The fire is not dead after all.

I awoke, and the house had cooled. I had placed two sizable logs in the firebox. Then the dampers were closed. I went to bed exhausted yet again. Early. There were not enough hot coals to ignite the logs, and so the fire went out. Or so I believed.

‘I may as well open the dampers,’ I thought as I passed by to put the kettle on. When I was returning to bed, I saw a dull orange eye in the bottom corner of the firebox. ‘Not dead yet.’

Out to the porch for some small sticks to wedge down in the bottom behind the unburned logs with the coals. If they touch the fire, it might be passed on to them, and then the logs may catch.

The teapot started screaming, and I passed by again. The sticks are snapping and popping with life.

This day will get much colder than the night. Winds are coming, the phone predicts.

It is Sunday the 16th. November is more than half gone. The month has been consumed by the big project. There is no end in sight. Just more work. Another truck filled. And another. Another day gone. Another evening home exhausted til sleep comes and gives respite.

And dreams. Last night, I was showing her Jane Austen stuff. Posters and ephemera and old editions. A woman dead two hundred years and a woman in my dreams, unreal but so real in my mind I could reach and touch her.

I did not eat yesterday. Well, two pieces of bread, a couple of chocolate chip cookies Ridgley brought. (He and Terry were professional bakers for a while.) Water.

I was sick at heart. Ill at the core. It gets dark so early now that there is some excuse for crawling under the comforter at an obscenely early hour.

Then I was gone to Jane Austen and the woman…

Now I am awake at an ungodly early hour. 4 a.m.

My efforts paid off. The fire is alive now, flickering against the glass doors. The hot tea next to me warms my hands when I raise it. It warms my core when I drink it.

It was such a hard day yesterday. Lifting, looking, stacking.

The dawn is breaking. Treetops are swaying in the wind. The last leaves are being stripped from their branches and sent flying free into the air. They swirl and float like unaerodynamic avians.

Today will be the same. Only the books will be different.

Why do I do it?

Fog has rolled up the mountain from the valley. There was a soft cold rain all night. A London rain.

The fire died down again overnight. I’d left a large log standing in the firebox. Standing logs don’t ignite easily. Surface area, I suppose. I awoke about 1 a.m., chilled despite two canine “hot water bottles” pressing against me. I was too tired to mess with it. I cheated and turned on the heat.

The day will come, I suppose, when the furnace is on more and more. I still consider it a defeat when I hear that machine turn on.

The excitement continues as we continue into terra nova.

Me? I’m the ringmaster.

All over the warehouse, pointing, guiding, instructing. I did 18,000 steps on Monday. The stores are involved as well. Part of that was at home, cutting wood and blowing leaves. Exhausted, I was too wired and pushed my body even more. I would pay for that later—after midnight.

There’s no truth to the rumor that we are emptying shelves in anticipation of closing. The shelves will soon reload like holes dug by children in sand on the beach. They just fill in.

We continue to be out of space. Books remained outside until Monday night when the forecast of rain on Tuesday forced my hand.

We closed one of the sorting stations and filled it in. Robbing Peter to pay Paul? We are sorting less, so processing “raw” books is slower. But then Data Entry is stuffed with pallets and carts from sorting. Have we been sorting too much or too fast?

We send a “Pallet Count” to managers and supervisors early each morning. Here’s the November 17th report:

R1/rCT: 44

MMP/special ISBN: 1

Media carts: 45

Priced carts: 26

That’s a lot of books and a lot of space taken up.

Too, too, too, too… much.

It is Wednesday. Only 11,000 steps Tuesday.

I took a brief break and went to the landfill, where they generate mulch and compost from yard waste. I had the pickup truck filled with nice compost. $11.00. I’ll use it in areas to help with bulb planting when soil is needed.

Then back to the fray.

We sent out a truckload on Monday. A truckload will go out today. We hope to build another load on Friday.

Industrial bookselling.

When I get home, I’m exhausted. More exhausted than usual.

