Sometimes the Contents are Not What's Expected....

The estate sale ad intrigued me so I ventured  way out of my comfort zone and normal stomping grounds this morning. The Dear Departed once worked for Cactus Records, Houston’s legendary independent record store. 

The neighborhood was very gloomy – a down at the heels subdivision  firmly on the downhill slide. 3 bedroom brick starter homes built in the mid 1970s. The neighborhood is now mostly  poor and  Hispanic, lots of rentals and foreclosures and gang signs spray painted on the fences. It was not the kind of house you’d associate with anyone who worked at Cactus Records. I saw some pictures of The Dear Departed  and she was about my age. I suspect she lived there with someone else- maybe an aged parent. When I think Cactus Records I conjure up an eclectic house in Houston’s eclectic neighborhood with artsy furnishings and funky art, not a soulless tract house in the wrong part of town.


The estate dealer – I’ll call him Joe is not known for his pleasant demeanor and he was in rare form today.


To start with he left the E for east that belonged on the address. Another would be attendee and I meet up at the wrong address. We called and got the correct address and somehow the other attendee managed to get us in the door early. He was from New Jersey and he was pissed and he let Joe know it. I got included because I was the one with the phone number & the GPS.  He was a record dealer and I'm not so I was no threat. 


I think the Dear Departed had a home business making and selling bootleg DVDs. There were way more mailers in that house than the average person keeps. There were boxes of DVDs in those multi colored cases you can get at Office Max. All looked just a little “off” and it was very apparent they were copies. I left those but came away with an 5 foot high stack of original box sets – all new and sealed which the Dear Departed hadn’t gotten around to copying yet.


There were indeed lots of books, most worthless –many books published Dover.. Shelves of books on ancient Egypt but all by popular presses. I am pretty sure 2 someones lived in the house since the book subjects were very diverse. Far left wing crystal reading and far right Obama is Satan books on the same shelf. One of the someones liked genealogy and I found some  local New England history books that I’ve sold before. I had first crack at the books for about half the shelves and then the guy who buys for Brazos Books  appeared. He turned his nose up at my scanner but decided maybe I did know something when I picked this from a shelf he’d already gone through:


Iver Johnson's Arms and Firearms was such a good find that 3 people tried to buy it from me while I was standing in line to pay.


Nothing was priced and nobody could price anything but Joe . Joe had 2 different check out stations – one manned by his mother (old and clueless) and another by an ageing queen (fussy and clueless) Everyone and everything had to wait for Joe and  everyone was grumpy, especially Joe. Joe was running around cursing everyone and being as rude as possible to the buyers and assorted Hispanic men he’d hired to do the hauling and the translating. 


 The buyers were pretty clueless too – they managed to block a number of driveways along the street and tow trucks were summoned. You can only imagine how blue the air turned once wreckers showed up.


It took forever to pay – in fact I think I could of easily walked out with my haul, it was such a disorganized mess. I went into the “polite, sympathetic and understanding” mode I use with another dealer and it worked. He looked at my stack and said “$125”. The gun book will more than cover that so I paid and ran.


There were several cases of jewelry on the lawn (the house was so tiny) and I couldn’t get near it. It also wasn’t priced and the folks around were in a feeding frenzy. No records at all, though the ad promised records. Joe locked them in his truck because he didn’t want anyone to look at them unless he stood over them to guard them. Which he couldn’t do because nothing was priced. The record buyer folks were angry – can’t say that I blame them. It was a long drive and they went away empty handed.




My grand total ? $2,228.00. Not bad for 3 hours of work! 


 I’m very glad I got up early on a Saturday and that I took chance in an unfamiliar part of town.

Scene: A garage sale (where else would I be on a Saturday morning?)

I amble over to the wife with 3 books in hand.

“How much ?” .

“Books are $1 each” . She takes a second look at the titles

“Honey, are you sure you want to sell these books?” she calls out

“These books” were 3 Engineering texts with good ranks and selling prices of $100 each.

“Nah, I don’t want them anymore” replys Honey

“Are you sure? “

“Nope , don’t want them”

“I think….and she's distracted by another customer.

I quickly shove $3 into Honey’s hand and make a bee line for my car.

Hit the gas and hit the road. Hope nobody thinks to write down my license plate number.

The weather was tolerable till 9:30, so maybe one of these days it will be fall again. Best garage sale haul I have had in a VERY long time.

