We put out a revised and unified Christmas Round & Round story on Christmas Day—yesterday.

That’s enough to inflict upon you for one week, so this week’s story—#441 in a row since July 2017—will be very short.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

Christmas Night 2025

It was a beautiful day. High 50s. Sunny. Calm.

I had a joyous day with my dogs and my books in the little world I created so long ago. So, I was in the company of millions.

My laptop was tuned to television. One station was airing A Christmas Story nonstop. Earlier in the week, I came across the book upon which that movie is based.

Jean Shepherd was from northwest Indiana. He grew up in steel towns. I was born and grew up in a different Great Lake area in an eastern suburb of Buffalo—namely Snyder, New York. The “Great Lake Effect” means there’s snow from Thanksgiving to Easter—often a LOT of snow.

Though Shepherd was 33 years older than I, his school and Christmas memories mirror mine in so many ways. A lot because of the climate, light, environment and architecture around the Great Lakes. I guess time and change were different then. There are not a lot of bright colors in the movie—except in Higbee’s Department Store. Higbee’s was an electric flashing commercial emporium of (mostly) unattainable treasures to a middle-class little boy. (Higbee’s was a real department store in Cleveland, Ohio.)

I remember seeing a TV review of A Christmas Story when it first came out in 1983. I think it was Gene Shalit, the wacky-looking Today movie guy. Though the film was practically unheard of, he predicted it would be an all-time classic. I don’t think I got to see it until it came out on VHS a few years later. Back then, if you missed something, it was quite possible you would never have a chance to see it again.

I wonder if A Christmas Story was part of the impetus for me to start renting tapes in my little bookstore—so “I” could stock movies “I” wanted to see.

Christmas Day, I “watched” it twice in a row before switching the laptop to something else.

So, I spent Christmas Day in Wonderland, and I never felt lonely for a moment. Perhaps I have crossed over to a full-fledged recluse.

The day passed too fast. I made a lot of progress because not only were there no humans to get in my way, make noise, ask questions… there were no sorters generating more work, more book carts.

I finally had a chance to start going through carts on which I had put things aside for future perusal.

For the first time in a long time, I felt happy. There was no one to try to please, no one to teach or instruct. No one to disappoint me.

When I left for the day, I was tired but invigorated.

The roads were mostly empty.

When I got home, the weather was so nice I emptied more mulch into the garden behind the store wall, which was built last winter. That project has expanded substantially. Instead of a band of soil and mulch piled against the rear of the stone wall, I’ve begun filling in the whole “angle” the wall makes where it meets the informal stones set along the driveway’s edge.

I counted 20 big scoops. Then another 20. Then 20 more.

Maybe tonight I’ll do more. “20… 20… 20.”

On the next nice day, I’ll be able to push in a lot of daffodil bulbs with very little effort. It is getting late to get bulbs in.

Then I went inside and gave treats to the dogs. I didn’t have to stoke the fire much because it was relatively warm outside.

I got some of the baguette Terry gave me Tuesday when I was leaving their home. I carried in Asian food for them as payback for the times they’ve fed me this year. I had some sliced London broil. Romaine. Miracle Whip. Chopped Italian peppers. I sat and watched some The Rings of Power with a delicious roast beef sub.

It was a very satisfying evening. I took the dogs to bed after 9:30 but got up soon to put Merry & Pip into the pen as they were having coughing fits.

Now it is Friday. (Feels like Monday.) The panic of getting the stores ready for holiday sales is done. We will stay busy through New Year’s weekend, and then all the excitement will be over til next year.

We are shipping another dozen Gaylords to our big customer today. Though that’s slowed, there are still things they want from us.

It’s great to find a home for all the foreign-language books.

I guess it is too early to recap 2025. That postmortem is usually reserved for the last week of the year. But finally being able to take a breath, I can say it was a pretty fascinating period.

The vast expansion of the Gaithersburg bookstore, which I thought I’d undertake with lots of help, took on a life of its own. I had to recall planning and designing a bookstore. It has been a while.

My car wreck in June was a painful midyear punctuation mark. Mortality gave me a big punch in the face, reminding me to get things done. It took a while for the bleeding to stop.

The three stores, the internet sales and Books by the Foot all had renaissance years. A 45-year-old bookshop, and it is still growing.

Amazing!

