McHuston Booksellers

Rare, Collectible, & Otherwise

Tag: Books and Bistro (Page 73 of 92)

The open door policy is closed. (At least for Monday.)

October 20, 2013 /

Surprise holiday.

Since the majority of my neighbors-in-commerce are closed on Mondays (I still don’t understand why, exactly…) the construction contractor has chosen that day as the one to rip out the remaining sidewalk. I snapped a photo to remember the last day before the new walkway. (I’m a sentimental fool.)

He told the folks who would be closed. I’m glad I at least found out second-hand.

As a result, something of a rarity will occur on Monday. I guess I won’t be able to open the door for business. It happened during the blizzard, and a couple of other times.

Such is the price of progress.

And I had some work-ahead prep work to make the Monday go more smoothly. That’s just Murphy’s Law.

Ah, well.

If all goes according to the (rumored) plan – I’ll be open for business again on Tuesday!

McHuston

Changes. Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes!

October 18, 2013 /

Maybe David Bowie said it, at least, most musically. Turn and face the…

Changes. Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-changes. (You can YouTube it, for the full musical effect…)

Songs aside, I learned something today, which prompted the question: Are you ever too old to learn?

Or is that rhetorical? Like, “Does a bear **** in the woods?” You know, questions posed without expecting an answer, like: Are you kidding me?

I usually try to give an answer to those types of questions, just for fun. Example:

Customer, looking over a book and speaking aloud: Well! What’d’ya know?

Me, standing nearby: What do I know? Well! The sun comes up in the east, for one thing. Dogs bark. Halloween is in October. The North Star is found in the north. Do you want the complete list?

Customer, who also loves answering rhetorical questions, as it turns out: Yes, please. In chronological order.

Today, I learned more about rhetorical questions. By definition: A rhetorical question implies its own answer as a way of making a point. Examples: “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?” or “What did I tell you?”

There’s a question that is often asked that people don’t realize is rhetorical. Have you ever been asked, “Why did you do that?” or “Why did you [whatever]?” That’s a tough one because the only honest reply that will satisfy the asker is, “Because I’m stupid.”

Here you go. You back the car into a tree. Your spouse, sitting beside you, turns to you and asks, “Why did you do that?” Here are your answer-options:

1. I misjudged the distance between the rear bumper and the tree, but assumed I had a little more backing-room and assumed the tree was stationary. Honest.
2. I have been hoping to find a way to raise our insurance rates. Honest.
3. I’ve been drinking all afternoon and needed an excuse for a nap. Which I just woke up from. Honest.
4. I just planted that tree yesterday, and never imagined it would grow so fast. And would replant itself closer to the driveway. Never would have believed it. Honest.
5. Because I’m stupid.

Spouse, picking #5, the only real answer: Honest?

Are you ever too old to learn? (No.) Does a cartoon bear commercially promote hygienic rolled tissue paper in the woods? (Yes. A sanitized version of original rhetorical posing.) Do I look like I’m laughing? (No.) Shall I open a can of whup-rear-end? (This is a family blog, after all.) Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who would want to live in an institution? (H. L. Mencken)

Rhetorical, on a theme:

1. “If practice makes perfect, and no one’s perfect, then why practice?” (Billy Corgan)
2. “Isn’t it a bit unnerving that doctors call what they do ‘practice’?” (George Carlin)

My top-five rhets (of course, in this day and age, rhetorical is much too long a word to be offered without reduction, and must suffer the fate of temperature (temp), medicine (meds), repetitions (reps), rheumatoid arthritris (RA), applications (Apps), compact disks (CDs), gonads (‘nads), Miami Hurricanes (Canes), and others…) – actually, rhets is just too confusing, too, given the silent letter and confusing spelling. (Solution example: Nothing compares 2 U: Prince, performed by Sinead O’Connor.) Just call them Rets. Okay? (I mean, OK?)

Whoo-y!

Top five Rets asked in McHuston Booksellers this week:

5. So, what do you do in here? Sell books?
4. Is this like a library?
3. Is the owner here? (Unspoken rhetorical reply: Was the door unlocked?)
2. Do you like to read?
1. Is the street construction hurting your business?

