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Sunday, June 7, 2009

HOM: Eastward Ho!

The end of March came, and our first gun show was a moderate success. We'd made money, though not as much as we'd hoped, and we'd learned a lot. We'd given away a book in a free raffle and gotten names for a future catalog mailing list. We'd made some good contacts and picked up a few new books. All in all, we were satisfied, but now we needed to seriously start gathering inventory. In those pre-internet days, book dealers subscribed to the AB Bookmans' Weekly, a subscription trade publication with several hundred pages of very fine print listing books for sale and books wanted. This was THE tool for selling and buying books in the trade and Jerry had used it for his book searches. Now he spent many hours searching through each issue trying to unearth treasures and bargains. Lyn & Bec & I left on a major buying trip, one that had been in the planning for quite a while. We took my little Datsun truck and headed east, Boston bound. The S&S custom topper was Bec's rolling playhouse for the trip. A mattress went on the floor, some of Bec's favorite books and toys were tossed in and snacks and drinks and other odds and ends were stashed away. It made the trip a lot more pleasant for all of us, in those pre-Politically Correct days when people were allowed the freedom to take chances. She had enough head room to jump around and work off excess energy and the booted windows let us keep an eye on her & vice versa. The suitcases went up in the overhead, some extra tools into the front, arrangements were made for the house, and early one blustery April morning we headed out. Winter had hung on a bit longer than usual so we planned on early starts and early stops, but we had no real itinerary. We planned to end up in Boston but routes and timing were decided on a day-by day basis and depended on the availability of book stores and thrift shops. TBC (Me) (Blacktail Books)

1 comments:

Jean&Vic said...

I took a cross country trip with my Dad back when I was about 11 or 12. Somehow convinced him my best friend, Lori, could come with. Her folks were at the Lakeside Air Base and being transfered out that summer, last time we we see each other. We spent the trip riding under the S&S topper in the back of the truck -only thing that kept my Dad's sanity, I'm sure! -Jean

 
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