Letters from Pemberley

For our first at-home Saturday for weeks, I decided to hit up yuppy suburb Ballwin’s garage sales before heading to the huge used booksale going on this weekend.  Garage sale success?  Well, if you consider that what I really wanted was 24 month and 2T clothing for Tommy and that I came back with three pairs of 3T shorts and two pairs of shoes the next size up, it was kindof a flop.  (I did find some other deals, too, but that’s another blog post…)  I don’t know about garage sale prices nationally, but in good old yuppy Granger, just outside of South Bend, I got all of Tommy’s clothes last year for a quarter or so apiece.  I think outfitted the kid for the year for under $20 (plus a few more expensive store purchases after garage sale season).  Apparently the nouveau riche of our area believe that the clothes previously worn by their 1.2 children are worth 1, 2, or 5 dollars apiece.  Yikes!  Just because there’s a faded Gap Kids tag on it?  No thank you!  I would have stuck it out longer, but it was 40 and starting to rain, so I called it a day after just a couple of hours.

 The booksale was a family affair–yes, Tommy did just give himself his worst injury to date this week in protest of used book shopping–but this “greatest sale in the midwest” just sounded too interesting.  Happily for our pocketbook, it was pretty picked over.  Derek did find an out-of-print hardback of The Brethren, I found a Fern Hollow book and a copy of The Daughter of Time that matches my other Josephine Teys, and we found a few other bargains and gifts for friends.  Many choices were hard:  did I really need to pay $4 for a hardback copy of The Wolves of Willoughby Chase?  When it’s still in print and I’ve already gotten one for Clare’s classroom?  Deciding that I might want to buy a nice, new copy (or cheaper used copy) for myself, and unable to think of any other elementary school teachers who needed one of the greatest orphans-running-away-from-the-orphanage books of all time, I put it back.  Derek found some great classic books in hardback with slipcover boxes, but we realize that we already own most of the classic literature that we really love, even if they’re used paperbacks from college, so do we really need to buy nice copies at this point in our lives?  We picked up a Dickens’ short stories collection and left the rest.  I noticed some trends–these bookstore organizers apparently believe that Mark Helprin is just a mystery writer, that Gaudy Night must be everybody else’s least favorite Lord Peter novel, too (because it was the only Sayers I saw, and there were several copies), that mothers of today are still letting their pre-teens read The Babysitter’s Club (I saw dozens upon dozens of them in some people’s carts–poor misled parents!), and that, judging from the leavings at the end of the third day, nobody is interested in children’s encyclopedias anymore (were we the only kids who would sit down and read a letter cover-to-cover?). 

All in all, it’s been a most illuminating Saturday at home in St. Louis.

Our around-the-corner used bookstore is moving this weekend, so Tommy and I paid our farewell visit yesterday.  For bookworms like Derek and me, having a well-stocked, intelligently-arranged, affordable used bookstore two minutes away could be very dangerous.  I’ve forced myself to limit visits, and Tommy is actually my greatest asset in saving money.  He hates bookstores!  (Is he really our child???)  I can’t stay more than 10 minutes before he starts squirming around (and, now that he can walk, waddling around the corner from children’s books and pulling the entire humor section off the shelves).  Anyone who shops used bookstores knows that you need more than 10 minutes to find the really great finds.  Yesterday he really did a number on himself, though…I was browsing the LM Montgomery paperback titles with him in his stroller beside me (so I thought) when suddenly he flipped completely out of the stroller, bonked his head on a shelf on the way down, and started screaming bloody murder.  The owner is used to Tommy’s shrieks, but a concerned customer rounded the corner to ask if we were okay.  After ascertaining that Tommy had no broken bones and only a big goose-egg forming, I assured him that my son just hates shopping for books and was trying to get me to leave.  We grabbed the entire Montgomery section and a Series of Unfortunate Events book on CD and quickly paid and left.  Tommy was still squirming, so I didn’t even have a chance to tell the owner that we’ll miss him and his store but we understand that our family is basically the only foot traffic he has in his present location. 

 I’m sad for me, though.  Next time I get a hankering to read a great children’s book that our (tiny) library doesn’t carry and we don’t already own, what will I do?

Good luck in Kirkwood, Patten Books!  You’re leaving two sad booklovers (and a snarkily satisfied infant) behind!