Monday was such a big day. We were so close to the deadline I switched duties to my warehouse worker persona and was pumping the pallet jack to raise wooden pallets with over a thousand pounds of books on them. Then I can push or pull the pile. It is very heavy but not impossible. A fast way to move a lot of books.

The shelving contractor surprised me yesterday. He is coming today to erect more bookcases in Gaithersburg.

HURRAY! That’ll make staff and customers happy.

The dogs are snoozing on the bed next to me. How many can you count in this picture?

It is a week til Thanksgiving. I haven’t been told what the family plans are—if any…

Weird.

I think the stress of everything going on is wearing on some of the management. It couldn’t be me who is doing crazy stuff and frazzling them.

Could it?

I had a long dream about my best buddy John Adams, who died suddenly in August 2020. He was visiting me in my old hometown of Waynesboro, PA. He used to come up there often for golf. Those were great days. My other best buddy Cap would often join us. In my dream, I was showing John around the rust belt town. It is a Plain Jane burg with nothing you’d go out of your way to sightsee. But in my fantasy, there were fantastic architectural features. Steel and stone and brick. Industrial Revolution stuff like you’d find in Paris or London. Then there was a party at the old manse. We used to have Christmas and 4th of July parties with well over 100 attendees. In the dream, the house was even grander than it is in fact. Frescoed ceilings. Large oil paintings on the walls, which were higher than their actual ten feet. It was beautiful. I was giving John and other guests tours. Of course, my book collection looked like something out of Blenheim Palace.

Should I have continued and pursued that life?

I love the rustic existence I have now. There was so much work back then. Some good friends weren’t true, sadly.

I miss you, John. Ever optimistic. We achieved a kind of balance. Opposites in many ways but with so much in common.

Thursday

Ernest and I are on our way back from Gaithersburg. We pulled a lot of books for the big project and for Books by the Foot.

This is one of the two vans we filled.

100 plus yellow tubs for the big project. 35 or so big tubs (repurposed from tubs customers bring us their books in) for Books by the Foot orders.

It is hard work. We had someone loading them all for us, which helped.

The contractor rotated all the remaining perpendicularly oriented bookcases into straight rows. It is amazing. With the walls removed and bookcases moved, you can now see views that no one else ever saw. Front to back. Side to side.

We have space for more bookcases now as well. I hope he returns soon to finish things.

My arms are tired.

(Monday, the day I got involved in moving lots of pallets, I awoke around midnight with screaming cramps in my legs. It happens when I use muscles I haven’t stressed for a while. A magnesium pill and a bottle of Gatorade loosened things. I could barely walk to get them though. I wish I could predict them. I could take the mineral dose and drink the electrolyte in preparation.)

We are pulling older books—targeting pre-ISBN and focusing on titles our client likely hasn’t gotten already.

We need to count these as we load them into Gaylords so they can ship tomorrow.

I enjoy the challenge. There’s brainstorming galore. My head is churning with a dozen factors at a time. When a problem surfaces, I jump on it. I follow up everywhere, looking for efficiency innovations.

Today, there’s a pizza coming in for everyone as a small token of thanks.

Oh my G**, it is so much fun. General Chuck, Commander of the Wonder Book Battalion.

(This engraving is from Jonathan Swift’s “The Battle of the Books.”)

Friday

It is cold inside again this morning. I banked a poor fire last night. Definitely out of practice. 59 degrees. My hands are cold. Periodically, I’ll stop writing and put my hands into Giles’ fur-filled belly to warm them. It reminds me of the Jack London tale “To Build a Fire.” That didn’t end well for the, would you call him the protagonist? No, I think the dog was the hero of that story.

In warm weather, I tussle with the dogs when they curl up against my body. They can make it too warm, confining and uncomfortable. I welcome them when it is cold.

“C’mon, boy!”

A true symbiotic relationship. They provide unconditional love, companionship, entertainment—sometimes warmth.

I provide them food, shelter and healthcare.

And love.

Last night—is 5:30 night?—when I got home, I backed the pickup truck into the woods and shoveled compost behind the low walls I had built last winter.

