
The fox ran through the deep snow and crossed the lane in front of me. It continued up the slope and into the wilderness. It had large black swaths over its redder-than-orange fluffy coat. It didn’t glance at me but was focused on heading up the mountain into the wild. It looked very big, but that’s likely due to the coat it was wearing.
It is Sunday. There is still snow cover everywhere up here. Except the driveway. The snow melt did its job to get some pavement exposed. The sun has done the rest. There are still a lot of icy patches on the lane to the county road, but they are easy to dodge. It will rise to 40 today, so maybe the gravel road will be completely clear, and the tree people can come and finish their work. Down in the valley, the fields are still covered in snow. It is beautiful. Much easier to enjoy when the way down is not ice and the air is not in single digits.
A couple of nights ago I got in the mood to split wood. It is a mind cleanser. I put on ear protection, pulled the choke on the splitter, yanked the starter cord a few times, and the machine came to life. I didn’t do a good job last year with some the logs in the barn. Got lazy and left them too big to fit into the stove. It is all about spatial awareness. If I actually get as far as bringing a too large log in, the process ends in frustration. The log gets tossed off the porch onto the drive and then hauled back to the barn to be made smaller.
Time to go down the mountain to continue the Sisyphean task of going through books.
Another hard, satisfying, frustrating weekend at the warehouse. So many books…
There were a lot of fun finds. A big stack of Dr. Dolittle books.
Many with glowing dust jackets.
Dr. Dolittles were one of my first choices of “big” books at the library Mom would take me to in Amherst, New York so long ago.
Friday night, I had dinner with my older son and his older baby. At 15 months, the little boy is somewhere between baby and toddler, I guess. He has a few words but mostly uses sign language to convey his wants. Putting his hand over his heart and pulling it away is a sign of love or affection. He is especially adept at pointing with his forefinger. Friday, it was at guacamole or soft tortillas or chicken…
There was a cool Sherlock Holmes edition.
A nice group of beautiful bindings.
By Sunday evening, I had handled a lot of books and pushed a lot of carts. I was tired and sore when it was time to head home.
There is satisfaction in the pain. I have earned the ache. It is a reward for work. I long for more, but something is better than nothing.
The old muscles glow from work
It is a satisfying ache
Winter is here twice at once
The short cold season
That will end in weeks
And longer final season
whose finish is oblivion
Memories of a distant spring and summer
When exactly did fall come and go?
The sore pains are luxuries
Gifts of life labor and love
Better to feel hurt and loneliness
than emptiness hollowness or nothing
So embrace the worn joints
though that act causes more hurt
As long as there is that
—the blood coursing through the veins
—air coming and going from the lungs
—eyes ears taste and touch
All are here this cold quiet night
And memories of this minute
live with those of decades long past
I fear the day I will no longer hurt
It is Monday.
So different than a week ago. The “landing zone” at the top of the driveway is still half covered in packed ice and snow. The mountain is still snow covered. But the temperature is over 30. It will get into the 40s today. Maybe even the 50s later in the week.
Time to come out?
The weekend was the usual grind. Books and “stuff” at the warehouse.
Firewood and food at home.
More cartloads of books than I could ever think of getting done.
Some “collectible” sections deaccessioned from online sales had been carted up for me. A couple were laden with autographed books. But there were no treasures there. Signed or unsigned, they were all mostly worth the same amount. There was no reason to look twice at most of them. The stores will get a dozen boxes to put on display. Don’t get me wrong. A lot were nice books. Kids’ hardcovers and regional histories and cookbooks as well as the usual self-published novels and memoirs and “how I discovered God” or “survived this.” Later this week, the stores will have “Signed Sections” on the shelves across from the counters where you first enter.
All the books in those books are autographed.
(So what!)
The sun feels good pouring in through the window and spreading over me and the sleeping dogs on the big bed. They’ll be able to spend the day outside in their spacious pen. I had to take Giles to work every day last week. It was an annoying distraction.
Two booksellers are visiting the stores today. Frederick and Gaithersburg. They plan to take 1000 or more books each. That will be a nice purge as well as a nice purchase. But it will hardly be noticeable. 300,000 or more books in each store. Pruning is a necessary thing, lest the stock become stale and the customers become bored.
Some weird news stories on the phone this morning.
DC is the loneliest place in America, apparently. There’s an effort to mitigate this for some with robotic pets.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2025/01/27/elderly-robotic-pets-health-loneliness-isolation/
Ah, the future. Here at last.
Tuesday. 62 inside. 32 out. Even a lazy fire raises the temperature 30 degrees.