Library Sale Aventures

Friends of the Library sales are far and few between in my part of Texas. Hurricane Ike blew 10 feet of water through the Galveston Public library and several other libraries have taken to selling on line these days.

I saw an ad on Booksalefinder for a San Antonio Public library FOL sale and was intrigued. The San Antonio PL has a permanent FOL bookstore, which I’d visited before – DD went to college in San Antonio – with good results. I'd never been to one of their FOL sales & the web page said they received a large donation of 100 boxes of books.

The donation turned out to be from St. Philip’s College. The processing department at the college removes all the dust jackets as a matter of course. We weren’t the only dealers and all the dealers were armed with scanners which of course were useless since there was nothing to scan. We had to open the books and punch in the numbers. To be sucessful one needed both a brain and a scanner – and a great deal of perseverance. I selected books based on the titles and the publishers. It totally leveled the playing field and slowed everyone down.

For once there wasn’t the frenetic mosh pit atmosphere that pervades most FOL sales. Everyone was good natured and we all talked and chatted as we worked. The books were in boxes on and under tables and in no order at all. The library uses the Library of Congress cataloging system – which I’m not familiar with so I couldn’t use the call numbers to help me out. I speak perfect Dewey Decimal but I’m not fluent in Library of Congress.

One dealer announced loudly he didn’t have the patience to punch in all those numbers and left after 30 minutes. The rest of us carried on and were amply rewarded for our efforts – at least Wallacex and I were. There were lots of clunkers but also some gems in those boxes. The books were only $1 – that’s unheard of in these parts. do not sell one and we actually found list able titles.

Of course we ate Indian food, drank wine and talked books, books and more books.

I just finished listing my finds – between San Antonio and yesterday’s garage sales I added 72 books which listed at a combined $2,400+ - average price per book came out to $33. . I have a nice mix of high priced books with high ranks and lower priced books with ranks under 100,00.

The FOL folks are integrating the St. Phillip’s books into their store and told us they had many more books to unpack. We are planning a return trip in late July.

I'm very glad I took a gamble on an unknown FOL sale - it paid off tenfold!

What If They Gave a Friends of the Library Sale....

And nobody came?

The Houston Public Library FOL book sale was this weekend, with Friday being the members night. I was on the fence about going since I knew HPL sells to Better World Books and since I bought a grand total of 1 book last year.

To go or not to go…that was the question.

I got an unexpected donation of $100 to buy books for my school library – the FOL sale advertised that their “I Can Read” books would be only $1 each and I knew from past purchases that many would be like new. So that cinched it. Nasty weather was in the forecast and I had no desire after a long day at work to stand in line in the rain or deal with the opening bell mosh pit so I planned to arrive when the doors opened. It was sprinkling so I splurge on the underground parking. The Heavens opened shortly after my 4:15 arrival for a sale that started at 4:30.

There was NO LINE!

There could not have been more than 50 – 75 people (the sale is at the convention center) standing around waiting for the gates to open. Everyone was really laid back and in a good mood. The starting gun went off and there was no reenactment of the Oklahoma Land Rush. Only a couple of people ran, nobody pushed or shoved or tripped anyone. No hording, no sweep the tables, no grabbing. I had the art books all to myself. The prices were much lower than last year – still very spendy for a library sale but bearable. The bulk of the non fiction is individually priced - $2 -$10.

I didn’t see any of the regular dealers but it’s been a long time since I’ve attended an FOL sale. There were other scanners, many of which were , judging from what they picked up newbies or penny book sellers. I ran into the dealer who runs the Texas version of BetterWorldBooks and he said quite a few dealers (esp. the out of town ones) skipped the sale this year because it was so bad last year. He said he lost money at last years sale and so far he was doing well.

I’d planned to buy a stack of “I Can Read” books and leave – and instead I was there for 4 hours. I bought 3 boxes of books for $240 (told you it was pricy), the bulk of which are art books cause that’s where I went first. I was also dead – I was at work by 6:45 and I was on my feet for the bulk of the day. I dragged into the house at 9pm and collapsed.

The FOL Sale chairperson was doing crowd control (not that there was any) at checkout & I commented on how empty the place was. She agreed and said they didn’t expect as many people as last year because they had fewer books (true) but that she was very surprised at the low turnout. I told her the prices were way more reasonable this year and she said, yes they realized they had overpriced and that they made changes. She confirmed that many of the regular dealers were not in attendance.

