McHuston Booksellers

Rare, Collectible, & Otherwise

Tag: Catoosa (Page 70 of 101)

It’s a’ for the Hiney he’ll cherish the bee.

November 15, 2013 /

Of course, you recognize those memorable song lyrics, from My Tocher’s the Jewel, words from tha’ grreat Scotsman Rrrobbie Burrns, and sung to the tune of The Muckin’ o’ Geordie’s Byre. (Drawing a blank? Here are the first couple of lines, to refresh your memory: O meikle thinks my love o’ my beauty, And meikle thinks my love o’ my kin… (join in now) But little thinks my love I ken brawlie, My tocher’s the jewel has charms for him!

Whew. Brings a tear to my eye.

You know those songs that keep rolling around in your head – do you suppose they are ones that your grandkids might sing? Or… flip it around. Can you sing all the songs that might have popped into your grandfather’s head? Does music have a shelf-life? Or can a song expire?

Do some tunes wither up and disappear?

Part of the answer to that question is sitting on the desk in front of me. But just part. And, even that is limited, because none of my grandparents were living in Scotland when this book was published. Might have some Scots in the family tree somewhere back in history, hopping in their kilts and belting out “The Birks of Aberfeldie” at the top of their lungs.

That’s one of the jewels in “Lyric Gems of Scotland,” Price: Two Shillings & Sixpence Net, Arranged with Pianoforte Accompaniments, published by Bayley & Ferguson (pronounced Billy n’ Fairgissen), Glasgow.

There is no date in this old song book, but a British dealer who owns a copy estimates it was published about 115 years ago. And what ditties do you suppose the young larks were perpetrating back then?

How about: In a Wee Cot Hoose Far Across the Muir. (Could be: In a wee cottage house far across the moor. I’m just saying.)

Or, Keen Blaws the Wind o’er the Braes. Doun the Burn Davie Love. Fareweel, Fareweel my Native Hame. You’ll want to remember favorites like, I Gaed a Waefu Gate Yestreen and – Gae Bring to Me a Pint O’ Wine. And many, many more! (Scots version: and Minnie! Minnie Moore!)

Remember, these are all English words. Just delivered with a wee bit o’ that fain Scottish brogue.

Here’s the thing. There are actually a few titles that I do know, songs that have survived a century or more.

Auld Lang Syne, for one. You remember that one from New Year’s Eve. Some of you will remember Guy Lombardo and his orchestra. (Most of you won’t.) Their version of that song is still the first song played at the stroke of midnight in Times Square, to kick off the New Year. Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and all that. Or as we sing it, Should OLD acquaintance be forgot…

How about – By Yon Bonnie Banks? (Although I always heard this song as being titled Loch Lomond): Sing along with me now… By yon bonnie banks and by yon bonnie braes. Where the sun shines bright on Loch Looooooo-mond. Okay. That’s enough singing.

Well, then. I suppose there might be another one somewhere that I could recall. I only WISH I knew the entry on page 104: My Heart is a-Breakin’ Dear Tittie. You know it has to be an innocent “sing around the hearth-fire with the children” kind of song. At least, it was when this book was published. These days, I don’t think it would make the cut for a Sesame Street performance.

I’m still wondering how many of these songs are still known in Scotland – whether these were “gems” that stood the test of time or if some became somewhat lagging in popularity outside the campfires of the sheep herders.

For my money (which it is, at this point – until someone else buys the book), the best thing to be found on the pages is the inscription from 1911. The recipient of the songbook knew who it was from, but unfortunately the giver did not sign his name. As you can see in the image, the book was given:

“Frae yer ‘Brither’ in Auld Reekie. August 17, 1911.”

That just makes me want to sing.

Come visit!

McHuston

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

Those Small-Town-Remembering Blues

November 13, 2013 /

I lost my virginity when I arrived in Tulsa. I was mid-twenties and naïve. Oh. Wait a minute. I don’t mean that “birds and bees” stuff. More like the “virgin snow” reference, as in – undisturbed new territory.

