I answered the phone with “McHuston Booksellers,” and the lady quickly replied, “Is this – like – a bookstore?” Momentarily baffled, I started in with “…well, book sellers usually implies-” before she cut me off. She was calling from Tulsa and was parked in front of someone’s house.

“I Googled for Tulsa bookstores,” she said, “and just typed the address into my GPS. I’m parked in front of someone’s house.”

She told me she was looking for a real bookstore, but couldn’t tell from the Google search results which were real and which were simply individuals selling books online out of their bedroom office. I was glad I didn’t have a chance to finish what might have wound up as a sarcastic reply to her initial question. Her confusion was immediately clear.

I assured her that McHuston Booksellers is a brick and mortar store in Broken Arrow (a Tulsa suburb, for you out-of-staters) and that if she typed the address into her GPS she would wind up in the asphalt parking lot of a real shopping center, with an open sign, shelves of browsable books, and – perhaps best of all on this day in June – delicious air conditioning!