A is for dining alone… and so am I, if a choice be made between most people I know and myself. This misanthropic attitude is one I am not proud of, but it is firmly there, based on my increasing conviction that sharing food with another human being is an intimate act that should not be indulged in lightly.
MFK Fisher An Alphabet for Gourmets 1949
There are few people alive with whom I care to pray, sleep, dance, sing, or share my bread and wine. Of course there are times when this latter cannot be avoided if we are to exist socially, but it is endurable only because it need not be the only fashion of self-nourishment.
I wrote a paean to MFK here a few years ago.
It is Thursday morning. Still dark and silent. And cold. When I awoke to heed a call and go for a couple logs a few hours ago, I stepped outside into a strange world glazed over with ice. A dog had followed me out. He hopped onto the low stone wall and slid back down onto the glazed gravel.
There was a frightening dream before that. A man who was notable for several of the books in his collection. I opened two old duodecimos and one quarto. On a certain page in each, this man’s living face looked back at me. It was superimposed over the page of printed text. Spooky. I curled back up and pulled the covers to my eyes.
Would this be the night a real ghost would come and haunt me?
Spooky.
Maybe it was something I ate.
For I actually did dine with two friends at the wondrous Modern Asia restaurant in the same shopping center as the Frederick bookstore on Wednesday night.
It had been an eventful day in an eventful week.
I spent a couple hours at the store, often in the bookseller’s position of supplication—on one’s hands and knees. We had a lot of orders for boxes of paperback literature to ship around the country. Usually mass market Lit is full to overflowing at all three stores. Books double-stacked on shelves and sometimes fluttering to the floor. We’ve had two DC booksellers visit in the last week. (One came twice—120 boxes purchased.) They each picked out hundreds of classics at wholesale prices. And retail sales have been strong despite the weather. The thirty-five or so bookcases of literature actually have many gaps. (Not that a layperson would notice.)
So it was time for more desperate measures—the bottom shelves. The bottom and top shelves in bookstores are often where books tend to go to languish. Yesterday, they were the fullest shelves, so it was down to the floor for me.
Omigosh, how many copies of Candide do we have?
Too many. (Oddly, it has been a Candide week—a signed slipcased copy came to hand at the warehouse last weekend. I have seen enough to know that Rockwell Kent’s tiny ink autograph can be occasionally squeezed between texts on the colophon at the rear of the Random House edition he illustrated.)
Like a big kid, I crawled on the floor for over an hour, thinning the herd on the bottom shelves.
Then the phone chimed in my pocket. (My ring tone is “Cathedral Bells.”)
I answered with a little suspicion.
“Hello.”
It was not a number I recognized, and I get a lot of spam calls. If it is a living human spammer, they either want to buy my building or have a “solution” for my business.
“Chuck, I’m here at your loading dock.”
???
Turns out, I had forgotten an appointment at the warehouse.
French leather, of all things. Her father’s collection that she wanted to have a good home. She had driven from Annapolis, I think.
I was in the middle of a mess at the store, and Ernest was there working with me. I convinced her to bring the books to the store since she didn’t want to leave them for a check to be mailed later. A ten-minute drive. We could do a cash payout. If necessary, I could add money from my wallet as well and get reimbursed later.
“There’s a lady here asking for you.”
Up from the black and white linoleum tiled floor. (Ouch.)
Out the front door I’ve used for 35 years now. (We moved into this location in 1990.)
She was parked at the curb and didn’t want me to inspect the lidded bankers boxes until she’d told me their history. Though I’ve been sticking my head in the backend of cars for two score and four years (and a half), I was patient. Though I was anxious to get back onto my knees, I had inconvenienced her. When I eventually got the chance to remove the lids, I was rewarded with glowing gild lettering, tooled leather and marbled boards.
These books were alive.
The dawn reveals a gray world. The forest is coated in ice. A crystal fairyland.
The tiniest twigs and the thickest tree trunks are covered in ice, as if an artist had glazed every bit of the landscape. I went out to bring a few logs in. The pile on the driveway beyond the porch was covered in ice. I needed to lift them with two hands as they were too slippery to pick up in one.
The black canvas tote was lugged inside. An ice-covered log was set in the firebox through the lid at the top. It hissed, echoing the hissing outside of ice rain falling and adhering to everything, thickening the layer covering the world.
The teakettle began screaming. Pip got his morning cough medicine. (The steroid has helped him a lot.)
His “ACK ACK ACK” has become “ackack.”
The locksmith texted his cancellation up here.
I’m not going anywhere soon.
Back to the wonderland of books.
Then it became a small comedy. I made a good offer on them. Too much to pay in cash. I told her we could mail a check.
