Once, Therefore Always a Bookseller

This year's Northern California Independent Booksellers Association (NCIBA) trade show took place Thursday and Friday of last week. I was once again able to attend, thanks to a dear friend at Penguin Random House. I've attempted to explain to a few non-book people why it's so important to me to go to a trade show for an industry of which I'm no longer a part. The simple answer is that I want to see the people I used to work with and be in a room full of books.

The more complex answer has to do with being part of the community of booksellers. Humans naturally seek out other humans they like to be around to form tribes, and I knew I'd found mine less than a month into working at a bookstore. Perhaps people in every industry feel this way, but it seems to me that booksellers are the most consistently warm, funny, intelligent, articulate and just generally good-natured people I've ever encountered. I still marvel at the fact that I used to get paid to sit and talk books with the folks I saw on Friday. It was my job to listen to them tell me about the books that would be published in the upcoming season and decide how many to buy for my stores. That I've been able to stay connected with them (and that they still consider me part of the gang) means the world to me and proves there are friends who can't really be separated by time and distance.

I often tell my current boss that bookselling is a noble profession. I say that (mostly) tongue in cheek, and generally as a response to his telling me that the beauty industry is based on vanity, hope and fear. But it's true...and also true that being a bookseller isn't just something that one does, it's something that one is. A friend from my bookstore days is fond of saying that she was once, therefore is always, a bookseller. She's right. No matter what else we end up doing.

Take These Broken Wings

I've been reading Man on the Run, by Tom Doyle, which is a detailed look at Paul McCartney in the 1970s. The question could be posed, how much more could an obsessive fan like me possibly learn? A boyfriend once asked, "Are you really reading another book about the Beatles? Don't you know everything there is to know yet?" The answer was, and still is, "No." There's quite a bit left to learn, apparently.

Man on the Run takes readers from the ugly, angry last days of the Beatles through the dissolution of the final incarnation of Wings. It's a great read for me since I missed the original tide of Beatlemania, becoming infatuated with Macca about the time Venus & Mars was released. I remember what huge news the Wings Over America tour was. The first opportunity to see Paul in concert since the Beatles' 1966 Candlestick Park show! But it was an opportunity I missed, as my father didn’t care who he was, or how long it had been since he'd toured, there was no way I was going to L.A. to a (expletive deleted) rock concert. Oh, the thirteen-year-old angst...  

Journalist Doyle (lucky enough to interview Paul several times) deftly illustrates just how devastating the end of the Beatles was for Paul and how lost he was, at 27, suddenly without the thing that had driven him since the age of 15. What a gig to lose, no? And I thought the end of Tower was rough. Having retreated to the farm in Scotland, Paul shut out everything but Linda and the kids and turned to whiskey and other substances to numb the intense feelings of worthlessness he was drowning in. Who was he if not Beatle Paul? Would he ever work again? How could he think about working when he could barely get out of bed? It was Linda, hated by fans for daring to marry the last single Beatle, and later dogged by the press for her role in Wings, who recognized that her husband was in serious trouble and she was frightened beyond belief.

The reality is that Linda not only saved Paul, but it was her love, support and encouragement that made him try to, and eventually believe, that there was in fact life after the Beatles. Thanks to her, Paul put down the bottle and picked up a guitar. Linda was harshly criticized after joining Wings (at her husband's insistence), dealing with everything from fans deriding her to Paul's contemporaries like Mick Jagger wondering why Macca would "put his old lady in the band." Linda stoically dealt with public and private criticism (from the other members of Wings), but the truth is, without her, Wings would never have happened.

After a rocky beginning, Wings eventually took flight, and in a big way. The Wings Over America tour broke records and put Paul back into the spotlight he was accustomed to, though he had seriously doubted his ability to get there. Doyle captures the doubt that lingered behind the "cute one's" smile. The man who dreamed Yesterday (he woke up with the melody nearly complete in his head) and is responsible for countless timeless classics spent many a tortured moment wondering if he still had it or if he was past his prime.

