Old Town Books,Used

Excerpt. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. 1. Old Town Books From the time that I was nine years old until I was the ripe old age of sixteen, I spent four to six weeks of every summer vacation at my grandmas bookstore, Old Town Books. It isnt one of those highdollar, artsyfartsy or place to be seen kind of shops. It is a small bookstore selling mostly secondhand literature. The closest thing to a Starbucks is the small wooden cart near the counter equipped with two carafes of plainJane coffee one regular, one decaf. There is a can of powdered creamer, three kinds of sweetener: pink, white and blue, and red striped stirring sticks that look like skinnymini straws. Assorted coffee cups and mugs are arranged on the lower shelf. Expecting paper cups? No, we ARE civilized after all.Old Town, as the name suggests, is situated in the older part of town between the now defunct railroad station and the new warehouse district. Rail Street once was one of the more fashionable addresses. Grand Victorians with giant live oak trees once lined the street out to the rivers edge. Now, only a cluster lingers on housing various small businesses. Old Town Books manifests itself on the corner of Rail and Main in a monument to Victorian splendor. There are two stories and an attic room that once actually housed someones addled antique auntie. Grandma kept house on the upper two floors and left the ground floor as her bookstore. The entire thing is covered in curlicues and fretwork not to mention the leaded glass windows and door. The front porch sports three rocking chairs, of the Adirondack style, fashioned from the slats of an old picket fence.I cant say that Mr. Brenner gave any calculating looks as he hauled away the dilapidated, picket fence from the side yard of OTB. He looked to me like an old man just doing a days work. Grandma only paid him ten dollars. What did she want? It wasnt like he swindled her. No one forced her to buy back that fence for sixty dollars in the form of those three, beautiful rocking chairs. "Huh! Resourceful for an Old Coot", was all she could say.Grandmas friend, Bernice White, was an avid reader. Her house was filled to overflowing with various and sundry books. Most were romance novels of the paperback variety. However, she also had the largest collection of Life and National Geographic magazines I have ever seen. Her second floor bathroom was better stocked that most schools. Her bathtub alone housed encyclopedia sets varying from 1957 to 1979. Stacks of archaic literature lined walls, trailed up the stairs and flowed into every nook and cranny. When my grandma decided to open her bookstore, she purchased over half of her books from Mrs. White. Grandma always said that reading books exercised the brain, but taking in every book you ever laid eyes on made you a ninny.Grandma always referred to Bernice as That Old Ninny. "I promise you That Old Ninny and That Old Coot are having themselves an affair!" I couldnt tell if she was more thrilled with spreading roomers or hearing them. OTB was THE place to exchange gossip. Grandma made sure of that. On the few occasions when the older population WAS behaving she would fabricate a few just to keep things interesting."That Old Coot was all day at the Widow Keenes workin on her plumbinI BET he was working on her plumbin! You ever see that wrench he carries. That thing is huge! Dyou see how she was smilin and goin on about how that Carson Brenner has the Magic Touch? Uhhuh! And can you believe it? He charged that poor lonely little woman $8.00 dollars for that Touch too! Well, he just better keep that big, red, monkeything away from me, I tell ya!"Okay, perhaps fabricate was the wrong word. Exaggerate is what I was searching for. After all, Georgie Keene DID have Mr. Brenner over to repair her leaky faucet. It is well known that he is an excellent handyman. One might go so far as to say that he did indeed have a Magic Touch. Th