The Way With Words
August 4, 2011—
I’m sure you have a ritual, too.
Maybe it is a weekly yoga class or a spot near the foggy window of a neighborhood bar. Maybe you carry your laptop to a favorite coffee shop where you add a daring dash of cinnamon to your java.
Perhaps you check blog posts every night at 11.
One of my rituals was to stop by the Borders book store every Sunday in suburban Oak Brook outside of Chicago, The visit became part of my drive from the city to visit my elderly parents. I would collect my thoughts, comb through the music—this Borders had a great buyer who stocked the hard-to-find Skeletons from Springfield, Mo.—and I’d get lost in the travel section.
I remember such a fuss when chain book stores came on the scene, but like indys there were good ones and bad ones. Borders Oak Brook was a good one. It had a less snotty aura than some of the independent I go to in Chicago (but not the great Powell’s in Portland, Ore.!) Even in chains, there are links of individual spirits.
I ran into my former high school English Literature teacher who retired and became a clerk at Borders Oak Brook. I made friends with the guys in the music department who like me, would hit the road in search of a good Bob Dylan concert.
The independents will get a bounce out of Borders closing, just like the fine maverick record stores that have sprung up in my Chicago neighborhood.
But I will miss Borders in Oak Brook.
Last Sunday I saw a poster made by the Oak Brook store manager. I must be getting old and soft cover because reading it brought a tear to my eye. Especially the part where, “We believe that super heroes are real and not just drawings in comic book and that books in the children’s section can and should be read by adults….We believe you don’t have to have just 1 favorite author, song, movie or treat from the pastry case…”
I believe in bars built with books; Cali, Colombia, Feb. 2011 (D.H photo)
The entire poster is here because I saw David Thomas Ewoldt take a photo of it with his i Phone. Hope you can read it. I tried to upsize it.
I don’t take many pictures with my I Phone, and when I do it is an accidental portrait of my back pocket or the sidewalk.
He was a stranger but I walked up to him and requested that he send me a copy of his photo. A good book store will do that to you. I asked the early-to-middle-aged Glendale Heights resident to attach a note describing his muse.
“I first visited the Oak Brook store a couple of weekends after it opened twenty years ago,” he wrote on Aug. 2. “Before that I had only been to typical shopping mall bookstores. In comparison, the Borders store was a wonder. It was huge. The selection was vast. I saw things I didn’t think you could buy in bookstores. For years afterward, I’d go there to look for and find all the things I couldn’t get anywhere else. When I came back home during and after college, Borders was the only place in the suburbs I’d find more advanced and obscure items.”
The store clearly meant a lot to Ewoldt. He wanted to capture the poster. His camera was a net over an endangered species.
The poster was tactile and deep, like real books, magazines, newspapers and vinyl records.
Words are something you hold on to.
Especially in times of transition.
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