I’ve been staying up late trying to come up with answers (they ARE expected) to #1, what I originally believed to be a rhetorical question, and I’ve had to start repeating myself in reply for fear of dipping into the pool of answers that might be taken as sarcastic or condescending. The simple truth of the matter is: the complete and total removal of automobile parking in front of – and adjacent to – the entire block’s store-fronts, combined with restricted traffic flow and barricaded intersections – is not particularly beneficial to conducting business.

There. I’ve admitted it.

But – I’m not complaining. A guest today – very, very unhappy with the public expenditure for the main street changes – offered this commiseration: I’m sorry they’ve done this to you.

Answer (and I said it aloud…): They haven’t done this TO me… they are doing it FOR me.

As with all aspects of change, there is an abundance of reluctance to accept. The Rose District changes don’t bring with them guarantees – But – if they slow traffic from 45 mph to the posted 25, I’m all for it. If they allow vendors the opportunity to set up standard canopies to display their festival wares – without forcing pedestrians to step into the street because of narrow sidewalks – I’m all for it. If some restaurants (and their patrons) would like enough space to dine outdoors, I’m all for it. If water from rain and thunderstorms has a drain to move toward – I’m all for it (Main Street did not previously have ANY stormwater drainage). If shoppers trying to cross the street can do so without fearing for their lives (and I have personally witnessed people clasping the hands of their children, or trotting alone – their body language broadcasting their nervousness at trying to cross in front of drivers who would seemingly rather run them down as to allow passage – ) I’m all for it. If there is even a chance that the district will become a destination for those who are currently driving to Tulsa’s Blue Dome district, Cherry Street district, Deco district, or ANY other Tulsa commerce destination – I’m all for it.

Personally, there are times that I take a different street to get to a familiar destination, just because I enjoy a change of pace. On occasion, I buy a different kind of bread, just for fun. Some people get into comfort zones. Routines. Ruts. Sorry. I don’t. I know – as a change-accepting business owner – I don’t fit in with most of my neighbors, but I’m not trying to be a thorn in anyone’s side.

If everything stayed the way it always was, we’d still be navigating Broken Arrow’s primary road – Main Street – in wagons pulled by teams of horses digging their hooves into the mud or kicking up dust on the sun-hardened dirt.

We can live without change, if you like.

We’ll come to Main (in that fantasy world where nothing ever changes) because no other area offers retail establishments. If nothing ever changes, we’ll still refer to those businesses as Mercantiles. Saddlers. Blacksmiths. Saloons. If nothing ever changes, we’ll all have to visit Main Street, because that’s where the banks are.

(Oh, you don’t remember the long-debated change in laws that allowed for “branch banking” and the construction of banks in secondary locations – and later – teller windows in Walmart stores and Reasor’s grocery stores? Before that legal “change,” folks HAD to drive downtown to deposit their checks. Manually. There was no Direct Deposit. And downtown was busy.)

No air conditioning. No pavement. No sidewalks. No dress shops. No flower stores. No restaurants. No chocolatiers. No gift shops. No jewelry stores. No phone stores. No ad agencies. No professionals. No change.

Oh, wait a minute. Oops.

BA downtown already offers these changes.And you don’t want change. Hmmm. You don’t want anything different than the good old days?

Shall we boycott them, because they aren’t 1800’s?

What about it? Is change so bad?

Oh, pardon me. That’s rhetorical. Or, it should be.

Carving a name on the wall. Or in a book.

October 14, 2013 /

Ray J. was just a teenager when the bombs fell at Pearl Harbor. He was tall and thin – in fact, he couldn’t meet the weight requirement at the recruiting office. They sent him home to eat some bananas. When he showed back up, they accepted him into the US Navy and sent him to the Pacific.

He never spoke to me much about his experiences beyond mentioning being a little nervous sitting up in the conning tower when Japanese Zeros passed low overhead. Late in the war, some of the pilots were slamming their planes into the US ships.

On July 5, 1945 his name was on the list of sailors aboard the Robert F. Keller, a destroyer escort, when it sailed out of the Philippines for what turned out to be its last mission. Ten days later, his ship assisted in the sinking of the I-13, a submarine off the coast of Japan.