Perhaps it's part of Paul's everyman appeal that he seems never to have forgotten his working class roots, nor does he take anything for granted, including his other-worldly ability to crank out hits. There's a line in Alligator, a song on his latest studio album, NEW, "Everybody else busy doing better than me," that means just what it sounds like: Macca’s ever-present worry about measuring up. The 70s were a bit of a rollercoaster for Paul, bringing him loss, uncertainty, unexpected hits, painful misses and embarrassing busts, but two things never wavered: His love for Linda and his need to keep making music. Lucky for us he's still going strong 40 years later, with no plans to slow down. After taking the world by storm barely out of his teens, then having to start over, he did learn to fly.

And in the End...

Every year, I think the date might slip by unnoticed. I should know better. Twenty-two years is a long time to stay in one place. Eight years ago today, my Tower career came to an abrupt and jarring end. Plenty was written in the press during our final days, about mismanagement, our mistakes, our outdated business model, etc. To that I say, shut up, you guys weren't there. Granted, we did make our share of mistakes, but, fiercely embracing a double standard, I'm allowed to say so, and if you didn't work there you aren't. Period. Plus, we did a lot of things right, for a very long time.

I spent my last three years at Tower in the buyers building, as a member of the Tower Product Team, or #TPT, surrounded by a great group of people. After a stressful nine-year stint in the advertising department, buying was a welcome respite. Every day was filled with amusing banter, good-natured ribbing, and of course, music. Buyers are a happy lot, and why shouldn't they be? What could be better than buying music, books and videos with someone else's money?

2006, as it turned out, was not our year. The final few months were tough. I'd grown up at Tower and the idea that it might really come to an end had me at a loss. What the hell was I supposed to do next? I really had no idea. I worked on my resumé, but had nowhere to send it. (My wonderful friends in the Northern California bookselling community had already shared it). I bought grownup clothes (yes, my first suit). I longed to stay in the book world, but that proved difficult as I wanted to stay in Sacramento, being unwilling to try to sell my house, as I could only deal with so much change at once.

Friday, October 6, 2006. We got word that afternoon that we'd been purchased by a liquidation firm that had outbid the retailers who'd been interested in acquiring us. That was it—it was really over. I looked around at my friends and colleagues as the news sunk in. Tears, hugs, more tears. We were told to come to work on Monday. Really? To do what, exactly? The plan was to let the bulk of the main office staff go and keep a skeleton crew on to mind operations as the stores wound down and sold everything. We came in on Monday and just...hung out. HR/Payroll was processing final pay for over 300 people so it was going to take a few days. We decided to make the best of it. A few of the guys went home to get their hibachis. Someone made a store run. We had a parking lot cookout, played wiffle ball, liar's dice, and of course, listened to music. People from other departments dropped by to hang out. TPT was the fun building to the end.

Wednesday, October 11. We were herded into the main conference room where the interim CEO told us we were done. HR handed out final paychecks and I felt bad for them. The woman who handed me mine looked like she was about to cry and just kept saying, "I'm so sorry." Tina, we all knew you were just doing your job. The CEO tried to say something about what we were losing. I don't have many regrets, but to this day, I wish I'd asked him what the hell made him think he had any right to talk to us what we'd just lost. He'd completed another job, collected his big fat bonus and was ready to move on. We'd lost our livelihoods, our extended family and our shared history. And it fucking sucked. I cried more in those final days than I had in the previous 22 years. I drove away from 2500 Del Monte for the last time that afternoon, still sniveling.

After eight years, it's finally sunk in that you can't have new beginnings without endings. I'm finally at peace with how it all unfolded and happy to have been part of history. I'm grateful for all the wacky, eccentric, wonderfully awesome people in my extended Tower family, who I'll love forever. I've been searching for a way to sum up what those relationships have meant to me, but I'll just let the lads from Liverpool say it for me.

Something in the Air

According to the calendar, it's autumn, though the only evidence, apart from deliciously cool mornings, is the days growing markedly shorter. Both seem at odds with afternoons in which the mercury creeps into the 90s; not at all unusual for the valley, it's just noticeably incongruent. I'm not sure what it is about fall that makes me so reflective, but right on schedule, I find myself thinking about my childhood in the mountains, people I've known and lost touch with over the years and of course, Tower.

