McHuston Booksellers

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Tag: Featured (Page 34 of 43)

Movin’ & Shakin’ on Main…

March 27, 2013 /

Dishes are stacked in the kitchen. They are waiting. I am waiting, too. A break in the action. Today was Red Hat Lady Day. I’ll get to the washing and cleaning in a minute.

The tables at lunchtime were turned over to the group today, and since I’m still a one-man show with limited seating, it threw a kink in the dining plans of a couple of parties of nice folks who had driven over from Tulsa. I hope to be able to make it up to them in the near future.

In truth, this afternoon I was a one-man show with help from a kind-hearted sister. Kathy was kind enough to bring in a helper to cover at her store – Martha’s Heath Food and Herbs – so she could come down the street and bail out her brother by carrying bowls and refilling tea and lemonade glasses. A great help in serving all the Red Hatters at once. (Thanks, Sis!)

Meanwhile, the Ladies were suitably-attired in their matching-color-appropriate hats and enjoyed Irish stew, bread, and fresh-baked cookies before convening their meeting. I snapped a photo of the tables, all ready and waiting. Needless to say, once the chairs were filled there was no more time for my photography.

It wasn’t the only dining action in the Rose District today, although the chewing in the next block south was being done by a big, growling machine. They’ve taken down the building that will be replaced by a new structure to accommodate the In The Raw sushi restaurant. It’s great to see progress, even if it means seeing it with demolition-created-dust blowing into the eyeballs.

I took a stroll down to the bank (not remembering it closes at 4pm, just like in the olden days) and decided to snap a shot of the construction-destruction.

According to an email from one of my merchant neighbors, it was quite a show when it came down yesterday. One of my lunchtime guests yesterday mentioned there was work going on at the site, but I figured it was more of the just-puttering-around kind. Didn’t realize it was the kind of activity that brings down the house. Literally.

So, goodbye to a vintage Broken Arrow structure that probably dated to statehood, and hello to plans for a structurally-sound replacement that will help revive the commerce on Main Street.

Great things are in the works and great work is going on already.

Come visit!

McHuston

Booksellers & Irish Bistro
Rose District
122 South Main Street, BA

Physical fitness vs. physical fatness…

March 23, 2013 /

Maybe you never heard of Joe Weider. It is pronounced like Joe WEE-der. To me, it seems like I’ve known him all my life.

Big Joe started out as Little Joe, one of those 98-pound weaklings – OH, wait a second… there is probably no one reading this that remembers those old comic book ads that promised a body-builder’s-body to anyone who sent in the money for the booklet.

Those ads showed a scrawny guy lounging on the beach with his beautiful girlfriend, perfectly happy until the big beach bully strolls up and kicks sand in the poor guy’s face. It was the basis for a series of ads that became a national joke, of sorts. The 98-pound weakling. It was like saying Loser! Or Whatever! Or LOL ROFL OMG! Everybody knew what it meant.

Little Joe became Bigger Joe. If he was scrawny to start with, he worked out to make up for it. Then, during the Great Depression, he started what became an empire of muscle magazines, equipment designed for bodybuilding and fitness, and diet supplements. He was one of the backers of bodybuilding contests that featured superstars like Arnold Schwarzenegger.

In truth, Weider discovered the bodybuilding formula in a magazine. An immediate devotee, he continued his fitness formula for life.

He died yesterday, at the age of 93. He wasn’t infirm or out of shape, but his heart gave out.

Even in his latter years, ages 70s and 80s, he was chiseled and fit. After all the years, he still had a following of readers, people who took up Muscles and Fitness, Flex, Fitness, and Shape, a magazine for women. All together, it amounted to some 25 million readers. In those pages were people like Schwarzenegger, Cher, and Sylvester Stallone.

For my part, I remember thinking about getting in shape. I laid down on the couch until that thought went away. Joe Wieder was a product in my mother’s health food stores and not so much a destination for my lifestyle intentions.

Here’s the weird part: I remember the canisters of the Joe Weider products more than the man himself. I guess that’s proof that his legacy will live on. RIP Mr. W. When I was stocking the shelves for one of the country’s health food pioneers, you were just a name on a product.

Age 93.

In anybody’s book, the man achieved a ripe old age. Probably moving around in his latter years faster than I am now, and I’m many, many years his junior.

For many pioneers of the heath food and body building industry, Joe Weider was the Jackie Robinson, the Charles Lindbergh, the Lewis and Clark, and the Edmund Hillary. (Google them, if you don’t know these pioneers in their own fields…)

RIP Mr Weider. You were ahead of your time, and lived long enough to see the results of your efforts.

I’m thinking about getting in shape and it is in no way an intention of disrespect, if I lay down for a minute or two to think about it first.

Thistles and shamrocks. What?

March 22, 2013 /

The lettering on the front door says McHuston Booksellers & Irish Bistro. People ask me about the Irish connection.

People: What’s the Irish connection?

Me: It’s like the French Connection starring Gene Hackman without the Academy Awards, the car chases, the drug running, or the European mafia. Other than that…

Nah. It’s nothing like the French connection, come to think of it.

This afternoon, I whipped the picture from the shelf to describe the Irish connection, then promptly dropped it and shattered the glass. Ooops. The frame was too large, anyway. As a result of my salvaging the picture, I have a chance to scan it in to the blog today.

Family folklore suggests the photo was taken on their wedding day. Michael and Mamie. He spelled his name Michel and her given name was Mary, but she was known as Mamie. He came to the US from the Kingdom of Bavaria and her family rode the boat over, leaving their home in County Tipperary, Ireland.

They had a great marriage, since she spoke no German and he couldn’t crack that Irish brogue. The language of Love, and all that, I suppose.

After their marriage, they joined the many Irish immigrants who were working the new Katy rail line at its Parsons, Kansas jumping off point. From there, tracks were put down across Indian Territory to Texas, opening up a whole new avenue for commerce.

My father would speak occasionally about Mamie and the singing of the Irish songs with his buddies. He had a wonderful tenor voice. Shame on me for not learning the tunes from him then, but I have made up for that shortcoming over the years, Alive alive-oh! Alive alive-oh! Crying Cockles and Mussels, alive alive-oh!

You didn’t ask, but the McHuston part of the Irish connection comes from my dear Mother’s side of the family. Her people arrived on a boat years before the American Revolution, trotted over to the county courthouse, and immediately declared that they had lately arrived from Ireland.

Her family, at the courthouse: Here we are, then. Would ye kindly jot that down in the book for us? A note of arrival, if you will. The name is Houston, and that would be us.

Clerk, writing in the big book: Irish, you say. Like I would not have guessed that. All-righty, then. Huston it is.

And thereby, and forever after, the family lost the O that might have been included for posterity, so others would not call us Huss-tun. It’s pronounced just like the Astros and the Texans and the fellow Sam: Houston.

The Mac part?

In the old Gaelic language, Mac translates to “son of.” Mac Donald described the son of Donald.

Mac Huston describes the son of Ms Huston, who is my mother – the book-lover who instilled that same attachment in me.

And THAT’s the Irish Connection (if it isn’t all a load of Blarney…).

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