She wasn’t thrilled with that, nor with my offer. I raised my offer and told her she could go back to the warehouse for a check.
She was happier about both options. It was on her way home. I pulled out my phone and called the office, instructing them to have a check ready for her.
“Chuck, we don’t have any checks.”
So… I’d be meeting her at the warehouse, after all.
One of the 4 vans at the store had 40 boxes the DC bookseller couldn’t fit in his vehicle, so I took that one, leaving Ernest to pull more orders. (Foreign language, of all things!)
I parked at the dock and crossed the warehouse. (How many hundreds of times have I made that trek?)
Anne came in the front door. (We were on a first name basis by now.) I led her to the office for her check and signed a bunch more while I was at it. I asked if she wanted to see the warehouse, figuring it would be a “no” since she had been inconvenienced so much. But she lit up at the offer, and I walked her through the “tour” route. She seemed almost giddily excited about all the books.
Then it was back to the store in an empty van and back on my hands and knees amongst the “great books.”
What is the most populated author there? Shakespeare, of course. We need to keep him in check. I think once we had 3 bookcases of Shakespeare paperbacks. Now it is about one. Who’s next? There are always a lot of Twain. Surprisingly, Henry James takes up a lot of real estate. I think it is because he doesn’t sell well anymore—and we keep sending them over.
Then we were done. The tubs were rolled out to the van.
Back at the warehouse, the French leather was carted up.
We will polish these and stage them for photos. They’ll go to the Boutique and hopefully a designer or collector will appreciate their beauty. Foreign language books are difficult to sell online or in the stores, but we try.
On the way back to the warehouse, I got a call from a charity director asking if I wanted a rabbi’s Hebrew books.
“Ummmm…”
The day was racing toward its end. An email came in about the legal thing. A settlement? What a Kafkaesque nightmare.
We don’t get many complaints. Occasionally someone will post that we didn’t pay enough for their books. (Ummm… why did you sell them then?) We now have two plywood signs at each store.
I did pay a lot for the leather. Maybe $25 a book. (Less for damaged ones and far less for the cloth and vinyl.) Is that a lot or a little? Buying a book is just the beginning. To sell a book successfully, it will be “touched” by 7, 8, 9 employees. Some books have only the option of recycling. We can’t give them away. The charities bring us their books! Will the leather ever sell? How long will they take space on the shelves?
My old mentor Carl Sickles (RIP 2007) used to tell me, “We pay rent for every book in the store. Every book needs to eventually pay for the space it takes.”
A large percentage of books we can’t do anything with except recycle.
Larry texted, requesting we put out 250 boxes for an after hours delivery.
I’m glad we had those few weeks when the warehouse was pretty empty. Some very old material got exposed. A pallet from Mary O’Hara’s estate that we picked up years ago as well as two pallets from Larry Hogan Sr.’s estate. They had been in a basement and needed a few years to dry out and air out. Ernest went through both and put books on carts that he thought I should see. Hogan was a congressman and most notably was on the Watergate Committee.
I’ll get around to them.
I worked on other carts until it was time to meet Howard and Sue. On the way over, I stopped at HMart. It used to be the main grocery store location in Frederick. It was Giant. I wondered if I could find shaving cream there, but I really wanted some of their kimchee. They must have a dozen brands and varieties. I bought two big jars of it. That will be cleansing. Some other (for me) exotica. It is an international grocery. Mostly Asian offerings, but also other ethnicities. Very cool and fascinating. No shaving cream though.
Howard and Sue were at a big round table when I walked. I had a martini. Dumplings. Chicken lettuce wrap. Then breaded eggplant (think a pancake vibe—slightly sweet but with a piquant dipping sauce.) Salmon…
It was wonderful, and there were a couple pounds of leftovers for each of us. (That’s an issue there. You don’t eat just once per visit. You’ll have about 3 more meals at home.)
If you ever shop at the Frederick Wonder Book, walk down to Modern Asia for lunch or dinner or carry out. There are four other restaurants a short walk away in the complex. All of them excellent. My kids went to Mountain View Diner for breakfast almost every week on days I had them—”Daddy Days.” It is an old-school Greek-influenced diner. “Breakfast all day.” Great memories.
It was good for me to get out and actually be with people and talk.
The owner of Modern Asia, Roy, came over and chatted. I feel guilty I don’t go there more often. (See the above.) He looks dapper and like he is 29 in uniform. The food he makes, with however many others in the kitchen with him, is always wondrous. Asian, Chinese, Vietnamese, Curry, their own creations.
