I dreamt I was dreaming.

My left arm hung over the right side of the bed. Blood dripped from my fingertips. The thick red drops fell heavily onto the wooden floor. “Splat… splat… splat.” A small puddle formed and then spread. It became a big red pool. Irregularly shaped. A couple feet across. “Splat… splat… splat.” A dead pool. I awoke in my dream, and the dawn was coming on. Hundreds of square miles of red sky filled the horizon. The heavens were on fire, and only the sunrise could extinguish them.

Sweet Death
I can use the rest
Peace from stress and aching
Relief from longing
Take me to that freedom
I would look in from without
Observe with no heat or cold
I would hear the silence
Sweet Death
Freedom from worry
No hunger or thirst
No pleading for sleep
One last lullaby
To carry me off

When you’re struggling in a blizzard, you don’t pause to check the temperature or gauge the wind speed.

My guardian angel must be weary of rescues.

I awake to a cold October morning, curled on my right side in the fetal position, Giles’ curled body pressed against my back—perhaps seeking affection, perhaps warmth.

It is 41 degrees outside. When will the first freeze occur? When will I feel the need to build the first fire in the big iron wood stove?

Venus is rising with the dawn on the eastern horizon.

I hope today will not be madness, like yesterday was.

Recent weeks have added dimensions of physical and mental labor. We were at capacity before.

I’ve been at capacity at work for, what, a couple years now.

As we’ve grown, there have been new burdens. The old burdens have become greater as well.

Yesterday afternoon turned into a pallet roundup. Somehow I became trail boss. I found myself alone on the floor in a remote section of the sprawling warehouse. Things were not working. Many of the pallets were located in the southeast corner of the building. The rest were in the far northwest. We only have one scale jack. We only need one. How to weigh the two herds? “Bring them all to the center.” Of course! But that area is already congested. “I’m sorry. There’s no other choice,” I told the wide-eyed Books By the Foot staff as dozens of 1,500-pound pallets filled and buried their work area. “Wrap them. Weigh them. Write the weight on the front and back.”

Where were my managers? Why am I alone out here on point?

I owed my old friend in Chicago a call. He’s downsizing a massive remainder operation. He wants me to take dozens of pallets of academic books at any price. One or five or ten of some of these titles would be okay. Hundreds of copies of the same books are impossible.

“I’m sorry. We don’t have any space here. Things usually open up in the winter, when the holidays and bad weather slow down the incoming.”

I texted our recycler. “Can you sell me a trailer or two?” That’s the last thing I want. We are out of loading docks where we could park them. They’d just be band-aids out in the dockyards.

Then I went to the office to check in.

“Did you see the voicemail I sent you?”

“No. What is it?”

“Complaint.”

Groan. The message went something like this:

Good morning. I’m calling for Chuck Roberts, the owner of Wonder Books. I was given this number to leave a message. It is Wednesday, the 15th October at about 12:25 PM. My name is… I just had my first experience visiting your store in Gaithersburg and providing my used books based on prior calls and queries to your store. And I had a very poor experience. And if you’re concerned about how it’s represented, I’d appreciate your call back. I am inclined to put a review online about the poor experience. But before I do, I welcome Chuck Roberts to give me a call…

I checked to see what it was about.

“The customer wanted more money than was offered. He claims a higher offer was made over the phone when he called the store to inquire about selling.”

We don’t make offers over the phone. At least no one is supposed to.

Great. I looked at the voicemail. I almost always avoid these. I wasn’t there. My involvement usually adds to the problem.

Plus, I was completely frazzled. I’d been in the whirlwind all day. Actually, the last month and a half there’s been a leitmotif dominating the symphony that’s always playing in my mind. Wagner-esque. Kind of like “Ride of the Valkyries.”

Ignore it? Pass it off?

Deep breath.

“Don’t get angry,” I thought to myself. “Don’t react with righteous indignation.”

It was a very civil conversation. It was bizarre, as well. The customer had called the store twice about his “collection” of books. Someone had told him we usually only pay a few dollars per “box” for common material. Obviously, we can’t appraise the books over the phone. Are they moldy? Pristine?

“I was told… It was a horrible experience. The employee was very rude. I’d taken them to [another well-known bookstore] first, and they were even more horrible…”

“Ahhhh…” I thought. Never a good sign.

I eventually figured out which team member had interacted with this customer. I happen to know this employee very well, and he’s never been anything but even-tempered—even in the most stressful of situations.

I called him. “The customer had five egg crates of books.”

What’s an egg crate? We define a “box” as a copy paper box or larger completely filled. I wracked my mind.

“He wanted his egg crates back. I reboxed them, and they only filled two boxes. The books were just average. He didn’t want to take them back. He accepted the money…”

“I was told over the phone…”

Here I was, alone in the office discussing a few dollars worth of books. Another bookseller would likely refuse the books, or at most would maybe buy a handful and send the rest back with the seller.

Sigh…

“If I sent you 15 dollars, would that make things better?”

Yes. It would. He was glad he didn’t have to leave a negative review on Yelp. “That’s what Yelp is for.”

I got the address from him and warned that mail is often taking up to a couple weeks to reach its destination.

And disconnected. I sat there in wonderment.

In some ways, I’d been manipulated.

“Call me or else.”

In other ways, I can understand the psyche of someone parting with a “lifelong collection.”

Turns out that an egg crate is like a milk crate. A small plastic carrier about half the size of a “box.”

I gave the man’s address and info over to one of my employees. “Please be sure this goes out with this week’s checks.”

