many delight in
musty, badly arranged and
ill-lighted, bookshops
Many buyers delight in the musty, ill-lighted, badly arranged bookshops with their monastic atmosphere. Their fascination is unquestioned, they have added much to cultivation of readers
From the article, Intelligent and Aggressive Bookselling by Cedric R. Crowell, General Manager, Doubleday, Doran Books Shops, Inc. in Publishers Weekly, New York, November 26, 1932.
Growing up in Grand Rapids, Michigan, there were not a lot of bookstores.
The City Directory of Grand Rapids for 1960 lists just 15 bookstores.
Of those 15, Bakers, DeSales Catholic Books, Kregals, Northtown Bible and Books, Glad Tidings Book and Bible, Langerhost Bible, Pell’s Bible, Reformed Church Bookstore and Zondervan’s were all religious books stores.
Then there was Allen’s Bookstore, a big, old fashioned bookstore down on Division near where the Majestic Theater offices are today.
It was next to a Coffee and Nut shop called the Coffee Ranch and the smell of freshly roasted coffee often filled the bookstore even before the days of Starbuck’s in a Barnes and Noble.
Those smells sound good but the coffee roaster often malfunctioned at the Coffee Ranch and filled all the stores in the building with the smell of burned coffee beans.
Through my Dad, my family was familiar with the Coffee Ranch.
It had wooden floors, a big coffee mill, sacks of beans, bins of coffee, redskin peanuts the size of your thumb and cashews the size of your big toe.
It had all the atmosphere for real that today’s gift shops try to recreate.
At one time the Coffee Ranch supplied all the major restaurants in Grand Rapids with their own blends and then sold those coffee blends in their store under the name of the restuarant.
The walls of the Coffee Ranch were lined with these wooden bins with the names of the restaurants on a card on the front of the bin.
It was cool for us because there was one bin labeled with a card that said PANTLIND’S BEST.
The Pantlind was the biggest hotel in town at the time and has since been taken over by Amway.
The cool thing was that PAINTED on the bin, behind the card, was the label, HOFFMAN’S BEST.
I asked the owner about it and he said that back in the day, the Hoffman House had it’s start in Grand Rapids before moving to Wisconsin where it became a family run business success until being bought out in 1976 by some chain.
I was never able to prove this connection but you can guess what coffee blend I would buy.
Allen’s Bookstore, next door, was as close to a main stream bookstore as Grand Rapids had.
My Dad would take me there from time to time and my Dad would chat with Mr. Allen about what was new and good.
My Dad knew everyone and could talk with anybody.
I would walk around and day dream that Mr. Allen would look over and say, ‘Hey kid! You are the 100,000th customer this year and you win $100 in free books.’
That never happened but I had my $100 worth of books picked out just in case.
Besides Allen’s, the only bookstore in town, was Grant’s.
Grant’s Used Books at 449 Bridge St.
Well, Grant’s Used Everything.
It is now Bridge Street Lofts on that location but before it was torn down, Grant’s was one of those small building’s built into an existing house.
The shop was Mr. Grant’s hobby and he sold anything he could think of.
Those blue coin collecting books.
Odd auto and boat motor parts.
And books.
And books and books and more books.
My hunch is that Grant’s specialized in Grand Rapid’s Public School textbooks that he bought and sold to families in the area but he also stocked the most amazing collection of books I had ever seen.
The store could not have had a more musty, ill-lighted, badly arranged bookshop with a monastic atmosphere had Grant tried.
The main floor was high ceiling with book cases and books wedged in everywhere.
My Dad would take me over there from time and my Dad would talk to Grant.
My Dad knew everyone and could talk with anybody.
I remember one time he got into an argument with Grant over how the book, Anthony Adverse, ended.
To make a point, Grant had to find a copy which meant going down to the basement.
He led us to a back stairs that had a large sign with an arrow that said ‘Down.’
He moved some books stacked by the stairs around until he found a switch and turned on the lights and took us down a shaky, narrow staircase.
The basement made the upstairs look roomy.
The basement was a maze of cement floor to exposed ceiling beams bookcases, lit by bare light bulbs with aisles barely wide enough for me to get through and barely above my head.
There were 1,000s if not millions of books down there.
“All Fiction,” Grant said as he started looking for Anthony Adverse.
All fiction and somewhat arranged in alphabetical order by author.
Maybe suggestion if not by rule.
Books were wedged in maybe three deep and then sideways on top.
Books were stacked on the floor.
Books were everywhere.
I was in awe.
My Dad made no effort to leave the stairs and enter the maze.
He was just a little too big to fit in between the book cases.
Grant found the book and we returned to the main floor.
As Grant read the last page he said, ‘I remember now, public opinion made the author re-write the ending.’
I don’t remember who had what side of the argument.
I do remember Grant look at me once and asking, ‘What do you read?’
And I answered … CS Forester, Hornblower books.
My Dad smiled and Grant reeled off the list of Hornblower titles and which ones were his favorites.
Then he mentioned that Forester had other books including, Rifleman Dodd and The Gun.
For years I searched for a book called Rifleman Dodd and The Gun until I got to college and in the college library I found out that it was, as Grant said, two books, Rifleman Dodd and The Gun.
Odd twist to this story, when I finally got around to owning a copy of these books which I ordered from Amazon, it was a single edition that had both books, Rifleman Dodd and The Gun, in one volume that I still have to this day.
At some point, I started going to Grant’s Bookstore on my own.
I would ride my bike over to the west side of Grand Rapids which was like being in another world.
Grand Rapids had a North End, a South End and a West Side and you knew where you belonged and I would leave the North End on my bike, cross the river and ride across the foreign West Side to Grant’s.
Grant would hear the bell on the door and look up and see me and say, “The Hornblower Kid” and let me wander around.
If he heard the light switch to the basement click, he would yell, “Don’t go in the basement !“
Then he would look and say, “Oh it’s you”
“Don’t touch anything but the books.” he would say and down the stairs I would go, into another planet or maybe another dimension as time would stop when I was down there.
The rest of world continued on I am sure. but I felt like I had been transported to another place altogether.
All those books.
All those thoughts.
All those words.
It was a magical place.
Fascinating.
Another thing about Grant’s was the price.
I think all books were a quarter and he never charged tax.
I would get a $5.00 from my Grandma on my birthday and at Christmas and it translated to 20 new books in my mind.
20 new blocks of magic.
Fascinating.
Grant’s Used Bookstore came to mind when I read the lines:
Many buyers delight in the musty, ill-lighted, badly arranged bookshops with their monastic atmosphere.
Their fascination is unquestioned, they have added much to cultivation of readers.
Musty, ill-lighted, badly arranged bookshops.
Their fascination is unquestioned.
No Haiku For You 