McHuston Booksellers

Rare, Collectible, & Otherwise

Author: admin (Page 160 of 220)

Steve Jobs, we hardly knew ye.

October 6, 2011 /

My wife wanted to know why her television program was interrupted to announce the death of a man whose name she didn’t remember. He had been sick with cancer, she said.

I don’t know why, but my first guess was Steve Jobs.

“Yes, that’s him,” said my wife.

Two things became clear when I tried to explain why he was important enough for the network to break into programming to relate the news of his death. It was just too simplistic to call him an inventor who made electronic products, and – as I wrangled for words to define the man behind the Apple – I struggled also to keep my emotions in check.

It was like losing a brother or dear friend.

I gave up my Selectric typewriter in favor of an Apple IIe, a prehistoric computer that I thought was sensational. For the time, it was. Spelling errors? Just back up the cursor and type over them. Move sentences and paragraphs. Frustrated? Just punch the delete key. Or save and come back to it later. No more wadded up pieces of paper littering the wastebasket.

On the back window of my Honda hatchback was an Apple logo sticker, the only adhesively applied object ever attached to any car I have ever owned. It represented a clique, of sorts. Like a Harley, only geekish.

Over the years, I wound up in bed with Microsoft. Not necessarily happily so, but nonetheless. Budgets had a little something to do with that. Apple and its proprietary rights. After the IIe, I tried an Apple IIc before going IBM. There were so many programs that were much more affordable.

But I never lost my affinity for Apple. I was one of the club with a lapsed membership card, still admiring the group and its products and its cultish approach to business.

For guitar players, there is Eric Clapton. Among electronics owners, there was Steve Jobs. An early message put it in terms I consider most appropriate, likely delivered from an iPhone or a competitor inspired by the Apple product:

He was our da Vinci.

And he is gone much too soon.

Sometimes history belongs in the past.

September 14, 2011 /

I remember hearing about the Jacqueline Kennedy papers or diaries or interviews – whatever they were – and the fact that they would be sealed up for seventy or seventy-five years before being released. The presidential widow intended to protect the privacy of her children, while realizing that there would still be interest in her thoughts and impressions regarding her time in the White House.

At the time I thought: Well, I won’t live long enough to ever be privy to that information.

Low and behold. The book is on the front counter along with the CD collection that contains Kennedy’s conversations with historian and former White House aide Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. The release is timed to commemorate the 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s first year in office.

Apparently, there is still an interest.

More than eight-million viewers took to the sets to watch Diane Sawyer present a program on the book and audio release, not quite NFL football-viewing numbers, but still substantially more than the top-ranked show on Monday evening.

I listened long enough to decide I didn’t want to hear any more.

The audio was recorded in 1964, a time that was stuck in between the I Love Lucy and Ozzie Nelson era and the feminist-movement genesis that followed. In the former, women were – as a rule – happy to stay at home and raise the family while the husband served as the breadwinner. Women weren’t expected to offer much in the way of political opinions. That changed, obviously.

Unfortunately, the part of the Kennedy conversations I heard indicated that the First Lady was mired in the homemaking age, despite her social-status, education, and political position. She made remarks to the effect that “Of course Jack was right. What would I know about politics?” That’s a paraphrase, since I changed the channel quickly enough that I didn’t memorize the quote.

Sometimes the perception held in memory is better than the truth. I was a child when John Kennedy was assassinated, and although some of my recollections of the time are quite vivid, I would have known little of the social framework in which that time was entrenched. Looking back on some things, the time seems so far away as to be fiction.

In 1964, there were still separate drinking fountains at the train station in my home town. Officials tore down the station rather than integrate the facilities. (Maybe that is only my impression, but the timing was suspect, at best.) There were separate high schools for blacks and whites. There were certainly women in colleges, but many considered keeping house as a preferred occupational path.

It was a different time – one so removed from our current state that it is almost impossible to imagine the differences in thinking. The dream of Camelot and its shining example, the wealthy Kennedy and Bouvier families on the throne reigning over the placid masses – were all changed by the assassination.

The widow remarried. Many suspected it was to insure her privacy and her way of life. Later, she returned to the US and New York and made a new image for herself in the publishing world.

The audiotapes of the young widow will provide insights for some, but for me, a taste of what seemed to be little more than shallow gossip was enough to make me search out less bitter fare.

Making an Impression. Or not.

September 9, 2011 /

Get yourself caught up in a juicy scandal. It’s the best way to find yourself at the center of public attention. Some Hollywood press agent once quipped something to the effect that – The only bad publicity is NO publicity. Or, as Oscar Wilde put it, “The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.”

Unfortunately, if it’s a real scandal, becoming newsworthy is the last thing you want. You’d really rather crawl in a hole and disappear.

For independent booksellers, publicity is good – scandal is bad.

I was disappointed at the bank today, while making a little deposit. The teller counted the sum, printed the receipt, and glanced at the form I’d handed her.

“You sell books?” she asked.

“Yes,” I answered. I was somewhat taken aback by the question, and maybe didn’t answer loud enough. She asked again.

“You sell books?”

“Yes,” I replied again.

The pre-printed deposit slip she was reading had “McHuston Booksellers” and the store address right there in black and white. Under the name it says “Antique, Rare, & Otherwise.” I figured that would spell it out pretty well. Before opening for business, I chose the bank because it is down the street from the bookstore. On Main Street in Broken Arrow, OK. Not a big town. Not a lot of banks or bookstores.

McHuston Booksellers is wrapping up five years as a brick and mortar store at this location. Five years is not a long time, but then again… If you had a wanna-cry toothache, would you wait five years for a dentist appointment? Stay on a diet for five years? What about missing a house payment – would the mortgage company think five year’s of non-payment to be nothing more than a drop in the bucket? What if, in raising the kids, the terrible two’s lasted for five years? Five years can seem long enough for a lot of things.

Five years for a business is supposed to be the corner at which make-or-break is turned.

That’s why it was discouraging when my own bank doesn’t realize I’m in business, or what it is I do here. I suppose if I made big deposits instead of small ones, and made them a lot more often – there would be some sort of connection. Being located on the same short Main Street isn’t enough, obviously.

I’ve seen billboards for bookstores. Small newspaper ads. Not so much in the way of television or radio advertising. All that publicity costs dollars – the big ones. I’m still depositing little ones in that bank down the way.

A juicy scandal is still out of the question as to a means of raising a little publicity for the store, but the appeal is growing.

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