The U-Haul was barely unpacked before I became a big-city crime victim.

Like I said, I was naïve. Didn’t know you had to protect your stuff because, if you didn’t, others might take advantage. It never really occurred to me that people would do things like secretly take stuff that belonged to others. I was a classic knucklehead.

Oh, sure. I knew what burglary was. On my first job at Allen’s IGA in McAlester, I was a fifteen-year-old flatfoot, following boss’s orders as I stalked a woman around the aisles watching as she stuffed a pot roast into her cavernous purse. Apparently, all I learned from that was – if you steal, you’ll get caught at the checkout counter. (She even had a jar of asparagus stalks in that handbag. Fine dining on the carryout program, I suppose.) My boss Marshall was a pro. She paid extra cash for nearly $50 worth of purse-carried items.

Growing up in a small town can contribute to a sense of personal security. Under a certain size, the newspapers call them “communities.” That’s the truth, in my opinion. Small towns are simply communities of common-minded people and that’s the reason I still have a fondness for those places.

My favorite example – one I’ve repeated often enough: We had just purchased a house. I mean JUST purchased. Moved in, unpacked enough to set the alarm clock to make it to work on time the next morning. Bzzzz. Shower. Shave. Drive to work. I had barely arrived at the office when I got a phone call from the realtor who had worked the sale.

Mrs. Realtor, on the telephone: Larry? I hate to bother you at work but I just drove by the house, and your front door is wide open.

Me, still trying to figure out who this caller is (it’s early, the day after moving in…): Open?

Mrs. Realtor: Yessir. The door is open. Wide open. I would have stopped and closed it for you, but I was running behind this morning and just now got to the office myself.

Me: Oh. Well, that’s okay.

Mrs. Realtor: I was thinking you might want to run by and close it. A dog or a squirrel might run right in and then you might have a mess on your hands.

A mess. Catch that? She was worried about a mess. Nothing more. I thanked her and hopped in my car, whizzed over to the house and drew the door tight. I didn’t lock it. Wasn’t my habit. Dogs and squirrels can’t open securely closed doors. Dogs don’t have thumbs, and squirrels are too short to reach the doorknob.

Did you notice? Mrs. Realtor made no mention – whatsoever – of thieving humans. That’s the thing about small towns. Oh, sure. There are some incidents. They just don’t happen frequently, and when it happens, everyone in town knows who did it. Later, those folks are arrested again, chastised again, and then again, everyone gets their stuff back. It’s inconvenient, but nothing permanent.

The point of the story?

My move to Tulsa and the loss of my victim-virginity wasn’t the end of it. In no time, I became a victim-floozy. Park the car at the shopping center: return to a break-in and loss of cheap in-dash radio. Leave the garage open: return to the loss of toolboxes and still-to-be identified items. (Never know what you’ve lost until you need it and go to the garage to get it.)

I finally got it.

Tulsa is not a small town. Tulsa is different from small towns. People steal in Tulsa.

Here is the deductive reasoning. Broken Arrow is no longer a small town; hence, people steal in Broken Arrow.

So here I am, working a 12+ hour day, removing all the antique and collectible books from the shelves, stacking them in the office. The decorative bric-a-brac that contributes to the feel of the shop, those odd-ball things I’ve collected over the years? Those are on-shelf temptations. Not to book-people. Not to readers.

But the Main Street Tee-Off event crowd isn’t composed of readers.

So, I have to shake off my small-town upbringing and my general belief in the goodness of my fellow humans. I’ve got to work extra late this week and then extra hours next week, restoring the items to the shelves, just because I’ve learned (finally) that some people cannot be trusted. (Several of my neighbors were victimized last year, and I probably was as well. Too naïve to realize it, I suppose.) I’d leave the front door open if it was just dogs and squirrels. I’ve come to trust their judgment.