The melt off continues. My road is now completely ice clear. The snow on the porch roof is melted where the bird activity has been. There are thousands of sunflower husks in a ten-foot radius around the bay window.
When they dry out completely, a good wind will blow them off. If I get impatient, I’ll climb out the window with a blower to clear off the organic material.
The forest floor is still snow covered. When that finally melts off, I wonder if there will be any hellebore (Christmas Rose) blooming. I haven’t had much luck establishing snowdrops, but there are some. February arrives this Saturday. The first daffodils will bloom later that month.
Another good long sleep. Warm beneath the covers. Two dogs pressed up against me. More for warmth than affection, I believe. But they are affectionate friends. It is comforting to reach over in the middle of the night when something wakes me and to rub a furry belly or neck.
Pip is off to be babysat for a while. I needed a break from the coughing. The vet started him on steroids. So far no improvement… Poor guy. He is in good spirits, but the frequent coughing takes its toll. He seems tired sometimes and sleeps a lot.
Monday was a blur of book work. The two different DC booksellers indeed visited—Frederick and Gaithersburg, respectively. I went to the Frederick store to reintroduce myself. Those booksellers hadn’t visited since before COVID.
They took a LOT of books. 5 pages of tallying looked like this.
After I’d gotten them oriented, I did a walk through. The store looks great. What can be improved? Nothing major I can see. Second and third tier tweaks, perhaps. I hope the snow and ice and cold didn’t hurt January sales too much. I’ll find out in a few days.
The day finished back at the warehouse with carts. I’m still behind. I forced myself to face off with some difficult “Kill section” carts.
Look at this crazy set. It didn’t sell online for five years—despite regular price reductions.
2500 pages on Toledo from a hundred years ago. Ex-library. Slightly damaged bindings. Who could use such a monster? What are these 2500 pages filled with? Every farmer, shopkeeper, accountant, attorney… in the “Sandusky Region” and their antecedents?
What to do with it?
Groan.
Depressing.
No. That wasn’t the end of the day. A novice bookseller had warned me she was coming. I wasn’t sure which one she was.
Ah, the energetic one. Full of enthusiasm.
The last thing I wanted to do was answer questions about book after book. There were post-it notes on many.
“No. This is a reprint house. See here on the copyrighted page, ‘By arrangement with Alfred Knopf…'”
“This is a much later printing. Tricky because the only date is 1952. But this SBN number line at the bottom of the page means this was printed around 1970.”
“This Robert Jordan signature is a facsimile. He was dead by the time this was published. This other guy continued his sagas…”
There were some nice books, and overall the lot was very nice.
She was continuing on to Boston. I could go home now.
“I’ll email my thoughts and how much I can offer.”
I was nice on the outside. Grumpy inside. But I was glad to help. Booksellers have a duty to pass down knowledge.
Tuesday
I got to work today, looked around and got paralyzed. It is so much, so overwhelming—I don’t know where to start.
More carts of old books?
I did that all weekend and half of Monday. Like a hole in the sand on the beach, it has filled in as if I’d never done anything.
Groan.
Depressing.
Paralyzed.
I’d love to run away, but where? Would that be any better?
It is Wednesday. The dawn is a thick burnt orange band on the horizon.
Yesterday morning seems so long ago. So distant.
I awoke around 4. A vivid dream stayed in my consciousness. My old friend and mentor, Allen Ahearn, was driving us on country roads in the onetime rural parts of Montgomery County. We were in one of his big long bulky Buick station wagons. He liked those cars because they accommodated his considerable height.
We came to a wooden bridge about 60 feet long. It was paved with wooden planks laid perpendicular to the road. A few had fallen through, but Allen continued, and we bumped across.
Then he turned onto an even narrower road.
“You know where we are?” he asked. “We turned off of 307. This is 404.”
It was fall, and the road, lined with trees and wilderness, had dry brown leaves lining both sides of it.
Then we came to another bridge. It was longer and even narrower than the last. To cross it, you had to line your wheels up on two parallel rows of long planks and drive over them. Two-thirds of the way across, a plank on the right side had dropped off its support. It had fallen a couple feet down onto a trestle-like framework below. We had driven onto that section, so I knew I would be unable to get out and lift and reset the twenty-foot long board.
I awoke then, and the dogs sensed that and wanted to go out. I followed and brought some wood in from the cart near the side porch. Then I crawled back into bed and waited for Giles and Merry to return and bark at the door to be let in.
Allen’s funeral was just a week ago. I couldn’t get down to get to it in time because of the ice and snow. That morning was 5 degrees.
