McHuston Booksellers

Rare, Collectible, & Otherwise

Tag: Broken Arrow (Page 14 of 141)

Must be Spring Cleaning time!

April 10, 2016 /

I was riding on two wheels when Schwinn was advertising the Sting Ray and Krate bicycles. My ride had a little engine on it, but it wasn’t a lot bigger than those in the Schwinn ad on the back of the Boy’s Life magazine.

There are all sorts of odd-ball things that come in through the front door. Mostly books, but I’ve looked over everything from puzzles, games, documents, and sheet music – to statuettes and coffee mugs. They call it spring cleaning, but whatever the occasion, we seem to be offered more items for purchase this time of year. There were a few books in this load, but the greater part of it was old magazines.

Hate to call them old, because I remember the time well. Boy’s Life was a magazine that was delivered to our house for a time and I remember the excitement of something arriving in the mailbox with my name on it. I have a vague recollection of the Krate bicycle as shown in the image – but I might have been paying more attention to motorized transportation by then.

aBikeSchwinn

The Sting Ray, though… that was the stylish ride when I was a young and on the pedals. I didn’t have the real-deal, but created one – Frankenstein style – by cannibalizing an older bike and buying a set of high-rise handlebars. There was a kid in McAlester who could pop a wheelie and ride on the back wheel alone for as long as he wanted. City blocks.

I wanted to be able to do that.

aBikeSchwinn2

So, I practiced and crashed, practiced and crashed – but finally got to the point I could keep a “wheelie” going for about as long as I wanted. Got good enough that I started trying to do it on the front wheel by bumping up against the handlebars. That didn’t work out so well.

If I had been a bit younger, I would have been fantasizing over the Krate and its available models: the Orange Krate, the Lemon Peeler, the Apple Krate, the Pea Picker, and the Cotton Picker. Shock absorbers. Shift lever, five-speed. Dual brakes.

And a price tag that had to have been startling back then.

A hundred bucks.

That amount was more than my monthly rent for the little garage apartment I had just a couple of years after the Schwinn ad came out. Of course, I’ve not priced bicycles lately, and it could be that they cost as much as a month’s rent.

The Boy’s Life magazine had a cover price of forty-cents, which is proof of its age. There aren’t many publications to be had for under a dollar these days, and back when I tried stocking magazine titles, most were closer to five bucks each.

These however, can be had for a song – if you happen to be in the market for some memories. Don’t have the space to keep them around so I’ll be working to find a home for them. There is a passion among book people to keep printed materials out of the landfill.
The magazines may be cheap, but the bicycles certainly aren’t. The second image is from a couple of current eBay auctions, which proves that the bike might have been a pretty good investment back then.

We’ll be wheeling at lunchtime, so…

Come visit!

McHuston

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

Long ago. Back in the time we ate dirt. And loved it.

March 26, 2016 /

The four little words that carry the burden of years: Never Heard of It. It happened most recently while talking cars, when I mentioned the Datsun 240Z.

“A what?” he asked.

“Datsun 240Z,” I replied, figuring I had spoken it clearly enough, assuming that the car was an icon of sorts. Like saying, Corvette. People usually know what you’re talking about.

“Datsun?” he repeated, and frowned. “Never heard of it.”

BANG!

zCar

The hammer of aging. Remembering clearly the stuff people have never even heard of. Like the car model called Datsun before it morphed into Nissan. Used to own a boxy little Datsun and used to drive a Z-car.

But that was after they became known as Nissan in the US market.

The fellow and I were talking about the demise of British sports cars – those little convertibles of the sort I drove in high school. I suggested that the failure of the English cars was in part due to the introduction of the Japanese Z car.

It was the end of the 1960s and the US was clamping down for the first time on vehicle emissions. British car companies bolted on some emission control devices to meet the new standards – resulting in a lower-horsepower version of the previous year’s model. Since they were practically sewing machine motors to begin with, they no longer made for that zippy, happy, driving experience.

The Z-Car was designed with an anticipation of the new standards. Result: zippy, happy, driving experiences.

Needless to say, long-gone are the Triumphs, the MGs, and the Austin Healeys. The Nissan 370Z for 2016 has a suggested retail of 30K, and I bet it is even more zippy than before.

Some of the Tulsa media folks might remember the K95FM news car back in the early days of that incarnation of 95.5. The format had recently changed to contemporary country, with a news department. It was a kick to pull up to the scene in that sporty little blue Z.

It had one of the early mobile phones installed in it. That’s what we called them back then. Mobile phones. They were mobile as long as the car was moving, those first ones. Big as a cinder block and about as heavy.

But that car served to remind me that work can be fun, too. Especially for someone who is a fan of sports cars. Even if it was just a local press conference about the latest fund-raiser. It was a kick for me to drive to it.

So, today’s image is for those of you who don’t remember when the Nissan car company sold vehicles with the name Datsun stuck on the fender. The Datsun 240Z was the first in a long line of imported sports cars.

One of which once roamed the streets and byways of Tulsa County with a big K95FM emblazoned on the hood.

That was back in the days of good news, huh?

Come visit!

McHuston

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

Reading the Book Data.

March 21, 2016 /

I admit to being naïve. I think I’ve confessed to that in an earlier posting. You’d expect that, I imagine, from someone who opened a bookstore in this age of streaming videos, audio books, and X-boxes.

I don’t mean to say I’m gullible. I cultivate a healthy measure of skepticism. I did lose forty bucks at a traveling carnival once, and maybe that was being gullible. Or it could have been misplaced pride, thinking I was good enough at throwing a baseball that I could hit a target and win a stuffed prize. Found out later it was a rigged game, so I suppose the lost forty bucks amounted to the dues-paying of a rube.

bookNap

Naïve is leaving the garage door open and driving down the street to the convenience store. Never was a problem in my small-town upbringing. In Tulsa, I lost a toolbox to a thief in less than ten minutes of away-time. Took me ten years to inventory the loss, since I only realized what was gone when I needed a particular tool and discovered I no longer owned it.

In the case of the shop, having grown up around books, I mistakenly believed that EVERYONE was a reader – and assumed books and reading to be a shared human passion.

Boy.

Was I wrong.

Naïve.

I’ve probably told you this one before, but I love repeating my favorite non-reader bookshop customer anecdote. The fellow came tumbling in the front door as though he had popped through a time portal, and suddenly came up stock-still, throwing his hands on his hips.

“Books,” he said. “Would you look at all of these! What do you do with them all?”

As he seemed pretty serious with his question, I remarked that I offered them for folks to buy and read. He nodded in understanding.

“You know,” he replied, still gazing around at the shelves of books, “I used to have a friend who knew somebody who read books.”

And I can tell he was proud enough of the fact that – I just let it go without responding, nodding in honest admiration.

Today’s naiveté eye-opener comes courtesy of the New York Times, reporting on a new Pew Research Center survey in which 27 percent of American adults said they had not read a book in the past year. I always tend to round-off numbers, so – to me – that figure represents a third of all adults. One in three.

Pretty sure that my over-consumption is doing nothing to offset that statistic.

And that, my friends, is why the sign on the store-front awning says BOOKS & BISTRO. Offering a little light fare at lunchtime hedges the bet a little: I’m figuring that if folks don’t read at all, or are taking up the electronic reading device, at some point they might want a nice cup o’ Irish Stew.

Or meatloaf and mashed potatoes.

I’ll have to check the Pew research data on that one.

Come visit!

McHuston

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

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