McHuston Booksellers

Rare, Collectible, & Otherwise

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Cheesy changes.

October 13, 2012 /

You know what they say about change… Keep it! (I’m kidding. I don’t think anyone ever says “Keep the change” except in the movies.) The old saying is something like – there is nothing constant, but change. It’s a froo-froo way of pointing out that we can’t really rely on things being the same as they were last week.

It’s the same with the lunchtime menu.

The items have been changed out a couple of times already, and I’ve mentioned to folks that the cardstock menu is just temporary since I don’t want to pay to etch it in stone (or lamination) until I’m relatively certain that they are the right things at the right price.

A couple of items have been bumped. Not that there was anything wrong with the food, but since I’m still the head chef, line cook, waiter, busboy, and dishwasher – it is important that anything being offered is easy to plate up and serve. (A party of six had me worried, but the majority ordered Irish stew, of which I am a master ladler. (Spellchecker didn’t flag that as a made up word, so perhaps there is a user of ladles called such…)

The grilled chicken is gone. There won’t be a lot of lamenting among you, I know, because it was among the least ordered items on the menu. In its place is a grilled three-cheese: it is nothing fancy, but plenty tasty on the grilled Irish loaf and on the inexpensive end of the price line. The corned beef and Swiss sandwich no longer features slaw atop the sliced meat. I was trying to achieve a Reuben-like sandwich without grilling sauerkraut (which produces a distinct aroma that books love to absorb). I thought the slaw might substitute, but I didn’t care for it after all. The sandwich works as a kraut-less Reuben and is still delicious.

I’ve also fine-tuned some obvious (or should have been obvious) errors, like leaving off the price for a cup ($3.95) or bowl ($5.95) of soup. Oops.

The hours for the food service are still limited. I want to run with it, but I’m still at the crawl/walk stage. The 11:30am to 1:30pm window covers most folk’s lunch hour and gives me plenty of time to get my dishwashing apron a workout afterward.

The Enduring Taco.

October 10, 2012 /

Unfortunately, the sleek new Taco Bueno website offers no history of the company, except for such monumental achievements as “Muchaco is invented” and “Iconic Bueno Bubble makes its debut.”

The man behind the company – Señor Bueno, I think his name was – brought the recipes and drive-thru windows to Tulsa sometime in the early 1970s. The location near the Farm shopping center at 51st and Sheridan was one of the pioneer spots. It was within walking distance when the kids were young. It had a game room.

Games may be confined to iPads and cellphones these days, and the architecture has changed over the years as well. As reported in the Tulsa World, and already likely known to many Owasso Bueno aficionados, a second location has been opened in that city. Probably a great relief to the staff of the only other Taco Bueno in Owasso, reducing the taco load. The building design has been updated to feature a stone entryway.

Bueno has had a long-term relationship with the Tulsa area, and while it is true that they’ve added and taken away some menu items over the years, the primary offerings have not changed much. Taco. Soft taco. Chilada Platter. (Why they are chiladas at Taco Bueno and enchiladas everywhere else, I don’t know.) There’s that fry-bread-like muchaco. Mexidips and chips.

And we’ve not grown bored of them after forty years…

Other chains have come and gone. There used to be Steak and Ale, which was a special occasion dining stop for a lot of people. A big salad bar lure for others. That group is gone, having Chapter 7nd into history back in 2008 after a 42-year run. Some of you may remember Shotgun Sam’s, a pizza place that dusted the pans with corn meal before spreading the dough and baking. That chain is no longer.

Part of it is the food and part is presentation, when it comes to diner loyalty. Those Steak and Ale filets were pretty tasty but the management never updated the stodgy old stores, which were reminiscent of a medieval alehouse. When they finally saw the edge of the precipice, remodeling just wasn’t enough to save them. Red Lobster has just announced a big menu shakeup, adding non-fishy items to attract the non-seafood lover in you. The change was spurred by a downturn in sales.

As for the Bueno-heads in line at Owasso – it is clear that the tacos are still a favorite with us here in Oklahoma… even after 40 years, Taco Bueno is still writing the book on Tex-Mex.

Good Book! Good Gosh!

October 4, 2012 /

Salvation is a lot more expensive than it used to be!

One of the online book sales consortiums releases its priciest sales once a month, and for September, the Good Book brought a heavenly price for the seller. The hand-tooled bible is old enough that Christopher Columbus could have taken it along on his voyage to the new world.

Printed in 1491, the so-called “Poor Man’s Bible” sold through American Book Exchange for $26,200. Obviously, it isn’t a poor man’s bible any longer, but at the time of its printing, this volume was among the first published in a much smaller and less ornate binding – more affordable for the common man.

Several Bibles made the top 10 of ABE’s most expensive books sold, but the top fiction honors went to a first edition copy of Louisa May Alcott’s “Little Women.” The 19th century volume brought $25,000 in a private sale.

Nowhere near that price, but an interesting book just the same is an 1883 German language bible we have in the shop currently with a binding that looks like it was carved from the trunk of an oak tree. The heavy volume is filled with beautiful engravings as seen in the accompanying image.

Some of the earliest Bibles printed in America were done in Western Pennsylvania, where German immigrants settled at the invitation of William Penn. Publishers in the region continued to print in the German language to accommodate the large settlements in Chester and Lancaster counties that still relied on their native tongue. Obviously, the use of German was prevalent enough to require the publishing of German language books well after the Civil War.

Somehow, one of the Good Books from that area found its way to Indian Territory, and eventually Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, where it proudly sits anticipating its 130th birthday.

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