Maybe he came in the dream to bid farewell.
The fire is popping and snapping in the other room. The two lengths of wood I brought in were too long. They are sticking out the top a few inches, propping the heavy iron lid open. The firelight of the exposed flames is dancing on the ceiling. It looks like reflected water would, but the color is oranges and yellows.
“Pop! Pop! Snap…” a subtle soundtrack to otherwise silent morning.
When the wood burns down enough, the logs will drop into the firebox, and the lid will fall closed with a cast iron clunk.
The snow still covers most of the forest floor, but there are patches of brown dead leaves, and the exposed tops of stones and boulders and stumps are reappearing. The day will warm to almost 50 later. But winds will rise after noon. Maybe they will blow the sunflower husks off the porch roof.
The sunrise has moved north. It surprises me that it is so close to the gap in the forest—my “window on the world.”
Yesterday was just… oppressive. No matter how hard I work, I can’t catch up with the carts of old books.
I spent much of the day standing before them, robotically picking up one after another.
Read the spine—if there is one or if the lettering hasn’t completely faded.
Then open to the title page and look for relevant information there. Then maybe turn to the copyright page if there might be clues there.
Then make a decision.
If possible.
If not, put it aside. For when? The future is now.
A human drone.
Then there is the sprawl of papers on the conference room table. I cannot bring myself to sit there and begin the process of wading through them.
Torture.
The thaw has released some books being sold to us. I’d been begging for fresh common stock to keep people here employed. We were getting low.
We’ve gotten over 500 boxes in since the weekend.
Hurray!
“There’s a man asking for you at dock 2,” said the tall kid, who is doing so well at keeping the sorting and data entry areas loaded or emptied or…
I just wish he wouldn’t keep bumping into things. It’s distracting.
I didn’t recognize the guy who was bringing us books to sell. But since he asked for me by name, I was cautious.
“Where do these come from?”
50 or so boxes had been unloaded onto pallets on the dock plate. He was outside—a few feet lower than where I stood.
“West Virginia.”
“How do you get your books?”
“People bring them to me.”
“Have you brought us books before?”
“No. Jonathan told me should ask for you.”
That explains it. A referral. They were just common cast offs. Our system would mine the lot for whatever value we could in them. I made the offer, and he lit up in acceptance.
“Go out the gate you came in and drive around the building and go in the front door. I’ll meet you there and get you a check.”
Yet another trek across the huge building. Have I done a million steps in here since 2013?
Then it was back to face the music. Pandora. The “Ralph McTell” station I typed in long ago on my iPhone. Comfort music to soothe the savage breast.
“Lookin’ like you could use a friend…”
4:30 finally came, and people around me vaporized. Other parts of the warehouse were still busy. Shipping. Data entry…
“I can leave…”
Home. The dogs dashed from their pen into the woods, their paws making slushy sounds in the softened snow. I changed into my battered sweats and pulled the tattered Buffalo Sabres hoodie over my head and shoulders. It was dusk and would darken quickly. Switching on the outdoor lights would help. Out to the barn where I filled a chainsaw with gas and chain oil. I toted it behind the house and across to forest behind and upslope from the deck. There was unfinished work there from the time before the January snows and freezes. Dead wood from a fallen maple last spring. The problem was there was no easy way to carry it to where the truck or even a cart could get it to the barn or front porch. The shortcut would be to lift it onto the edge of the back of the deck. From there, it would be relatively easy to carry, as needed, in the canvas totes. Out the back porch, across the bridge to the deck and up to the very back level. From there, back inside and to the woodstove. It would be much more efficient to burn this wood this season than try to transport it and stock it for the future.
Good exercise too.
The saw sputtered to life. I double-checked my footing to avoid slipping. Cutting the logs into stove-length sections, I was extra careful not to cut all the way through and maybe hit a hidden stone beneath. Sparks would fly, but more important, the saw chain would be come much duller. So, when I’d get partway through, I would straighten and put a boot to the log to roll it over and finish the cut from the other side. When I’d finished cutting, I set the saw down and began carrying the wood to the nearby deck.
It was satisfying work. A clear beginning, ending and result.
It was much darker than the pictures show. The iPhone adjusted the light.
The work done, I carried the saw all the way back to the barn. Then the cart was filled with barn wood and rolled to the side porch.
I removed the hoodie and sweatpants on the porch—the only ones who could see me would be woodland creatures still active in this crepuscular part of the day. I shook the sawdust off and went inside.
