McHuston Booksellers

Rare, Collectible, & Otherwise

Tag: literature (Page 21 of 39)

Leanin’ on a lamppost. (Irish Olympic event.)

November 4, 2013 /

It’s a little bit like a flashlight with no batteries. You can bonk someone on the head with it, but only in the bright of day. Actually, it is nothing like that at all. The drift is, the bulb is missing, but the lamppost has been restored to its valued place on the sidewalk.

Hoo-haw!

My neighbor JoAnne (Hollow Tree Gifts) dropped in this morning, happy and sad at the same time. The good-news bad-news concerned the sidewalk in front of her shop. There wasn’t one. That was then.

I moseyed (have you moseyed lately?) down to her end of the block this afternoon and the workers are smoothing the last of the cement. She should be able to open her front door to customers in the morning.

In the sidewalk planter in front of the book shop are two gentlemen who are installing the landscaping irrigation and drainage. That’s a good thing. I was worried at the beginning when mention was made of the merchants taking care of the plants in front of their own stores. No objections from me regarding the work involved – it’s only my memory and the responsibility of keeping thirsty plants alive.

I’d hate to be the one who killed off the roses in the Rose District.

You can see in the image my headless-lamppost and in the other a view from the front-door looking north. For now, you’ll have to imagine the green foliage and rosebushes.

The block from Commercial to Dallas is getting back to normal, at least during the daytime. The tall lamps have banished the darkness, but it will be a much brighter nighttime on Main when all of the lamps are lit.

Timetables are approximate, but there are hopes that everything will be ready to go by the time the Main Street Merchants’ annual Tee-off comes around, mid-month. That’s the Holiday Shopping Season jump-start for the downtown businesses in which many of the stores hold open-house type events, and in previous years the event has featured horse-drawn carriage rides, live music, and traveling minstrel shows. (Okay. I made that last part up.)

A couple of ladies dropped in during the lunch hour just to see what “all the Rose District talk is about.” I’m glad to know there is talk going on and that it is piquing the curiosity of area shoppers. I hope they’ll come back with things are a little more tidy and the orange barrels have moved to some other B.A. location.

There is still plenty of work going on inside the shop, as well. Just shelved a nearly-complete Hardy Boys collection, nicely kept hardback volumes.

Traipsing down to the library (have you traipsed lately?) as a vacation-reading maniac one summer, I had as a goal to read every one of the mysteries. The librarian had a sheet of paper imprinted with an image of a suitcase, and with each completed book she applied a colorful “travel” sticker to the page. We naive young bookworms were traveling around the world through the printed page. My suitcase runneth over with stickers and – all the while – I was saved the worry of nasty tropical mosquito-borne diseases and Montezuma’s Revenge.

Golly-gee, it was a simpler time back then, wasn’t it? But, dad-gummit, I fell for it and wound up reading a stack of books that summer. In retrospect, I should have been practicing my little-league baseball skills. (Then again, I probably had better later-life prospects as a librarian than a second-baseman.)

The roast beef is on the stove and aroma drifting ‘round the shop is reminding me of Grandma Mamie’s Sunday table and Grandma Sylvia’s Thanksgiving spread. Irish stew weather is fast approaching. The kitchen is calling and my oven mitts are at the ready.

Come visit!

McHuston

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

Bligh’ me, yer a smart one Weazel!

September 30, 2013 /

Suddenly, Pat hurls himself at the maniac Weazel!

Can’t ask for much more excitement than that, don’t ya know… In fact, before even hitting Page 1, there’s a scary pop-up in which Connie must peel potatoes or lose his ears. Sounds like my childhood! Zowie! (Kidding there, Ma…)

Almost eighty-years ago, a young fellow named Milton moved to New York City. The kid could draw. Got himself a job with the Associated Press in the features department – that’s the bunch in charge of comic strips. The head of a competing art syndicate liked Milton’s work, and hired him to draw a comic strip he had envisioned.

It hit the papers in 1934. Terry and the Pirates.

Loads of action and adventure. Great artwork. Terry was a cabin-boy type on the ship of the worldly Pat Ryan, who had some outlandish confrontations with Dragon Lady, the Pirate Queen of the Orient.

Milton Caniff drew the comic strip for a dozen years, but – back in those days – the publication rights and ownership of the character belonged to the syndication group. Caniff was paid a salary for his efforts.