Back home, the leftovers and groceries were put away, and I felt incredibly sad. Memories of old friends who are gone or don’t come out any more. The Korean restaurant—legendary Hana’s, which was where the new courthouse is now. Nicole would ferment her kimchee in big ceramic vessels on the patio. Elderly Everett, her husband, always trying to introduce me to some Korean delicacy.
“Try this,” he told me, holding out a tiny bottle with a ginseng root in it. “Very good for men.”
They treated the two tiny boys like family. The Bulgogi and BiBimBop… I have had plenty of Korean food since, but nothing like what Nicole would make.
All gone…
I should make new friends and go out with new people. How do you do that?
(It is 1 p.m. Thursday. 40 degrees in Frederick. Still 32 here? Crazy. I’m going stir crazy. I’ll take the ATV down the driveway and see if it is icy. The chains keep that machine from sliding. Outside, it looks like it is raining, but I think that is just ice melt dripping from the forest canopy.)
Tuesday was an exciting day. The tree people got here before I left, and we had to do some maneuvering to get me past their trucks. The results are great though. They did a lot of “vista pruning.” That’s mostly removing lateral branches obstructing the view.
It turned out beautifully.
No view today though. Just a crystal fairyland forest.
Fairyland!
I took my Map to Fairyland to get framed.
I bought it at the British Library in October 2023. It is 55 inches wide.
Maybe it will inspire me to write more fantasy stories. I added a few pages to the latest installment of Round and Round. It will be number 46.
I made a journey to the Gaithersburg store with Clark, and we met with the landlord and a contractor about the new space to expand the bookstore there. That will be exciting. I hope nothing mucks up those plans.
It is Friday, February 7th. Sunrise in 10 minutes. It may be the first unobstructed one since last September. The view is my celestial clock as well as calendar.
Yesterday, I finally made it down to work through the crystal palace about 2 yesterday. When I returned, all the ice was gone. The mountain was banked in fog. I could barely see 20 feet ahead going up.
The dogs are piled on the bed. They’ve been out, had a rawhide treat and are ready to return to work. Lying around is a dog’s main job.
7:09! 1minute to show time.
Ah… there it is. The sunrise will move north across that open space for the next few weeks before it moves back into the forest.
It is a pretty simple life up here. Weather is the major excitement. Gardening and harvesting dead wood are my main activities. The house is full of books, and I spend my time writing or reading. When I watch tv, it is usually a sporting event or DVD of an old movie or tv show. (The Caps won again last night, and Alexander Ovechkin scored goal #879. He only needs 16 more to pass Wayne Gretzky’s record, which was once thought unsurpassable.)
I used to have company up here. Now it is just canine companions.
Maybe I should try.
I just realized I’ve gone to work every day since October. Even on Christmas, I went in for a few hours. It’s not “work.” It is my avocation and passion.
And I am always behind.
Endless books. A dream, right?
With the snow gone, I see there are thousands of emerald green fingers emerging from the earth.
The first daffodils, the earliest varieties, should begin blooming in late February. I need to get out and knock down the briar sprigs. Once the fern brakes come up, a weed whip certainly can’t get to them. And there’s a lot of dead trees I can harvest for next winter. (Or the next and the next—there’s still plenty of firewood in the barn.)
Last week’s story triggered a few people. There are rarely comments and almost never mean ones.
“Idiot… science… stick to books…”
At least a few people misread my section on looking back at COVID and commented. (That section has been deleted.)
It was mostly about how crazy things and people were then. How the “facts” and “science” changed—often daily.
Two people seemed to think I was ant-vaccine?! I wrote nothing like that!
I’m not anti-vaccine. I had my shots. (I also get my flu shots.) I got COVID. It became long COVID. Then I got diagnosed with a permanent thing that NIH (and other “science” orgs) site believes to be tied in many cases to the vaccine and/or COVID. I’ll be on a couple of new drugs the rest of my life.
This was published in 2023—about the time I got my diagnosis. Atrial Fibrillation After mRNA-1273 SARS-CoV-2 Vaccination: Case Report with Literature Review.
Did I complain? Regret?
No. That would be irrelevant. It’s history now.
I got the shot with the info at the time. And I got what I got.
One insisted no one ever said the vaccine would end COVID.
The Centers for Disease Control are walking back claims made by its director that people who are vaccinated against COVID-19 do not spread the virus, clarifying that they do not yet definitively know if that’s the case.
CDC Director Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky had said Tuesday that “vaccinated people do not carry the virus, don’t get sick, and that is not just in the clinical trials but it’s also in real world data.”
Again, I don’t CRE they were wrong. It is history.
Over.
Done.
I do care at the dogmatism then.
And, amazingly, NOW!
No. That would be irrelevant. It’s history now.