The leftover burger, wrapped in foil, was put into the oven to heat. I poured a can of soup into a saucepan, dashed some hot sauce into it, shook some dry oregano on top and stirred it all in.
I’m into the late 1970s James Bond of Roger Moore. The movies are far more sophisticated than the early ones, but Moore is too dapper and “mugs” too much. Driving a hydrofoil around St. Mark’s in Venice is just silly. The giant Howard Kiel playing “Jaws”—biting through metal cables with his stainless steel teeth… cartoonish.
Still, they hold up—at least for me.
Chainsaws and nighttime forest and vintage James Bond. A great escape.
Now the sun is up, and I need to go face the day.
I’m considering the nuclear option at work. The carts could simply be emptied and packed up. The paperwork could just be slid off the table into plastic tubs.
Bury it all…
The porch roof is far less frenetic. Only a handful of birds at a time. The others are off somewhere else, feeding on natural foods exposed by the snow melt. They must have tired from the diet of sunflower seeds only. (The suet feeders are still pretty active.)
What a difference a week makes. It actually feels warm out! And sunny!
Ernest is driving us to the Frederick store. I want to see the damage the DC booksellers did. And we need to cull Civil War and maybe some other stuff.
Plus, if I’m away, I don’t have to face the carts or the mountains of paperwork.
The store had a lot of employees and some customers. But I think they were outnumbered.
We’ve done so much there in the recent past that there is not a lot of “tweaking” left to do. It seems the categories we moved and/or resized are pretty much in balance.
I’ve been suggesting that lower-priced or aging material be removed from the glass cases. The cases serve two functions. “Showcasing” books and collectibles as well as protecting them. Most of the case books now have prices showing on their (plastic protected) spines. I saw prices as low as $19.95 on some art books. I asked for the keys and slid open the glass door. I looked at every book and pulled out items that belonged somewhere else or didn’t need the protection of being locked behind glass. Soon there were big piles with post its on top that I wrote “Open Stock” on.
When they condense the art cases, that will open space to expand the adjacent Sci Fi and Horror section. Those cases are very popular as well as a little cramped.
It wasn’t a massive project, but I felt satisfaction in the results.
Ernest made a lot of tubs of culls in Civil War. Some would go back to the warehouse for Books by the Foot. Others would stay at the store and get marked down to $1.59 or 5 for $5.
All three stores have large sections of 5/$5 books, DVDs, CDs, LPs. Hagerstown has the largest offering—all indoors. Frederick has nearly as many, and a lot are located out on the covered sidewalk. Gaithersburg’s are mostly on carts that roll outside on days when there’s no rain.
$1 KIDS BOOKS! Frederick and Hagerstown have very large sections devoted to children’s books at $1.59 or 5/$5!
If you want to do a good deed, come buy a lot of them and donate them to shelters, underfunded schools, put them in your free little libraries…
You can also acquire inexpensive children’s books in bulk from our Books by the Foot program.
I got an anonymous fan letter this week. The writer likes the store but feels we didn’t pay enough for his two boxes. I don’t know what kind of books were brought in. “A couple of boxes.” If they were common or out-of-date books, then anything we paid was sufficient. Our payroll and handling are by far our largest expense. Having vans at the stores to put purchases in, the labor of reviewing and making an offer on one book or a carload, sending down an empty van and bringing back a full one, unloading, moving the books to sorter stations where every book get inspected and put into different vectors. Then to yet more employees in data entry. The tons for which there is no hope, no market to give them away to—that get recycled into pulp. There’s more labor and almost no remuneration in that…
I sympathize with the guy. (It appeared to be male handwriting.)
Years ago, I got a similar letter. This was in a woman’s hand. It began, “Mr. Roberts, you are a fraud…” That was not easy to forget. What the writer didn’t see then was that almost all the bookstores in DC region were closing. Even in 2000, Wonder Book was my life’s work. I was determined that we would somehow survive. Where we are now is a result of that.
Whatever formulas we use, they’ve worked to keep us going into 2025. The building and trailers are usually stuffed with books.
My Pandora station “Ralph McTell” plays Kate Wolf pretty often. She died young—around 44 in 1986. I never had any of her albums. This song hits hard sometimes.
We had dreary meetings about payroll processing and some government form. We’re required to ask sensitive and personal information. But we are told it will be anonymous when we file it.
“There’s a tired shadow hidin’ in your eyes. You’re lookin’ like you could use a friend…”
Dreary.
I wasn’t as stressed as the day before.