Part of this nostalgic bent might be hastened by the fact that my writers group recently expanded to include more women I worked with at the bookstore. So predictably, we can't help but revisit our shared past, talking about our fellow employees and rehashing favorite customer stories. It's more than that though. Fall feels like a time for new beginnings, whether a new school year, a new semester, or just time to double down and refocus, after the relaxed pace of summer.

For me, looking ahead to anything new comes with a generous helping of looking back at where I've been and the twists and turns of the paths traversed. I seem to fall into such reflection more and more with each passing year. Whether that's an introvert thing or just human nature, I don’t know, but here I am. The path to being a writer went through the bookstore, took a hard right turn though the advertising department, then a sweeping curve into purchasing, where I spent my final three years at Tower. It all came to an end eight years ago this month. With each passing year, I expect the anniversary to have less of an effect on me, but it hasn't happened yet. Perhaps it's finally time to tell that story too...  

Captured by the Moment: Tower Books, Part 3

Looking back on my bookstore years, it's amazing how many things I remember with perfect clarity. Mundane, everyday moments are captured for eternity. I'd worked retail before Tower, but not consistently 40-hour weeks. That was new territory for me. I had naïvely thought that everyone who came into the bookstore would be nice. People who like to read are polite, aren't they? Not necessarily. That was rude awakening #1. People, whether they're readers or not, are just plain cranky if you don’t have what they want (even if they don’t know exactly what it is). Our being out of the book of the moment was the most common complaint. Never mind publishers underestimating print runs or distributors failing to deliver. It was our fault if we didn't have a given book.

The phones kept us as busy as the customers in the store. The following might seem scripted, but we really got calls like this every day.

Clerk: Tower Books, may I help you?

Customer: Is this the record store?

Customer: Do you have the book that was on Oprah today?

Clerk: Which book?

Customer (incredulous): Didn't you watch Oprah?

Customer: Do you have (Book of the Moment)

Clerk: No, I'm sorry, we're out right now.

Customer: How can you be out of it? It's so popular!

Clerk from Watt Avenue: Can you do a book check?

Sunrise clerk: Sure, what's the title?

Watt clerk: The Donner Party Cookbook.

(There was a certain amount of hazing when new employees were hired. Our neighboring record store used to send their newbies over to borrow the shelf-stretcher).

As anyone who has worked retail can attest, dealing with the public can be...challenging. And while I have enough rude customer stories to make me inclined to agree with Ron Swanson, there were plenty of nice customers too, our regulars, who just enjoyed hanging out in the store, browsing away an afternoon, looking for the next book to put on the must-read stack. Rainy days were especially busy. There's something about a stormy afternoon that makes a bookstore the perfect respite. The old Sunrise store was small and cozy, with dark wooden racks in the aisles and along the walls. Away from the sales counter, away from the ringing phones, beeping registers (the best of mid-80s technology) and clerk/customer exchanges, there was, at times, an almost library-like hush, as if people thought they could keep the clamor of the outside world at bay a little longer if they could preserve that peace.

I've always said I'd have stayed at the bookstore forever if I didn't need to work to make a decent income. The harsh reality is that retail doesn't pay a living wage. I mean, if your idea of "living" includes fewer than three roommates and a vehicle that runs. It was clear that the managers at my area stores weren't going anywhere, so I made the decision to transfer to the main office in West Sac. It was the right move, but it took a few years to embrace. I was still technically a bookseller while working in the advertising department, then later as a buyer, but the immediacy was missing. What I've come to realize in the nearly eight years since Tower's doors closed for good is that for those of us who truly love books, being a bookseller isn't just something we do, it’s something we are. 

Fear Factor

Fear is a complicated, multi-dimensional emotion. We can be afraid of specific things, like spiders or public speaking. We might fear new situations; the unknown is nearly a universal phobia. There's even the fear of fear: phobophobia. But what of primal fear? That paralyzing feeling that emanates from our animal brain, chills our internal organs and triggers the fight or flight response?

