Several years ago, before Amazon made book collecting possible with the touch of a computer key, I did it the old-fashioned way.
This is a story about cowboys and Indians and a skirmish that took place at the Sand Creek Library Book Sale. I lost.
It all started when a flyer tacked up on a bulletin board in the library caught my eye. It read:
BOOK SALE
Friday Evening, Saturday 10:00-4:00
20,000 Volumes
Hard Covers-$1.00
Paperbacks-50 cents.
Special Volumes will be offered through a silent auction
I got to the library on Friday evening when the doors opened at 5:00. About 40 people were lined up ahead of me with more showing up all the time. We crowded through the narrow entry, past a table with two cashiers, money boxes ready and saw the books stacked on long narrow tables and some in boxes under the tables.
A rough attempt at organization had fiction in one area and nonfiction divided by subject in another. History buffs gathered about their choice. Women gravitated to cookbooks and gardening. Nature, sports, and several other topics were grouped together.
Empty cardboard boxes were available and most people opted to drag a box around with them, dropping books in, as they kicked it along.
That was not my style. My goal was to find the hidden treasure of one or two special books. At the most, five. My house revealed borderline compulsive collecting disorder when it came to books and I didn’t want to cross the line.
With a 1941 first edition Edna St. Vincent Millet, a hardback 1978 Michener Chesapeake, and a leatherbound 1935 Marie Sandoz Old Jules tucked under my arm, I decided to take a look at the books being offered for the silent auction.
These books were not stacked but laid out across three tables under the watchful eye of as many volunteers. Each book was accompanied by a bidding sheet where interested patrons could sign their name and offer their bid.
Nothing caught my attention until I came to the last table. There, in pristine condition, lay To the Foot of the Rainbow by Clyde Kluckhohn. Pre-eminent anthropologist, author of the classic The Navaho, he had gone to visit the canyon country of the Four Corners and written this book before the land was flooded forever by the Glen Canyon Dam.
This was special. Not just because of my interest in anthropology, but for a more compelling personal reason. I had been acquainted with Helen Henry, a 75-year-old Coloradan anthropologist, for many years. The summer before, she had accompanied my husband and me to Big Mountain, Arizona for the Sun Dance Ceremony. It was during that long ride I learned that Clyde Kluckhohn had been her mentor when she was a young Amherst student. It was he who arranged for her to live with and study the Navaho people of Ramah, New Mexico. That experience set the course of her life.
Helen may already have this book, I thought. But If she doesn’t want it, I wouldn’t mind having a copy for myself. I looked at the bidding sheet and saw only one name-Frank- and he had bid $18.00.
Hmm. I can top that, I thought as I wrote $20.00. Before leaving, I checked again. Frank had raised it to $25.00. I wrote $28.00 and headed home. The bids would close and payments would be accepted the following Saturday afternoon.
The next day when I returned, I saw my bid had been topped again. I countered and bided my time while browsing the leftovers from the night before. Returning to the auction table, the librarian assistant, nametagged Jason, noticed my interest and the line of entries on the paper.
“Looks like this is a popular one,” he said.
“Not really,” I answered. “Only two of us are bidding.”
Jason took a closer look and saw I was right. “Oh yeah, Frank” he said knowingly.
“Do you know him? Is he here?”
Jason scanned the room. “That’s him, over there.”
I followed his gaze and spotted my adversary, a serious-looking fellow dressed in jeans and cowboy boots. Ubiquitous Colorado Casual didn’t give me too much information. Sensing the need for an ally I told my Helen Henry story to Jason, who listened sympathetically, as I entered my next bid.
“I hope you get the book,” he said.
I browsed some more, keeping my eye on Frank and feeling the power of knowing who he was when he didn’t know who I was.
“The Silent Auction will end in 15 minutes,” someone announced loudly.
It was starting to snow, I was getting tired, and my resolution was weakening. I went back to the table one last time. Frank had gone up to $43.00. Something told me he would never quit. This guy was relentless.
Jason began collecting the bid slips. He saw me as he glanced at the Kluckhohn bids, and gave me a shrug that said, “I’m sorry.”
My opponent had won. But I wasn’t going to leave without letting him see the person who had given him a valiant fight.
I walked over to the fleece-jacketed, Levi-clad fake cowboy. “Hi,” I said, “I’m Lucy—the one who’s been bidding with you on the Kluckhohn book. He nodded.
I smiled. “Quite a treasure. Are you interested in anthropology?”
“No, not really. I like geology, but actually I’m a book dealer.”
A book dealer! I was right. I would never have been able to outbid him. Well, I had the higher moral ground. I told him the Helen Henry story. I added all the drama I could muster. I made her 80 instead of 75, the shy Amherst student whose life had been changed by Clyde Kluckhohn.
It didn’t touch him. In fact, he seemed to stop listening about halfway through my story, as he paged through the book which was now his property.
I wasn’t ready to slink off totally defeated. “This has been a great sale,” I said, continuing to converse ignoring the fact that it was a monologue on my part. “Last night I found a 1941 first edition Edna St. Vincent Millet.”
I had recaptured Frank’s attention. “You know,” he said, pausing and pressing his lips together, “Those things are a dime a dozen. I don’t know what it was about that year—1941—They just went off the wall publishing those things. Now the earlier ones. . . they’re harder to find.”
Frank, I thought, You’re a true warrior. When you get ‘em down, step on ‘em.
As I said, I lost the skirmish. But the next library sale is scheduled for April. The war goes on.
Postscript: Many Years Later. Now older and wiser and an Amazon junkie, it occurred to me I might be able to get a copy of To the Foot of the Rainbow, the book I had coveted and lost so many years before.
Click Click. Click. And TA-DA. There it was. The 1927 first edition, all mine, for just $768.57. Well, Frank, if you didn’t sell it before now, you made quite a profit on your investment of $43.00.
I may have lost the battle with Frank, but not with Amazon. I purchased a beautiful, clothbound hardcover, like new, 1980 publication, for $20.00.
***
Lucy Bell, former writing consultant and published author, is inspired by James Baldwin who said: One writes out of one thing only—one’s own experience. Everything depends on how relentlessly one forces from this experience the last drop, sweet or bitter, it can possibly give. Lucy mines her own experiences with a preference for the humorous. She is currently working on a collection of essays titled “Most of It Was Fun.”