Texas Better World was the one who told me HPL is cherry picking books to send to Better World and I believe him. I found good inventory but just about every book was a “punch in the number” rather than scan the number. The scannable books were for the most part, worthless for resale. Texas Better World agreed with my assessment.

The rain on Saturday was way worse than Friday and I doubt they had many shoppers. There should be some good pickings at bag day on Sunday
Maybe it’s time to re-think FOL sales.

Water, Water Everywhere

Or rather garage sales, garage sales everywhere but not a book to be found.
It was gorgeous day – sunny, no humidity, not a cloud to mar that beautiful Texas Blue Sky.
Craigslist was full of enticing ads and garage sale signs sprouted on the telephone poles like mushrooms after the rain.

And I found not one book worth buying.

In fact were it not for a Lava Lamp for school and a kitty condo for the cats I’d of come away empty handed.

Some days are like that…..even in Australia….or Houston.

Score de December

December seems to be the month to score inventory windfalls. . Last year it was the Jazzman, the year before it was The Bookman. December, 2008 ended with the Shady Doctor buy.

Shady Doctor was a psychiatrist who made a pile of money back in the1990s as a proponent of "Repressed Memory" syndrome. A Google search of the dearly departed showed he was most controversial, involved in a number of lawsuits and that his license was at times, questionable.

Shady Doctor apparently had a number of mental problems himself. He was anal to the extreme - every one of his hundreds of CDs was alphabetized, he had a 5 foot stack of binders with the warranty papers for every electrical appliance he ever bought and his shirts were arranged by color. He was a compulsive collector - multiple DVD players, VCRs, exercise equipment, camping equipment and enough Pfaltzgraff dinnerware to outfit a small department store.

His house was in a very sketchy part of town, one where even I felt compelled to lock my car doors. It once belonged to his mother and started out as a simple 5 room workman's cottage.

For reasons known only to him he left it entirely as is (and it needed a makeover)and built a sprawling garage and second story addition. Other than the library (which was a secret room) the addition was all white paint and grey linoleum. Very drab, very depressing.

The library was amazing- it had 2 secret entrances - one from the master closet and the other from the wet bar. The walls were lined with custom made library shelving and the shelves were filled with books. One side held his 30 year old medical books and 20 years worth of bound issues of Newsweek, the other side was full of Easton Press Books. Easton Press is one of the Holy Grails of bookselling. And these weren't just any Easton Press Books, these were all signed first edition Science Fiction Easton Press books.

The sale didn't attract many buyers with interest in custom leather books. Many of shoppers were neighbors who bought armloads of CDs & sports memorabilia but just rolled their eyes at the books. The book room was filled with very overweight young men, wearing backwards baseball caps & baggy pants and in need of a shave, accompanied by their girlfriends who wore very tight, very low cut pants that showed off their “muffin tops” and thongs all talking on their cell phones and trying to describe what they were seeing. In their words the room was full of “old books and other old s----“!

Science Fiction isn't my forte though I know it sells. I called a fellow bookseller, who prowled around on E-bay and we zeroed in on 17 books with potential. At $25 each I didn't want to buy any duds. Come Sunday everything would be 50% off so a return trip was in order.

Turned out that most of the Easton Press books were still there. I bought 10 and some audio books for Lou and left.

Upon delivery of the audio books Lou asked me 'Why didn't you make an offer for all of them?"

"Humm" I thought upon arriving home, "why not"?

I e-mailed the estate sale proprietor and offered to buy and haul away all the remaining Easton Press books at $10 per book. I estimated maybe 100 books were left. Wrong. There were 210 volumes and she accepted my offer.

Gulp. Very Big Gulp. Very, Very big Gulp.

Didn't think I could back out without incurring the wrath of the Estate Sale Dealer. Whose wrath I could not afford to incur - she's an important cog in my inventory strategy wheel. Oh well, I'll just pay the minimum on my Visa bill this month.

13 boxes later I was the giddy but scared owner of 250 Easton Press Books.

I think I've just advanced a step or two above my usual bookselling rank of bottom feeder.

They are all headed for E-bay. Stay tuned.

My Scanner - Never Leave Home Without It

We’re in Fort Worth for the weekend – My Beloved is playing in a golf tournament. My Book Selling Buddy is is coming up from Waco tomorrow and we’re going to go book scouting.

We came up todayon Friday so she could practice and we also wanted to see a new art exhibit at the Kimball Art Museum.