Then the Big Deal came out of nowhere. Frightening in its scale. There were times I was unsure if the thing was real. That evolved into my trying to put reins on the whirlwind. But we pulled it off… somehow.

I was able to pay down four of the five big loans I’ve taken on.

All the years in business, and I never went into debt until 2013 when we bought this warehouse. That turned out to be the best thing I’ve ever done financially.

And the books. All the wondrous, beautiful, important, unforgettable books.

Maybe I’ll do a review of some of them for next week’s story.

My parents would sometimes call me “Chuck-a-Luck.”

When I was picking up the Chinese food to take to Ridgley and Terry’s on Tuesday, I asked how long it would take to prepare.

“Two minutes.”

!?!?

Still, I went next door to the little hole in the wall liquor store. I don’t know why. I don’t need anything. And for health reasons, I’ve cut way back on that vice. (Are there any other vices left?)

Is book hoarding a vice?

If so, it is a harmless gentle one. (Unless the 10-foot stacks surrounding my bed collapse atop me!)

I’m kidding.

I picked out a bottle of Sazerac Rye. I’ve always enjoyed Sazeracs. My first and only trip to New Orleans found me staying at the iconic Roosevelt Hotel (it is a Waldorf Astoria as well) and visiting the Sazerac Bar there. Happy pre-COVID memories.

On the sales counter, they had a display of high-end whiskeys.

A Midwinter Night’s Dram!

I discovered it about ten years ago. Since then, others have discovered it too. It is virtually unattainable. On the few occasions I’d see an elusive bottle, the prices were exorbitant.

“How much is this…”

It was a lot. But not crazy like some prices I’ve seen. And it was Christmas. A present to myself.

“Merry Christmas, Chuck.”

Christmas Eve 2025.

Things were pretty quiet in the book warehouse. We had last-minute special orders to deliver to all three stores.

The stores would close early—sometime in late afternoon.

Since the panic was over, I could look around for things for the warehouse guys to do.

There was a mountain of empty boxes atop some pallets on the loading docks.

“Let’s get those down and see what’s underneath. Cut down the ones worth saving and crush the rest.”

There were some happy surprises under there.

“A pallet of Barbara’s books from her house!”

“How have these been hiding for over ten years?”

The same way this precarious pallet of paperwork has been hiding in plain view since 2001!

Crazy.

Maybe someday we will find that Ark of the Covenant that got dropped off here all those years ago.

I discovered the rest of this story as an unfinished WordPress document lingering at the foot of my laptop’s screen.

I had to laugh when I read through it. Last Christmas was just the same as this one!

Maybe all these stories are just an endless loop:

In a small city on a small planet, third from a small insignificant sun, there was a small bookshop.

In the scheme of things, everything about it was small.

The “scheme of things” was the vast universe. Perhaps only one of thousands of millions of other universes.

But that is too great a concept to consider.

And, really, one universe at a time is plenty. More than plenty.

This bookshop had existed for many years. A long time.

But in the scheme of things, a mere blink.

Actually, far less. A fraction of a blink. A minuscule fraction.

But consider the mustard seed. Or, if that is too small, the acorn and the great oak that may grow from such a small seed.

(Fairies need great oaks in which to live. The question may be posed, “Does the oak need the fairies, or do the fairies need the oak?” But fairies live in another universe almost entirely, and rarely do the bookshop’s universe and the fairies’ universe coexist in the same space and time. It is all very confusing, so let us just try to wrap our heads around one universe at a time.)

The bookshop.

On the outskirts of everything. Outside the big city. Outside the outskirt of the little city of which it is a part.

But, to some, the bookshop was a big place. Millions of books.

To one, the bookshop was the center of the universe. An egotistical thought. A fantasy.

But in this big little bookshop, insignificant in its region, less significant in its country, much less in its hemisphere…

…In this big little bookshop, in its cluttered office (where a befuddled bookseller would sometimes wander) upon a cork message board on the wall before the desk, there hung a ring.

There were smaller things in the office. And bigger things. Certainly in the bookshop. Things beyond comprehension in the solar system and the universe that this solar system is just a “blink” percentage of.

This ring was of great weight. If its true weight were realized, it would pull down the office wall, the bookshop, the building and fall through the earth until… until there was no place left to fall.

Such big things are difficult to contemplate.

Let us rather consider a simpler thing. The bookshop and the millions of books gathered inside it.