The Keller was part of the escort convoy when the aircraft carrier USS Bismark Sea was lost in a Kamikaze attack – the two US destroyers and three escort ships nearby managed to pick up 605 survivors over the next twelve hours. Those were facts Ray J. never mentioned. I had to do a little research. Sort of like Don’s story.

Don Spaulding was just a teenager when he enlisted, but he picked the US Army. His family lived within an afternoon’s car drive of Ray J.’s family, and the Robert Keller actually sailed into the Philippine Islands and the very strip of land where Spaulding was stationed. But Don wasn’t there anymore.

Japanese forces had taken the Philippines early on – and the US troops were ordered to surrender. What ensued has been called the Bataan Death March, but that was just the start of it. From his place of assignment at Clark Field, Don and his unit joined others as they were herded to a location where they could be transported to Japan.

There were labor shortages among manufacturers, and the US prisoners of war were to be carried to Japan to work as slave laborers. There were 345 men taken from Clark Field. After the long march to Manila, they were loaded into the hold of a freighter called the Noto Maru.

In August of 1944, there were one-thousand-thirty-five prisoners jammed into the forward hold of the Noto Maru. The hatch covers were closed initially, and the heat was beyond belief. Bathrooms were simply buckets stuck against the wall. The POWs were given a cup of water and two rice portions a day. The young men lived in the cramped hold of the freighter Noto Maru for twelve days.

Years later, Don learned that a great many prisoner transports were unknowingly attacked by US ships – because they had every appearance of an enemy transport. At Moji, Japan, the prisoners were at last removed from the ship and loaded onto railway cars, having survived an attack and two torpedoes that ran deep.

Don Spaulding stayed on the train until it reached a point between Tokyo and Yokohama where he was to begin working at the Osaka Zōsen steel mill, producing equipment that would be used in the Japanese war effort. He spent the rest of the war as a prisoner, but many of his comrades were not so fortunate. Conditions were dire, the work was hard, and food was scarce.

Ray J. returned to Parsons and Don eventually found his way back to Tulsa.

Don Spaulding didn’t stay home for long. Almost unbelievably, he traveled to Texas and re-enlisted at Fort Sam Houston in 1946 and specifically requested to be assigned to the Pacific – the Hawaiian Department.

Years later, and back in Tulsa, Don was reminded of his comrades who shared the dark hold of that Japanese freighter bound for Japan, fellows from Company Three like Charles Ashcraft, Fred Bolinger, and Otha Johnson. His good buddy Alfred Sorensen. Pete Armijo, John Chesebrough and Juan De Luna. Don’s name was in there too – ironically – listed right beneath his friend Alfred.

The book was Brothers from Bataan. It tells the story of those brave men who lived an ordeal that the rest of us cannot even imagine. When it came into the shop, I noticed the signature and some cryptic notations. It wasn’t an author’s autograph, and it took a little investigating.

I learned what Noto Maru signified – a ship in the group of some two-dozen vessels referred to in later years as “Hell Ships,” the unmarked freighters that carried prisoners off to Japan.

Don Spaulding owned the book and already knew the information he wrote on the title page. I believe he wanted to make his mark on the wall, like many prisoners of war did. A simple, personal legacy intended for those who might come later. Many who carved their names into the walls of their prison cells did not have much time left. Don lived another eight years. He died in Tulsa in 2009.

His story is not so different from that of Louis Zamparini’s, the subject of the book Unbroken. Zamparini survived a plane crash in the ocean only to drift on a raft into Japanese-held islands. He also wound up working as a slave laborer.

The story of Ray J. – my father – is one that will never be known. Like Don, he was a young man who left home to serve the United States against aggressors, with no guarantee of returning. I can’t share Ray J.’s story, because I don’t know the full of it.

But I can share the tale of another young man from the Midwest as a measure of respect for their service, and as a token of my regret that it did not occur to me to express my pride and appreciation to my father – until I had missed my opportunity.

Better late than ever, I hear.

Proud of you, Pa.

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