Another comment said, “Now I wonder if the [anonymous site] reviews of you are right.”
I don’t look at reviews. I’m not into social media. The only thing I ever do is Instagram. That’s because it is usually friendly, harmless, not political—just pictures of books and animals. Trolls live at some of those other places.
However, when we do get complaints that are brought to my attention, they tend to fall into two categories:
- We don’t pay enough for books etc… (Depends on the books and the circumstances—see above.) And if we don’t offer enough to satisfy what you want, just please say, “No.”
- We don’t pay enough to staff.
Wonder Book is fortunate to be located in two of the wealthiest counties in the country. This part of Maryland is not the kind of place where there’s one employer—like a meat packing plant. The point is—it isn’t hard to find a job around here.
We do offer health, retirement, vacation, sick leave for full time.
Pay is based on merit in most cases, and the longer you’re here and the more you take on…
I did a quick count, and of approximately 120 current employees, about 60 have been here 3 years or more. That’s not bad for retail or warehouse work, which is often temporary by design for students, retirees, etc.
Digging deeper, tallying the years those 60 have worked here adds up to about 600.
600 YEARS at Wonder Book. (Add me in personally and make it 645 come July.)
4 people have been here since 1990 or before. (I’m the 5th.) A lot have been here ten years or more. So, for a percentage of people, it has been or is long-term or even a “career.” It has been for me. My life’s work. With millions of moving parts, perfection is far from possible. It is a constant work in progress.
A lot of employees over the years have been multi-generational or siblings or family.
There are 5 or 6—at least—currently who have left and returned for whatever reasons. One person left recently after being here for over 25 years and leaving and returning many times.
We’ve needed about 120 employees to operate for about 20 years. Fewer and fewer going back to the first employee in 1980. That means there are thousands of former employees. Someone is going to be disgruntled. Or hate me for some reason.
I studiously stay out of employees’ hair. The lanes are pretty wide. I myself am a very engaged employee. People see me all over the warehouse and frequently at the stores. But it is rare that I insert myself beyond “Hello.”
As to other things I wrote, they are simply history. Positive or negative, they are what officials said and did during COVID. (Google what Rachel Maddow said about the vaccine if you don’t recall.)
“Now we know that the vaccines work well enough that the virus stops with every vaccinated person,” Maddow said on her show the evening of March 29, 2021.
“A vaccinated person gets exposed to the virus, the virus does not infect them, the virus cannot then use that person to go anywhere else,” she added with a shrug. “It cannot use a vaccinated person as a host to go get more people.”
We made sure Wonder Book was in full compliance with all regulations as they evolved.
If you want to see what Wonder did during COVID, that is all chronicled in these stories. Go back and read “Plague” stories begun in March 2020 and added to weekly for many months.
We were considered “essential” (as was Goodwill, Random House, etc.) The government wanted warehousing shippers to stay open no matter what they sold to keep the trucking and delivery infrastructure going.
For every thousand packages we ship out, that means there will be about a thousand delivery trucks by the time the books or whatever arrive at the end destination.
The stores were closed according to government edict, and we had no idea if they would ever reopen. Those early COVID months were the hardest I ever worked. Constant innovation and action to changing rules and guidelines and employee needs and wants. It was an all volunteer force then. (I guess strictly speaking it still is.)
Well, enough about that. I think I’ll stick with pretty pictures and happy books here from now on.
We are close to 400 stories now. If I make it to July, it will be 8 years of uninterrupted Fridays. That may be enough. It’s pretty stressful.
And like the books, just stay away if you don’t like the stories.
I’ve started rereading the Apocalypse. (There’s no religious or “current times” reason behind that.)
It’s just that two cool books came in recently.
One is signed. I’m still waiting for a Bible signed by Martin Luther or… God… to come in.
That reminded me of the brief stop I made on Patmos at the cave where St John the Divine was inspired by… something—to create the Apocalypse. Maybe it was hallucinogenic bread like the girls in Salem may have eaten.
(My trips are always “budget” bus tours. That’s another pot shot I’ve taken. Travel. At this point, if I don’t do it now, then I’m not sure if I’ll be able to before too long. And I do work 7 days a week.)
Yep, I know certain things go with the job I’ve taken—voluntarily. And that sticking up one’s head makes it fair game for some to “whack a mole.”
The books. The books.
All the worlds and time
to which I have traveled
To read a book is one thing
To have a book is another
There are satisfactions in both
My cold fingers turn the pages
this black winter night
I am at an inn
in the snug
warm punch and glowing fire
It is 1870
in the English countryside
chatting with an old coachman
about a Christmastime
two score years before
No. I am in my bed
155 years on
My cold fingers
hold this pen and pad
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