Introduction One woman. One van. One traveling bookstore filled with approximately 647 volumes. Many gracious people. Scores of cities and towns, countless miles of roads and forty-two states covered since June 2015.
Chapter One When the twenty year old Sprinter van broke down in Dixon, California, it was time to get a more reliable vehicle for the bookstore. This started a chain of events involving a list of characters. Melissa picked me up along with as many books as we could fit into her Prius to do the bookstore gig in Berkeley the next day. Mike at Ron Dupratt Ford in Dixon walked me through purchasing a Transit van. Kevin came down from southern Oregon to assess if the bookshelves could be moved from the old van to a new one (they couldn’t). Kevin’s task then shifted to helping me move 647 volumes from the shelves in the old van to boxes and bags in the new one (a task we needed to complete in two hours). Manna Restaurant in Davis, California fortified us. Thank you.
Chapter Two Maiden voyage. Drove the new van from Port Orford, Oregon to Portland, Oregon (274 miles/441 km). Think twisting roads. Think highways. Think traffic jams. Think city traffic. Think parking in a very narrow parking space with the Transit 250’s 148 inch/376 centimeters wheelbase. And once again, it was individuals who smoothed this experience. Cristina helped watch fenders as I parked, and along with Mircea provided an awesome dinner. Judy lent me her car for zipping around Portland when I went places where I didn’t need the bookstore. Extracto Coffee celebrated the new van when it set up as a bookstore on Mothers Day even without shelves or logo. Cathedral Coffee endured me backing around their parking lot with the Transit’s loud back-up warning beeps trying to park this glistening monster of a bookstore. Traveling bookstore fans Shelly, Sarah, Ethan and others showed up to cheer me on.
Chapter Three Moving. No surprise the owner/operator of a traveling bookstore moves. There are moves and there are moves. The bookstore moved from Salt Lake City to Reno, a drive that deserves the word immense. This bookstore has driven across Kansas, down through Wyoming’s long stretches, across snow-blinding mountains in Colorado, through foggy hills of Arkansas, through flood-threatening rain in West Virginia. Since first starting the bookstore, this owner/operator has done all this based out of the northwest corner of Montana. This fall, I am moving to Baltimore. There will be new places to take the bookstore like towns on Maryland’s eastern shore, the Boston book festival, and gigs in Maine to name just a few. And places to return to like Olive Branch, Mississippi and Asheville, North Carolina. And as it is a traveling bookstore, it will certainly be making trips back west as well .
Chapter Four Things noted on the past tour I want to remember. Three tow-truck drivers. The one in Boise, Idaho (beautiful rig and tattooed prosthesis), the one in Dixon, California (very kind and encouraging as I tried to sort problems), and the one who delivered the new van to Port Orford (sweet man who I should have tipped but was too overwhelmed with the van arriving on a flatbed at 8:15am up a narrow gravel road to do anything but marvel at his driving). Realized when visiting Matt at Ace Typewriter that there are people in my life that no matter where I go I believe I will meet up with them again somewhere on the road. Like Anne in Brno or Linda in New York City or Kevin in Port Orford. But some folks are so much a part of a particular place, I realize if I ever want to see them again, like Matt, that I will need to return to that one neighborhood in Portland, Oregon between 9am to 5pm weekdays.
Amazing Traveling Bookstore 