Books in bulk from ormondsacker

Today seemed like a good day to drop twelve dollars on literacy, so I swung by the Metropolitan Public Library combined book sale. It was out at the OKC fairgrounds, in a cavernous building that at other times houses chickens, RV's, and award-winning marmalade. It was also packed - I spent ten minutes hunting for parking while parents and kids and guys in dubious overcoats streamed past. Some had grocery sacks full of books, some had handcarts. On the way in, I passed two women, chatting, with wheeled recycling bins.

Inside there were two aircraft-hanger rooms, "Collectors" and "General", separated by a length of corridor and a concession stand. "General" was $1.00 for hardbacks, 50¢ for paperbacks, and 50¢ for VHS. "Collectors" turned out to be a fractional acre of hardcover Dave Barry and Richard North Patterson, with two tables in the far northwest corner labeled "Old Books - Fiction" and "Old Books - Nonfiction". As I eyeballed some water-damaged Boy Scout manuals, a woman next to me pounced on a Modern Library edition of Thackery's Henry Esmond and flipped to the title page. She looked up at me, eyes shining. "This is from nineteen fifty-three", she managed, with all the delight of someone unaware they're about to get offered a dollar sixteen on e-bay.

But it was worth the visit - I picked up a '20s hardcover edition of archy and mehitabel and filled in some gaps in my Donald Westlake and Robert Holdstock. I also have here a late-40's kid's book called Yankee Doodle's Cousins (encountered once, briefly and fondly, as an actual child) that's the most exhaustive census I've ever seen of the lesser American folk heroes that never quite got optioned by Disney. Mike Fink? A.B. Stormalong? Febold Feboldson, Prairie Scientist? 'Hunkie Joe' Magerac, the Hungarian of Steel? All here. I handed over my take at checkout card table #23 ("Six books? My, you're easy - the last guy had what, eighty something? Like, eighty!"), gave a cheerful pat to a cardboard box labeled "Romances, 24 ct. $7.50 fr bx", and strolled out into the rain.

Published by :ormondsacker 2008-02-24 04:56:23.0