4:30 I bugged out. I may be picking up some free firewood from friends on Thursday afternoon. There’d been enough melting that I could it back to the garage and unload the 8 remains bags of KCl “Snow Melt.” There was still a half a load of uncut wood from over a month ago remaining in the truck. I drove that to the upper driveway and climbed aboard to unload the wood.
Dinner… I had 2 aging “salmon burgers” in a vacuum pack. My daughter-in-law had requested wild salmon for Christmas. They arrived late, and my son told me I should try a couple of burgers. They were pretty good on toasted seeded rye with some tartar sauce.
I ate while watching another Bond movie. The opening scene has Roger Moore visiting the grave of his wife in a rustic English churchyard. That took me back to the one George Lazenby Bond film. It strikes me as the only time the character is three dimensional—human—when he tells his soon-to-be murdered wife, “We have all the time in the world.” That is her epitaph on the gravestone. Bond crying for a woman he actually loved…
Thursday.
The sun is pouring in the bedroom window. It is actually “warm” sunshine coming through the glass. The dogs are sprawled between me and the window. Happy and warm—they act as though they have all the time in the world.
Time to shower and do the getaway chores to get to work.
What will the day bring?
I met some old friends for drinks and dinner on Monday. It has been a while. 5 retired doctors, a lawyer and executive and me. I was the odd one out. They were sent away because most or all their wives were having a party. It was good to catch up. We used to have a group that would get together for whisky tastings or meet at a bar or brewery for meetings of the “Metaphysical Club.” We didn’t discuss much serious philosophy. It was just an excuse to get together. Those meetings are yet another causality of COVID. My dinner last night was a leftover half a hamburger from that meeting. The retired guys. What do they do with their time? One flies his own plane a lot. The others… we didn’t talk much about that.
It is Friday morning. The birds have not returned. Just a few at a time flit onto or off the porch.
I went to Terry and Ridgley’s on Thursday after work. I dug up a hardy cactus to bring them, and I stopped for a bottle of wine. They had another dead oak felled and cut up.
“Take what you can, please.”
I aimed the pickup downhill on their woody drive. That way, logs tossed in would roll forward. Ridgley came out and helped, and now I have some beautiful wood to burn. The freshly cut oak, even though dead, still smelled so sweetly earthy.
There’s a lot more, but the chunks we left are really big. I’ll think about for the next time I get invited over.
They are gourmets and were once professional bakers. They sold pies and pastries to high-end DC restaurants and places like the Cosmos Club.
We started with some great wine and cheese. We go back a long way together. Ridgley one time dealt in antique advertising and rare paper. Occasionally, he would bring me books. Occasionally, we would compete at country auctions.
We chatted about old times. His family was high up in local society, and he knew some of the legendary families. Great stories of Frederick when it was country and horse farms…
He even had anecdotes about Atanasoff, who may or may not have invented the computer. He lived nearby.
Amazing.
Terry made turkey potpie. It was delicious, and I ate way too much. (I also ate way too much of the stollen they made and Ridgley brought to work a couple Saturdays ago.)
Before I left Thursday, a staffer from the Frederick store came over. She does a lot of the design stuff at the store. She does craft stuff, and I told her to come take some of the bits and pieces of books we would otherwise recycle.
She was excited about our antique “trash.” I completely understand. We rescue pieces of disintegrating old books as much as we can. From marble endpapers and boards to plates and prints, maps and gilt covers…
This is what was put aside.
I hope I get to see what the projects become.
I had to leave her to get on a payroll conference call. It made my brain hurt. When it was finally done, I had to rush out to Ridgley’s. I was running late.
Friday… what will the day bring?
“Soaking rain” perhaps. That will melt the last of the snow. Last week’s arctic blast will just be a chilly memory.
There will be payroll mechanics and policy discussions.
The legal sword of Damocles still hangs over us. Absolutely bizarre. Kafkaesque.
And the next ten days will be in the 40s and 50s. Maybe I can do some yard work. There’s a little more daylight every day.
And books…
What a year it’s been — and it’s only Feb. My son (just back from a crazed round of trips — Kenya with Boy Scouts, and Amsterdam with wife) has been saying I should take a trip. The unsaid being that otherwise my next trip could be scattering of ashes. I am old! The badgering has resulted in my scheduling a Road Scholar trip to Costa Rica — 9 days, end of dry season (4/30-5/8). With daughter, who can see, hear & move with alacrity. Just waiting to hear about air arrangements & hoping to dodge malaria prophylaxis. It will be good to visit a functioning democracy. It’s amazing how energizing it has been to plan and to look forward. May you be cheered and energized in your endeavors!