The raging wildfire burning in El Dorado County, about 60 miles from here, is triggering that response in me. As of this morning, it's still only about 10% contained, has burned over 82,000 acres, caused 2800 people to evacuate and is being battled by 7800 firefighters. The smoke is lending a surreal yellow-orange cast to the sky that was particularly vivid around sundown last night. Intellectually, I knew I was perfectly safe. But as my growing anxiety illustrated, the deepest part of my primitive brain was trying to tell me when the sky is that color I'm in danger.

So why does fire do this to me? Like anyone with Southern California roots, forest fires set off warning bells, but one extremely traumatic incident is forever imprinted. During the fall of my third-grade year, a large fire broke out in Big Bear, just below the dam. Like the King fire, it was determined to be arson, making it all the more difficult for an eight-year-old to understand. Someone did this on purpose?? I woke up that Friday morning (the 13^th) to my family hurriedly preparing to evacuate. It was the first time I'd ever seen my mother scared and I'll never forget what that felt like. It was a terrible moment of realizing there were things my parents couldn't do anything about. As I packed a box with diapers and baby food for my toddler brother, I watched my father dash in and out of the house, packing the car. We were going to stay with my grandparents in the valley, but we had no way of knowing how long we'd be there and if the house would still be standing when we got back. My mother told me I could bring one "special thing" I couldn't part with, but we just didn't have room in the car for much. Looking back, I have no idea how they packed three kids, a dog and our suitcases into a Volkswagen bug but they did.

My grandparents made us very comfortable, but I didn't have the vocabulary to express my unease. My parents were glued to the TV, wanting to catch every bit of news about the fire, but I couldn't stand to watch—I didn't even want to hear them talk about it. I left the room every time there was an update. We stayed there for nearly two weeks, and then, thanks to the mercy of shifting winds, my hometown was spared, and the fire was finally extinguished. We could go home. We still had a home to go to.

Driving up the mountain, through the burnt-out moonscape that used to be the San Bernardino National Forest is another vision permanently etched in my brain. A forest decimated is a harsh reality to witness. Our house was unscathed, save for a layer of ash on the patio furniture and the lingering smell of smoke in the air. I had no way of knowing what else would linger. But over the years it became apparent, as a siren in the distance or a single whiff of smoke would trigger the impulse for flight. I didn't know what a panic attack was; I just knew that I suddenly needed to be elsewhere. I got better at dealing with my fear as I got older, and don't think about it much until an incident like the King fire occurs. Then I remember the utter helplessness and panic. And send prayers of safety and success to the firefighters.    

A Day in the Life: Tower Books, Part 2

I loved everything about the old Sunrise bookstore (called such even though it wasn't actually on Sunrise Blvd. It was a holdover from the days when the original record store was in fact on Sunrise, about a block away. That was the case with a number of Tower stores—the names didn’t make much sense until you knew the backstory).

I settled into being bookseller immediately. I shadowed veterans at the register the week of my training, and was given the Home & Garden and Crafts sections to take care of, the latter of which was in complete disarray and hadn't been looked after in over a month. I was to arrange it by subject, alphabetical by author within those subjects, and make it look nice and neat. Oh, and it would be a bonus if people could find books they were looking for. I jumped in with both feet my first day and got lost in that little alcove, arranging, rearranging, alphabetizing and bringing order to that wonderful chaos that was now my responsibility.

I'd found my home for sure. I was around other people who loved books. I met publisher representatives who came in to sell to the buyers (I desperately longed to be a buyer. What could be better than buying books with someone else's money?), who were witty, intelligent, articulate and fun to talk to. I so wanted to be part of that world. And, as I re-filed misplaced books (the best way to get to know that store), cared for my sections, worked the registers and helped customers find books, it happened: I became a bookseller. A soul-stirring, life-defining moment, every bit as powerful as the moment I realized, "I'm reading, I can read now," in first grade. I was a bookseller and it was a perfect fit.