McHuston Booksellers

Rare, Collectible, & Otherwise

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Rose-colored glasses looking Green!

March 16, 2014 /

One thing about working on your day off – you can tackle the jobs at your own pace. So here I am, taking a break from chopping vegetables, looking over some pictures from the first ShamRock the Rose festival. Here comes my admission, right up front, honest and forthright.

I had my doubts. Once again, I was wrong.

Predictably (pun-intended), there were the expected dire forecasts from the meteorologists, which made me worry. (Those are the same who advised us, when it got cold and snowy, that we should all stay home – or die. I didn’t and I didn’t. My customers did, regrettably. Stay home, that is. Not die.)

This time the prediction was for a 100% chance of rain beginning at noon.

Mention of severe tossed in, just for good measure.

As it turned out, the rain held off and the festival got underway as scheduled. A net-posted photograph indicated sparse attendance, but it was obviously a snapshot taken early on. On our part of the Rose, there were plenty of folks wandering about, and many of them stopped at our door-front table. We were offering Irish Stew and – Surprise! – green beer.

Based on the festival sales, I decided to up my preparation for St. Paddy’s Day’s lunch service. Back in my Paddy’s Irish Restaurant days, we were strong on corned beef and cabbage, Irish whiskeys, and – of course – green beer. We had a great kitchen staff back then. My kitchen staff here is – me.

So, I’m planning to do what I know I can manage on my own. Some of you will recognize my lovely daughter Kristen in the image. (It was the Luck o’ the Irish that she didn’t inherit the old man’s face.) She’s agreed to help out during the St. Paddy’s lunch, which will make it a much smoother service.

We’ll be offering green beer to go along with corned beef on rye, if you like. Or Irish stew, if you prefer. Potato soup, as always. Shepherd’s Pie with the hand-mashed potatoes and stew gravy. Some Irish music, as you might expect.

Compared to the old days, it will be a small party. But we’ll be in good spirits and wishing everyone the merriest of St. Patrick’s Days from the heart of the Rose District.

Come visit!

McHuston

Booksellers & Irish Bistro
Rose District
122 South Main St. Broken Arrow OK!

The Most Famous Author You Never Heard Of.

March 8, 2014 /

The Summer of Joe and Frank was marked by almost-daily hikes to the public library, where a summer reading program for kids was offering a gummed-back sticker for every completed book. I’ve always had a competitive streak, and figured the way to fill up my stick’em-on page was to tackle the Hardy Boys.

There was certainly a collection of titles. The Tower Treasure was the first book in the series, and when I carried a copy home that summer, it had already been read by generations of young boys. Of course, I didn’t know that. (Just the beginning of things I didn’t know.)

As young sleuths, Joe and Frank Hardy found their way into all the exciting situations a kid could imagine. Their father is the great detective Fenton Hardy, but – as every boy reading the book would have it – the cases are solved by the brothers, who must rescue their dad, more often than not.

More than 70-million copies have been sold, in some two-dozen languages, quite a writing-plume in the cap of Franklin W. Dixon.

Except he didn’t write a single word.

Maybe I was the last one in the world to learn it, but Franklin W. Dixon was a made-up-name created by Edward Stratemeyer, a New Jersey writer and businessman. Mr. Stratemeyer grew up in Elizabethtown, where his father and brothers were successful entrepreneurs. Edward quit their cigar-making business to manufacture stories.

He created a couple of brother-detectives, and then – over the course of his lifetime – hired writers to pen the stories for the Stratemeyer Syndicate, his publishing firm. And he didn’t stop with the boys. Nancy Drew became the fictional counterpart, penned by Carolyn Keene (another name made up by Mr. Stratemeyer).

When his stable was complete, Edward Stratemeyer and his firm had to their credit, the Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Tom Swift, the Bobbsey Twins, the Rover Twins, and others. All told, the juvenile fiction titles have sold more than 500 million copies, and most are still in print. Stratemeyer alone is said to have written over a thousand books.

At his death in 1930, the reins of the business were turned over to his Wellesley College educated daughter, Harriet Stratemeyer Adams, who was just as prolific as her father and wrote books under several of the pen-names.

It’s obvious that I would have been the dumb-as-dirt sidekick in the Hardy Boy world. It took me all these years to figure out the Case of the Secret Writers. I can only offer the single true fact that kept me from learning the truth before now.

I didn’t have a clue.

Read’em if you got’em. And if you don’t…

Come visit!

McHuston

Booksellers & Irish Bistro
Rose District
122 South Main St. Broken Arrow OK!

Not a Hot Streak, but it warms me anyway.

March 3, 2014 /

I believe this is the message my vehicle is trying to tell me:

Van (laboring in vain as I turn the key and the engine slowly grinds): Will. You. Just. Stop? If you were a robot, you’d be dead, too.

Single-digit temperatures and The Beast don’t get along. Mostly the van doesn’t move along when bitterly cold weather is at hand. Or at battery. Fortunately, I suspected as much and did not waste time scraping the ice off the passenger-side windows before cranking the engine over. (That’s an overly-optimistic description of what happened.)

Borrowed car later, I’m here at the shop – an island of warmth in the midst of a frosty, snowy wasteland.

Normally, by eleven-thirty in the morning, the parking spaces in front of the store are already filled. People getting an early-jump on lunch at the Main Street Tavern and the BruHouse Grill. Normally, I’m ready to serve lunch at this hour of the day as well, which adds a little to the lunchtime parking demand.

As you can see in the snapshots, there is no problem at all today. Plenty of wide-open spots in which to roll up, roll in, and grab something to eat. Except, you’ll have to opt for my neighbor’s tables for lunch today. I finally arrived just a few minutes ago and it’s a little late in the morning to start peeling carrots and potatoes.

So, I’ve taped a little notice to the front door that the Bistro kitchen is closed today, along with most of the schools in northeastern Oklahoma, and most of the businesses on my block here in the Rose District. (I didn’t put all that info on the little sign, just the Bistro part.)

When I was introduced to the five-degree temperature and that bitingly-crisp breeze, I wondered about the relative point in opening the store on such a day. Book emergencies are even more rare in this eReader day and age.

But I’m in my eighth year on Main Street, offering nicely-kept books to folks, at always-reasonable prices. And in all those days of turning on the lights and unlocking the front door, I’ve always sold a book. (Well – there was an afternoon during that blizzard several years back, when after several days trapped indoors I dug out the car and slid to the shop for two hours. Then locked up and slid back home. It was more an adventure in cabin fever relief than retail sales opportunities.)

The point of opening today?

It must have been for the young woman who breezed in (I felt the cold wind accompany her) and went directly to the parenting books. What to Expect when You’re Expecting. I had to stop my typing here to ring up her purchase. Maybe not a book emergency, but she did say, “I’m so glad you’re open” as she walked in front of the counter.

That makes me feel good.

That might be the only sale of the day – for all I know. But the seven-plus year streak is still alive and – more importantly – I was here and had the book she was looking for. That makes a bookseller feel all warm inside.

An important feeling on such a day as this.

When we get a weather break, I hope you’ll

Come visit!

McHuston

Booksellers & Irish Bistro
Rose District
122 South Main St. Broken Arrow OK!

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