As anyone who has ever hoisted a Dilbert coffee mug will realize, there’s Gold in them-thar Marketing Rights.

Caniff quit adventure on the high seas and traded it for adventure in the clouds – leaving Terry and the Pirates and creating his own strip called Steve Canyon. The high-flying Air Force hero appeared in newspapers nationwide, enjoyed by millions of readers. He continued the comic until his death in 1988.

A year after Terry and the Pirates made its debut, Caniff wrote and illustrated a hardback book version, complete with three “Pop-Up” pictures. It’s not politically correct these days, but its Oriental dialogue-affectations might be compared to the dialects in Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer adventures.

Needless to say, the book is scarce in any condition. With all three pop-ups completely intact, it’s a rare find and nice addition to the shop’s offerings.

I’ve long been a fan of the newspaper comic strips. As a kid, I aspired to draw that sort of thing for my living. (Bligh’ me, yer a smart one Weazel! …another pipe dream, busted.) I remember admiring artwork like The Spirit, another action hero drawn by Will Eisner – a contemporary of Milton Caniff.

I still read the “funnies” in the Tulsa World, but the artwork just isn’t the same. You can click on the image to compare the portraits of Steve Canyon and “Dilbert” – the creation of cartoonist Scott Adams. (The humor in the Dilbert strip is as sharp as anything out there, and particularly sharp on the modern office culture.)

But it ain’t Terry and the Pirates:

THEN, out of the South came the great terror of the China Sea – TYPHOON!

Here that wind, Limey?” exclaimed Weazel. “We strike now!

And how they struck! They cut the ropes on all but two of the lifeboats, scuttled the ship, took command of the entire crew at the point of guns! Dmitri carried out his foul part of the scheme, too. Drawing a gun, he shoved Mr. Drake, Normandie, and Terry, who had come to warn them, into a closet and tied them up.

Suddenly Connie remembered something. He ran to the place he had hidden the life preservers. “Yipple Dipple!” he exclaimed. “Come now lickity-skip!”

It doesn’t get much more exciting than that, huh?

Come visit, lickity-skip!

McHuston

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

March of the Orange Barrels

September 11, 2013 /

As Granny Mamie would say: Ya canna keep Troubles from comin’ round, but ya needn’t offer ‘em a chair.

That pretty well sums up my feelings as the Rose District construction approaches the front door of the bookshop. As you can see in the image, the orange barrel invasion has swallowed all but the doorstep of my neighbor Jason’s – Main Street Tavern. The block just to the north is next.

That’s this place.

Probably next week, I’m thinking. A little bit of trouble, convenience wise, and comin’ round. But I’ve already brought the sidewalk bench indoors. Needn’t offer a chair. Speed things along.

Giving credit where due, the contractors have gone out of their way to accommodate the merchants as the construction progresses. When the last segment of sidewalk was all that was left down the street, workers kept at it all night so the chips & salsa, margaritas, and enchiladas could be served as usual when Fiesta Mambo opened the following day.

The most-asked question lately? Is the construction bothering your business? Well… I don’t think barricades, front-end loaders, jackhammers, and road-closed-signs are GOOD for business. There are some once-regular customers who had just found the shop at its new location whom I haven’t seen for a time.

The other side of that is – with a stop sign at every intersection – some folks are slowing down (and stopping hopefully) long enough to look around and notice the businesses in the area. The Main Street Expressway, where speeds regularly hit 45 to 55 mph (not an exaggeration), was not conducive to business. Too risky to take your eyes off the road or cell phone when a pesky pedestrian might step out to cross the street.

That’s my primary hope: that – once the construction troubles pick up and move along – the Rose District will be a little friendlier (traffic-wise) to shoppers and side-walkers. It would be great to have people cruise the business district like we used to do, styling and profiling, circling the loop between the Sonic and the A&W. (Different town, different era.)

There will be plenty of new things to see once the street-scaping project winds up. A couple of new buildings. Several new restaurants. There are already new shops settling in with the long-term residents. Half of one block is complete with newly-painted parking space lines. It’s going to be great, I just know it. The sooner they move in front of the bookstore, the quicker it will be finished. No sense fussing about it.

As Granny Mamie would say: You can’t drown your sorrows. They know how to swim.

Make some waves. Come visit!

McHuston

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

« Older posts Newer posts »

© 2025 McHuston Booksellers

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