Friday, June 12, 2015

Today at Logos

This is journal entry number 5,555, if anybody but I care!

I stand corrected.  Judging by the response to yesterday's entry about drive-in theaters it appears they are still alive and thriving in parts of this country.

Sandy's granddaughter was with her again when I arrived at Logos and they were headed off for more yogurt, so we didn't chat, but there were several customers (maybe 5 or 6) in the store when she left.  She said she had a busy morning.  A mom and a girl of about 11 or 12 between them chose $28 worth of books, including two young people's pirate books.  While I was ringing up their sale, everyone else left the store -- turns out they had been there as a group, I guess.  Nobody bought anything.

I went looking for something to read, deciding I wanted to read something other than a mystery today.  I started out with Judith Viorst's book, "I'm Too Old to Be 70," even though I'm too old to read it.  :)

A middle-aged man with curly grey-white hair bought a contemporary fiction book about several generations of women in China.

A girl came in with about 2" thick pages from a genetic text that she had taken out of a binder and asked if we wanted it.  I told her I'd take it, but we would probably just throw it away--she didn't care.  she just wanted to get rid of it.

A guy with Rastafarian hair spent some time checking cookbooks, and then started to walk out. turned and thanked me, waved, and left.

An older guy came with a book on birds to buy and commented on the book I was reading, saying he was feeling like that these days too.

Next was a fresh-faced young man, cleanly dressed in blue shorts and a blue checked shirt, tan sneakers with black anklets just barely visible over the top of them, and carrying a bike messenger bag.  I later realized he was with a young woman in jeans and blue t-shirt with a long pony tail hanging down her back.  They stayed at the humor section for awhile, he on the floor handing books up to her, and the two of them laughing.  She eventually left and after checking the kids' section, he ended up buying a Mark Twain, 4 sci fi books, and the cliff notes for a book about mythology.

Bruce walked in.  His hat this time was more like a visor, without the top part, just a band around his head holding the front part of the visor on.  He looked around a bit, but didn't make eye contact or say anything and left without buying anything.

A guy with a graphic of a native American in full feathered headdress on a black shirt was looking for Jack Kerouac's "On the Road," but left when he couldn't find it.

A couple came in looking for military books and likewise left when they didn't find what they were looking for.  They were followed by two teen aged girls who popped in and out so quickly they hardly got 2 feet from the front door.

A woman in black with purple accents in the strings off her backpack. her flip flops, her water bottle, and the accent color barely visible in the weave of her shirt bought two books of poetry, one of which was wedding poems.

A very tall, barrel-chested man wearing a leather hat with a wide brim started by checking the self improvement books and ended up buying a book on the Louvre, which was so thick and heavy it surely must have contained photos of every piece in that museum!

I had finished my Viorst book by this time (which I enjoyed so much I actually bought it) and decided to start re-reading Bill Bryson's "The Mother Tongue," one of my favorite books.  I knew I had two copies of the book at home, so there was little risk of my deciding to buy it from Logos.

An older woman came in with her son, who was carrying three very large old books.  She had apparently called the day before about donating them.  They were a book of biblical illustrations, a book of Dante's "Inferno" with wonderful etchings, and a book about old buildings in Edinburgh.  When we talked about Logos (which she had never been in before) and its philosophy of donating proceeds  to charity (I read that it has donated >$200,000 since it opened 6 years ago), she sent her son out to get another box of books which she had intended to donate to the Yolo County Library.

A woman and a boy of about 8 went into the kids' room.  I thought she was his mother, but later on looking at her, she may have been his babysitter.  He wanted a book about the human body and how it develops. All I could find for him was "Our Bodies Ourselves," which I decided was probably not what he was looking for!  They bought 3 kids books, Shel Silverstein's "The Giving Tree," a book on volcanoes and another on the Titanic.

And old man shuffled in from the bargain carts outside.  He was massaging the skin of his stomach through the gap in his shirt.  He had on a tan sun hat with the flap that comes down in the back to cover your neck.  He was thrilled to have found a book by Winston Churchill for only $1.

My friend arrived at 4:20 and we talked about Bryson's book, which I was reading, but he didn't find anything he wanted to buy today.

Sandy returned, after her time in town with her granddaughter and her daughter.  She had lost the keys to her bike lock and hoped she had left them here, but alas no.  She borrowed my phone to call her wife to bring down a duplicate set of keys, then trudged off, not looking forward to the long ride home in the oppressive heat.  (The a/c in the store was so wonderful I had no idea how hot it really was outside until Walt came to get me and I had to go outside!)

An old-ish man looking like a professor on his day off, with an aloha shirt, shorts and very scuffed black shoes bought a novel, "Winter in Madrid."

A striking woman looking like America Ferrera was wearing a long brown dress with a red floral print and spaghetti straps covered with a light weight bolero type sweater in a pale pink.  She was checking the literature section.  At the same time a youngish women dressed all in white was checking the other side of the same bookcase and when each of them hunkered down to check the bottom shelves, they looked like the famous Lucille Ball-Harpo Marx mirror scene. The Ferrera doppelganger left without buying anything but the woman in white made a $13 purchase and paid with a $100 bill, which she said was her graduation present.  I checked it for forgery before giving her her change, since there have been reports of forged $100 bills and $20 bills lately.

The last customer bought a book of Shaw plays, which I rang up while chatting with Susan, who had arrived to relieve me, about her European vacation.

2 comments:

Mary Z said...

I love the Judith Viorst books. As our oldest was nearing 50, I bought four copies of her "50" book to give each of our daughters as they had their 50th birthdays. I wonder if she has an "80" yet. LOL

Mary Z said...

She does, and I just ordered a hard-back copy for $3.99 + S&H. 8^)