and Oregon and pointed out the sub-sections, like fiction and local authors, or the books on hiking, biking and the outdoors.
I told her that I was looking for books by Professor MacColl, and spelled his name. She left me to browse and said she’d look him up to see if they had any record of his books.
Having worked in a bookstore many years ago, and just being generally familiar with such things, I can scan a bookshelf fairly quickly to find a specific author or title. And within just a few seconds, I had spotted the exact title I was looking for: “The Growth of a City: Power and Politics in Portland, Oregon 1915 to 1950”. It was the only title from MacColl on the shelf, but this was the volume that covered the time-frame I was most interested in! And it was a modestly-priced $17.95, a good $7 cheaper than the last copy I’d seen at Powell’s. I scooped it up and brought it back up to the front, where I raised it triumphantly for the brunette and teenager.
“That’s amazing! This is the exact book I was looking for!”
She smiled and murmured words of congratulations, and I dug out my debit card. While waiting, I leafed through the book, and the woman processed my payment, having to reach around the teenager to do so. When the brunette saw what the young girl was looking at, she said, “Oh, you got into your schoolwork?” I glanced up, and saw some webpage with bright primary colors displayed.
The girl agreed. The woman said, “Then you have no excuses for doing your homework! But…” she paused, smiling. “Are you going to go get me some coffee? You said you’d go in five minutes, and that was ten minutes ago!” The young girl mumbled something and smiled, pretending to be intent on her homework. The woman then playfully bumped the girl to the side, as if to knock her out of her chair and get her started towards the coffee shop. The girl grunted and giggled, and the woman repeated the bump.
I smiled and looked up, and the woman met my eyes. “Hey, if you can’t beat your own children, who can you hit?” she asked me facetiously.
Hmm, that’s her daughter, I thought, and they look nothing alike. Wonder where the father is? I stole a glance at the brunette’s left hand and saw no ring. She may have seen me look, but since she was holding my debit card at the moment I had a perfect excuse.
I laughed and agreed. “I just have a nephew** to beat, and it’s fun but not the same thing.”
“Hey, you take what you can get!” she said, and handed me my receipt to sign.
I wandered out of the store, thinking that I’ll have to shop there more often.
* I find it shocking that Professor MacColl does not (yet) have a page in the Wikipedia. I intend to fix that shortly.
** In fact, I have three nephews and a niece, of various ages. In the moment I was only thinking of Max because he’s the only nephew with whom I could rough-house. Both of my other nephews are adult men and much taller than me (hi, oldest nephew!); yes, they’re good sports but I wasn’t thinking clearly at the time. And my niece is 6 years old. For this shameful lack of accuracy and omission, I plead forgiveness – I was flirting (ineffectively) and not in my right mind at the time.