None of this is your fault, I know. I only mention it here in case you drop by and wonder what has happened to the shop. You’ll notice, and here is my explanation.

Folks casually visiting the shop for the first time Thursday evening won’t see any of the nice First Editions or the leather bound volumes dating to the 1700s.

But, I’ll have cookies.

Come visit!

McHuston

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

Mr. Postman, look and see…

November 6, 2013 /

Here you are at the post office, holding a letter to your relative in Cleveland. Times are tough. Crazy tough. So tough that you’ve got to write and let them know what is going on. Crazy stuff. You just need some stamps.

The clerk weighs the envelope and looks in your direction. Intense eyes. No smile.

How much, you ask.

Four.

Four dollars, you respond, while reaching for your cash.

Suddenly, the clerk laughs.

Four dollars! He repeats. What a joker! He turns to his coworker. Frank! We got a comedian here! Wants to know if four is four dollars! What a hoot! Four Dollars? Hoooo-weee!

Well, then – you ask. If not four dollars, then four what?

The clerk leans into your face and replies – without a trace of humor:

Four Billion Dollars.

Oh. Now there is a number.

How many stamps is that, you want to know.

Depends, he says. I’ve got some 200s but not enough. You’ll have to double up on the 100s. Too bad you don’t have a larger envelope, he decides.

So you buy the stamps and start licking. It’s 1923, and there aren’t any self-adhesive postage stamps. You’ll have to apply the tongue to each of the 25 stamps. You decide it was a good thing he had the 200-million stamps or you’d have had to cover up your return address on the back, where half of those postage stamps have been applied.

The War to End all Wars is over, and it’s another decade before the unrest bubbles up enough to plant the seeds of World War II. For the citizens of defeated Germany, times are tough. Today, they call it hyperinflation. Back then, there were a number of words that described the economy and the buying power of Germany cash.

None of them are printable here. Even in German. (A very linguistically literate audience haunts this blog…)

To send word across the Atlantic to the relatives in Amerika requires International Postage. The 25 stamps in 200 and 100 Million Mark (German dollar) increments amount to 4,000 million, or what we would call – with all those zeroes – four Billion.
Four Billion Dollars to send a letter.

You just wonder whether what was in the letter was worth it. The German word was millionen. Million. You can click on the image to see a view of the high-dollar stamps (actually high-Mark, their currency) that were required to simply mail a letter. If you click, you’ll also notice that – even without zipcodes or barcodes – the letter found its destination simply addressed to “Cleveland Amerika.” 1923 efficiency.

Here is the often repeated anecdote about post WWI Germany in the hyper-inflation years, of which 1923 – the year the letter in the images was written – might have been the absolute worst.

Workers who wanted to make the most of their money, demanded to be paid every few hours, so the cash could be spent before it became worthless. One employee loaded up all of his cash pay into a wheelbarrow and rushed off to the store to buy bread for his family.

He parked the wheelbarrow beside the front door and dashed inside to see if any loaves were left. When he came back out moments later, he looked at the spot where he had left the wheelbarrow. His heart sank.

The results of all his hard work were wasted, so much more than the just the morning’s pay was gone.

The thief had dumped all the money on the ground and made off with his wheelbarrow.

Another illustration of the times involved another wheelbarrow. This pile of money was being wheeled to the shoe store one Friday morning to buy a new pair of boots. If he had wheeled that same pile of money to the same store on Monday, he could have bought the entire STORE.

Always surprising, the things that show up in a book shop. Would have loved to have read the letter that it took 4-Billion Marks to mail. My guess is, by the time this piece of postage hit the mailbox, the German monetary system was just about to hit its reset button.

And the currency of record became bananas. (Kidding.)

As we all know, the new legal tender became Reuben sandwiches.

Come get one! (…without the sauerkraut. Hey, it’s Irish without inflation!)

McHuston

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

« Older posts Newer posts »

© 2025 McHuston Booksellers

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