Or simpler yet, the bookseller who was kind of a shepherd to those millions. Tasked with keeping them dry and in every other way protected from the elements, which sometimes raged outside the bookstore’s walls.

(As for the forces which raged beyond the walls and skies and clouds, see the paragraph above about fairies and oaks and acorns…)

The bookseller. Therefore, had a monumental task. But in the scheme of things…

Have you ever tried to shepherd one dog? One cat? A half dozen cats and dogs? Ten? One hundred? Things become more complex as the number of digits increase.

The bookseller was thinking big thoughts like these one chilly fall evening. He was standing on the large wooden porch outside the front door of the bookshop that seemed so big until he turned and gazed upward at the starry sky.

‘I will never get there,’ he thought. ‘When I was a boy, I was sure I would travel to the stars. Too late. Too late. And too, too far away.’

(To be continued perhaps.)

Saturday, December 20, 2024:

Christmas 2024

Saturday—The Winter Solstice

It was 64 degrees inside and 32 out when I awoke after 6. The actual solstice—the point where the tilt of the earth shifts making the sun appear to stop moving along the southern horizon and change course back to the north—occurred sometime after 4 a.m.

This “shortest day” will still be 24 hours long, but the time between sunrise and sunset will only be 9 hours and 21 minutes long. 7:28 a.m. to 4:49 p.m.

There was a striking sunrise to herald the seasonal change.

Winter Solstice Sunrise

Winter did arrive as if on cue. Sunday was 19. Monday 16.

But the sunrises have begun creeping north. Each day has a little more light time.

In three months, around the spring equinox, the sunrise will have moved into the gap in the forest in front of my home. I will have a couple weeks of unimpeded views of the sunrise (barring cloudy weather.)

I spent the weekend going through books. Big surprise. Much of the vintage collection brought here by my friend, who has a bookstore in central New York, was carted up for my review. I found a stool and sat myself before them way up around Dock 14 in the Books by the Foot region. The ten or so carts went past me pretty quickly. So many of the antiquarian books could be deemed worthless to readers or collectors with a glance.

But I did pull off about a half cart that I felt were attractive enough or authored by desirable authors (Bronte, Austen, Poe…) that they could be sent to the stores.

Vintage Carts

The small cart in the forefront holds the books that made the cut. The jumble of carts behind it are the “rest.”

The “rest” would be rolled across the building to the west side of the warehouse where they’ll be shelved in rooms designated for 80 to 200-year-old “worthless” books.

I was also tasked with 10 big plastic tubs of LPs culled from our internet stock. We are extremely picky about condition for records offered for mail order. That’s the good news. The bad news is this is the stock that did NOT sell online. The tubs were very heavy. My back was spasming frequently, so I wanted to avoid constantly bending to the floor. Of course, hefting the heavy tubs to stack them created plenty enough back strain.

Were there about a thousand? More?

Although in fine condition—most still wearing their shrink-wrap—about half were classical music or religious offerings. There was also a smattering of foreign language, ethnic and popular music. All those are poor sellers for us. I love classical music, but for whatever reason, the retro bug doesn’t seem to have bitten the classical fans. Those LPs I set in lower price boxes. (I still didn’t think they would sell and imagined the grumblings by staff upon receiving them.)

The other half was a different story. Not much rock but a lot of jazz, R&B and Blues. Those went out to the stores at much higher prices and would bring the LP stockers joy.

Thursday, December 26, 2024:

[Tuesday,] I was the last to leave the warehouse. I lingered working. I wasn’t invited anywhere for Christmas Eve, so I just went home and heated some of the turkey I’d roasted and carved. I chopped up a head of romaine. I sliced some of the caraway-laden rye bread to toast. A bed of lettuce was set on a large plate. Heated turkey and cornbread stuffing was set atop that. A couple dollops of sour cream on one side. A couple dollops of Hellman’s Mayonnaise shaken off a spoon on the other side. I found a DVD of Reginald Owen’s A Christmas Carol in a drawer and indulged myself.

It was a delightful if moody evening. Comfort food. Fizzy water. An ancient motion picture which raised my spirits while moving me to tears.

That night, I had troubled dreams. Taking Christmas Ghost Stories to bed with me likely didn’t help.

Christmas Ghost Stories

And then it was after midnight.

Christmas.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.