Then I left the office and crossed into the whirlwind, where thousands of books were in motion. Dozens of employees rolling carts, pallets, stacks of bins.

Which was the Twilight Zone?

Hi Chuck! I’ve been wanting to reach out, I read your blog every week, so you’ve been on my mind! Sounds like you’ve had a lot going on with your car accident, poor Pip & work! I’d love to catch up… We’ve talked about it before, but I’d like to see the WH. Let me know if you ever have time haha! I’m free all weekends for the most part. I work M-F 8:00 to 4:30…

It was from an employee from the ’90s. She’d been one of the first few hires when we built the Hagerstown location in 1995. We’d hired three high school girls. They were a memorable group. This one had stayed on into the early 2000s. I only had good memories.

She came in on a Sunday. She looked great. Unchanged.

We walked around the warehouse. Wonder Book had been much smaller when she left. She said “wow” at the usual spots during the tour.

She’d brought a couple scrapbooks with her. We sat in the office and flipped through them.

“How cool!” I’d forgotten these things.

Those were pre-internet days for the most part. Certainly there was no notion of how much technology would change things in the next 20 years.

(And who knows? Will humans become obsolete? Will books? I don’t think so.)

Those were the days when the movie companies were making lots of money from video rentals. They’d give us all kinds of perks.

Those are my kids.

I’d forgotten what a team that group was. Time travel.

And this was me, likely after returning from the Florida Antiquarian Book Show.

That was my only vacation in those days. I had to work the show to pay for it.

Good times, in retrospect. But also brutally difficult and filled with uncertainty.

The Washington Post did a feature recently on why people read physical books.

One of those interviewed mentioned she’d gotten the book she was reading at Wonder Book.

She summed up some of the main reasons physical books are so different from “screen reading.”

But here’s her text in the article:

It is Friday morning and 38 degrees outside. The dawn is a kind of prism on the horizon.

I’m wearing sweats under the comforter. Giles is pressed against my leg. Merry is at the foot of the bed, occasionally wheezing in his dreams. Pip is away at the babysitter (I needed a break). All is silent but for the tapping of my fingers on the laptop’s keyboard.

When I got home last night, I had no energy to work outside. A ten-pound pork loin was cut up and put into the oven to roast. At $2.50 per pound, it’s cheaper than dog food. And it thrills them so much to have real meat mixed in with their kibble.

I heated leftovers in foil for myself. I’ve been out for dinner every night for over a week. Strange. Sometimes I’ll go for weeks with no one wanting to see me.

Thursday had me spinning around the warehouse like a top. Did I overcommit? Promise more than I can deliver? Rob Peter to pay Paul?

It was a welcome break to visit my wonderful estate attorney in the late morning to see if my affairs were in order.

We reviewed the sum total of my life to this point. Line item after line item…

“Is that all?” I wondered. I need to work harder! But the plans are sound, I think.

On Tuesday, I went to the accountant to file the corporate taxes. That’s where so much of the money has gone.

“Sign this one three times…”

This year’s stack of documents was nearly a foot thick, sitting on the conference room table where I’ve signed my name for four decades.

England and Scotland are a dream. Only a few weeks ago, I was in the homes of Wordsworth and Walter Scott and Shakespeare. I want to go back.

The notes I scribble on folded paper and keep stuffed in my pocket are next to me in bed. I wish I could share the stories and images.

When we were driving from the Lakes to Edinburgh, the barren country road had an odd bend in it.

“They built the road over the spot where a witch had been burnt. There were so many accidents there that they built a bypass around that spot.”

“When Scott went bankrupt due to a market crash, he forced himself to sit at this desk for 12 to 18 hours a day creating stories and poems to ‘write off my debts.’”

“Unwanted guests would be served ‘cold shoulder’ rather than a hot feast.”

“J.M.W. Turner was passed out drunk on this dining room table.”

“When Scott was very ill, suffering micro strokes, he had a bed set up here so he could look over the grounds and the river Tweed. His last words were ‘quill and paper.’ It was the 21st of September. This day.”

This is from my visit to Dorothy and William Wordsworth’s cottage. The windows were small, keeping the interior dark. I looked out through a casement onto the backyard, where their gardens had been. A single rose was framed in a leaded pane.

Last Rose at Dove Cottage—Grasmere
Two hundred years on in autumn
The fern brakes are dying back
The redden and will brown and die
Through leaded diamond window panes
no larger than a fist
The last pink rose blossoms
Single petals signal season’s end
Now cold will come
Flowers will be a memory
that will not warm the soul
Icy wind and rain
leave no room for patience
She loves me
She loves me not
A curse to dismember
this year’s last rose

My friend Ron drove from his bookstore in Buffalo—Old Editions on Monday. He brought a truckload of vintage cloth and leather destined for Books By the Foot unless I find a sleeper or two in the lot. (Unlikely with Ron.) That night, he came up to the house and we watched Buffalo and Washington lose.

Tuesday we had his truck unloaded.

I have no idea where we will put them.

He is downsizing. Familiar theme.

He also brought some better books for me to look at. I couldn’t resist this atlas.

The world in 1807. What will it look like in 2207?

A few books came in the mail, as well. I wanted to visit old friends at Rare Books LA, but it was too close to my return from Glasgow.

Stunning beauty.

Maybe that’s where my wealth is.

No. I know I’ll never break even on them. You buy books for love, not money.

Maybe I’ll get to Pasadena. I haven’t been since February 2020. That was a great trip. Then things fell apart when the plague hit. I’ll never forgive some “colleagues.” Trolls. Or worse.

“Forget them. Treasure the true ones.”

Thanks, my Muse.