It was completely dark by that time. It was too far away for house lights to help. The truck’s running lights provided what little I could see. I needed to step gingerly, as there were many partially buried stones hiding under the leaves. When I get enough behind the wall, I’ll plant a lot of flower bulbs there.

I went to a funeral last Saturday. He was my son’s stepfather-in-law. But for decades, he was my dentist and sometime close friend. I first met Bill Thorne in the early 1980s. He had a new dental practice in Frederick after graduating from Georgetown. I was a beginning bookseller with chronic earaches and headaches. My parents were gone, and I lost ties with the doctors and dentists I had as a kid and teen in Rockville. Somehow I was referred to him as he wasn’t busy yet. He diagnosed TMJ and filed down one of my molars. It was a miracle cure. Then he moved his practice to Greencastle, Pennsylvania because of a “wonderful opportunity.” We lost touch.

When my older son was born, we decided to move from rural Gettysburg to the town of Waynesboro to be closer to my in-laws. They were excellent and trusted caregivers for the children. Waynesboro was close to Greencastle, so Bill became my dentist again. We also became golfers at the same club. I played my first tournament ever as his partner. We won! (The lowest “flight”—lol.) His daughter was about the same age as my kids, and we socialized pretty often. Then we drifted apart. I heard he had a dreadful heart attack in 2013, and though he survived, he could no longer practice. I continued going to his practice, seeing different dentists.

My younger son started dating his stepdaughter around 2019? (He had remarried another dentist whose kids were long ago schoolmates of my kids.) As they became closer, our relationship was renewed. They got engaged and then married. I’d visit Bill pretty often. He was frail and eventually wheelchair-bound, so I would sit with him and chat about golf and old times.

His body finally gave out on October 31st, and he was at peace.

Strange how circumstances brought us together at three stages of my life.

His funeral was in a classic Presbyterian church in Greencastle. Even though he’d been out of the public eye in many ways for a dozen years, there were well over 100 people in attendance, plus many more watching it stream. I arrived just before it began and slipped into a pew near the rear. I felt dreadful. Things inside me were flailing out of control. It hurt.

I heard about the doctor’s other lives—on the track team at UConn, volunteering pro bono dental care and, unexpectedly, as a lifelong churchgoer, among other things. His daughter gave a tear-rending testament to his qualities as a dad.

I also knew him as a book collector—especially anything about his beloved Greencastle and south-central Pennsylvania.

So many books this week.

Last weekend, my carts revealed more literary classics—I think from a Georgetown librarian. 25 or 30 editions and bios and criticism of Yeats. 15 or 20 of the Powys brother’s works.

When I left Sunday, I’d created mountains of boxes for the stores. Cartloads for the web, the big project and tubs for Madeline and Annika to research.

My favorite book this week was the Folio Society limited edition of The Last Unicorn.

It is a beautiful book. An artwork.

I love the book and the movie. I last watched it ten years ago. I remember vividly. Sigh…

I wonder if Wonder Book is a last unicorn? Will there be anything like it again?

I’d like to revisit the Unicorn Tapestries at the Cluny and the Cloisters…

We finally got a few of the Frederick windows treated the same as we did at Gaithersburg.

Those windows had the back side of the office and sales counter behind them. It was an unfixable eyesore.

Wednesday afternoon

Ernest was out.

“Chuck, someone’s at Dock 2 with books you should look at.”

He was a youngish guy with two early-teen sons. “I’m selling these for the wife of a friend who is in hospice… She just wants them out of the house.”

They were all role-playing games—heavy on Dungeons & Dragons.

We always need D & D. There is still very high demand for them.

I couldn’t bring myself to negotiate for them and took the offer straight to the top. “I can go 1200.”

He accepted.

“Here’s my number in case she has any concerns.”

Friday 8:30 a.m.

Time to send this off.

I’ve coordinated with the warehouse about where the vans should go and what projects I’d like assigned to create work for me when I get in.

Another big day at the old book factory.

Rather, The Old, Old Book Factory. OOBF. lol.

And here is our latest Books by the Foot newsletter, “Ever wondered about the books shown in films or TV series?”