always in motion, doing something, even if it is just walking back and forth to once again check the sky for any hint of snow-bearing clouds, as she had just done.
She smiled back and sat down to take a sip of her coffee.
“What would you like to do today?” she asked me. “You said you were shopping in Anchorage, so you’re probably shopped out by now. Is there anything else you’d like to do while you’re here? I should take a run into town to pick up a pile of food I ordered for the mutts and a couple of new harnesses for my leaders. Anywhere you’d like to go?”
“I wouldn’t mind stopping at the bookstore in Wasilla,” I told her. “You know Annabel’s under the clock tower. There’s a book I’d like to find for son Joe for Christmas, but it’s out of print. Neither Title Wave nor C and M Books in Anchorage had a copy and it wasn’t to be found in Homer. Annabel’s might have it. Could you drop me there while you run your errands?”
She gave me an amused smile with her answer.
“Sure. Break my heart! Make me come into a bookstore to find you. We may both be in serious trouble with books to be had. Good thing Alex’s working today. He’s a bigger addict for them than I am.”
We both glanced across the room at the two tall bookcases under the stairway, which were packed full of so many books that several piles had been stacked up on the floor in front of them.
“Looks familiar to me,” I told her. “You’ve seen mine. There’s not much difference.”
We took Jessie’s truck, as she could load it with the bags of the dog food she needed and my rented car was too small. But we left our two dogs at home, knowing the cab would be overly crowded with four of us in it, and its bed was filled with the large box used to transport her teams of dogs wherever they were needed, each in its own compartment. Tank and Stretch would be left behind and relied on to behave themselves inside the house while we were gone for a couple of hours, well trained as they were.
In less than half an hour I was waving Jessie out of the parking lot in front of Meta Rose Square, a neat building with a few shops, the tall clock tower high above, and, my goal of the moment, Annabel’s.
Besides several customers, both Carol and Richard Kinney, the owners, were there and greeted me warmly when I went in. Though I seldom have a chance to talk with them and browse their shelves of new and used books, it is always a treat when I do, for they are book people to the core and instant friends of book lovers.
Wonder of wonders, they did have a copy of the book I wanted for Joe, a book of photos of Homer back when it was just beginning to be a town, which pleased me, as I was about to give up looking. I also found a couple of Ellis Peters mysteries I didn’t have in my collection and a wonderful old book of selected verse by Edna St. Vincent Millay, a favorite poet of mine since college days.
The best part of an hour later, I was about to tackle the history shelves in search of something Lew didn’t already have in his historical collection in Homer when Jessie came breezing in, greeted the Kinneys, and grinned at the pile of books I had waiting for me at the front desk.
“I had a hunch I was leaving you too long,” she said. “Not fair. You got a head start. Did you find the one you were looking for?”
Assuring her I had, I was headed for books on the Revolutionary War when the cover of a paperback book displayed face-out on a shelf I was passing caught my eye:
BIG SHOTS
THE MEN BEHIND THE BOOZE
THE REAL-LIFE STORIES OF
JACK DANIEL
CAPTAIN MORGAN
JIM BEAM
AND MANY MORE
I opened it to the table of contents and found that most of the chapters listed gave the names of the men who had created the various liquors, including a fair number of whiskeys with names I had written down from the bottles on the shelves of my local liquor store. Chapter eleven was Johnnie Walker.
That was enough for me to take it to go through
She smiled back and sat down to take a sip of her coffee.
“What would you like to do today?” she asked me. “You said you were shopping in Anchorage, so you’re probably shopped out by now. Is there anything else you’d like to do while you’re here? I should take a run into town to pick up a pile of food I ordered for the mutts and a couple of new harnesses for my leaders. Anywhere you’d like to go?”
“I wouldn’t mind stopping at the bookstore in Wasilla,” I told her. “You know Annabel’s under the clock tower. There’s a book I’d like to find for son Joe for Christmas, but it’s out of print. Neither Title Wave nor C and M Books in Anchorage had a copy and it wasn’t to be found in Homer. Annabel’s might have it. Could you drop me there while you run your errands?”
She gave me an amused smile with her answer.
“Sure. Break my heart! Make me come into a bookstore to find you. We may both be in serious trouble with books to be had. Good thing Alex’s working today. He’s a bigger addict for them than I am.”
We both glanced across the room at the two tall bookcases under the stairway, which were packed full of so many books that several piles had been stacked up on the floor in front of them.
“Looks familiar to me,” I told her. “You’ve seen mine. There’s not much difference.”
We took Jessie’s truck, as she could load it with the bags of the dog food she needed and my rented car was too small. But we left our two dogs at home, knowing the cab would be overly crowded with four of us in it, and its bed was filled with the large box used to transport her teams of dogs wherever they were needed, each in its own compartment. Tank and Stretch would be left behind and relied on to behave themselves inside the house while we were gone for a couple of hours, well trained as they were.
In less than half an hour I was waving Jessie out of the parking lot in front of Meta Rose Square, a neat building with a few shops, the tall clock tower high above, and, my goal of the moment, Annabel’s.
Besides several customers, both Carol and Richard Kinney, the owners, were there and greeted me warmly when I went in. Though I seldom have a chance to talk with them and browse their shelves of new and used books, it is always a treat when I do, for they are book people to the core and instant friends of book lovers.
Wonder of wonders, they did have a copy of the book I wanted for Joe, a book of photos of Homer back when it was just beginning to be a town, which pleased me, as I was about to give up looking. I also found a couple of Ellis Peters mysteries I didn’t have in my collection and a wonderful old book of selected verse by Edna St. Vincent Millay, a favorite poet of mine since college days.
The best part of an hour later, I was about to tackle the history shelves in search of something Lew didn’t already have in his historical collection in Homer when Jessie came breezing in, greeted the Kinneys, and grinned at the pile of books I had waiting for me at the front desk.
“I had a hunch I was leaving you too long,” she said. “Not fair. You got a head start. Did you find the one you were looking for?”
Assuring her I had, I was headed for books on the Revolutionary War when the cover of a paperback book displayed face-out on a shelf I was passing caught my eye:
BIG SHOTS
THE MEN BEHIND THE BOOZE
THE REAL-LIFE STORIES OF
JACK DANIEL
CAPTAIN MORGAN
JIM BEAM
AND MANY MORE
I opened it to the table of contents and found that most of the chapters listed gave the names of the men who had created the various liquors, including a fair number of whiskeys with names I had written down from the bottles on the shelves of my local liquor store. Chapter eleven was Johnnie Walker.
That was enough for me to take it to go through
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