We were browsing in the gift shop and I came across a pile of sale books – some reduced as much as 75%.

Did I have my scanner with me? Nooooooooo!

I mean who takes a scanner to the art museum?????

I sorted out the 75% off books, eliminated the obvious duds (Dover press and such) and pulled out my trusty iPhone. Thank goodness I still have ScoutPal.

I found not one but copies of this: Michael Sweerts 1618-1664

I paid $12 for each of them. I have once again justified my ScoutPal subscription for another year.

And I will never, ever go to the art museum without my scanner again!

Coupons Save You $$$

Given state of grocery prices these days I've started using coupons again. I keep mine housed in plastic baseball card holders which are in a zippered 3 ring binder. I seem to be a master at never getting said binder into my car once I finish - so far I've misplaced 2 of them. They are constructed from binders I find at the thrift store so I'm never out much money but it is annoying none the less.

Monday I misplaced it again & some honest soul (there really are some left in this world) turned it in. I went to Kroger retrieve it. Half Price Books is right next door so of course I had to stop in.

On my Monday stop I trolled a fishing book that listed for $120. I paid $7 and much to my amazement it sold yesterday. Today a little voice told me to go check out the fishing books again.
To my great joy, I found not 1 but 2 more copies.

I knew coupons saved me money but didn't realize it could be this much money!

Fleas for Fun & Profit

We had a mild winter, a short spring and then summer arrived with a vengeance. We are now experiencing 90 % humidity a 105 heat index and fleas. They appear to have an immunity to Advantage and FrontLine so it was time to lock up the cats and bring out the flea bombs.

Sunday morning appeared to be the optimum since My Beloved had a golf game. My Beloved is Fragile Flower, who is allergic to everything, including residual flea bomb scent.

I locked the cats on the upstairs balcony, turned off the Air Conditioner, sprung the bombs and fled the house. The plan was to hole up at Waldo’s Coffee House and linger over a latte and their Whi-Fi.

On the way I spotted a garage sale sign (I don’t normally go garage sailing on Sundays). Of course I had to check it out. It was a bust but on the way back I passed another, newly opened sale.

It yielded 4 textbooks, 2 other books with decent prices and ranks, 3 vintage calculators (very ebayable) and a Melissa & Doug wooden floor puzzle.

$200 in book inventory + E-bay stock! Wish that fleas were always so profitable!

The Home of the JazzMan

I'm not sure why anyone would hold an estate sale on Sunday, Dec. 23 - but MargieBeelge sales had one on the calendar. Perhaps they had no choice but it made for low attendance which suited us just fine. . It was an odd sale to begin with since the family held several garage sales before calling them in. From what they said the most amazing treasures went out of the house for pennies on the dollar (great weeping and wailing on everyone’s part).

The house was your standard 3 bedroom ranch, built in the early 1960s, in what was once a nice part of town but is now a lock your car doors part of town. . It was pretty apparent that it was a one owner house, that the wife had died years before the husband and that neither had ever redecorated or thrown anything out. Both of them had some serious pack rat issues and ADORED mail order. As in every book every put out by Oxmoor (Southern Living) press, every video put out by National Geographic, Columbia Music club and the Software of the Month club (bet you didn’t know there was such a thing – I didn’t either).

We I arrived at 10 and found one room was nothing but wall to wall CDs. The man was a major jazz aficionado. So much that he lost track of what he had – lots of duplicates and many were still sealed. We each took a corner and started scanning. Lots of not founds, Columbia music club and junk but some amazing finds too. At 1:30 we finally finished with the room – and neither of us had scanned behind the other one. My scanner showed I’d scanned 700+ cds and my friend did more (she’s more agile than I).

We were sitting on the floor, standing, on our knees and bending into assorted pretzel positions - physically it was a very uncomfortable sale.. We both have Scoutpal but the volume was so great that we didn’t have the time to hand key in any of not founds. Neither of us know anything about Jazz so we were scan monsters to the extreme. Oddly we were the only dealers present – the other folks were just people who like estate sales or like jazz. We had lots of comments on our scanners to which we gave our standard answer “It helps us keep track of what we don’t need”.

We were starving so we checked out – I have never dropped $500 on inventory and had only 2 boxes to show for it! Got some lunch and headed back for round two.

Round two consisted of the garage which was knee high in magazines and trash bags. Trash bags full of ripe garbage. My nose couldn’t take it but Lou got 2 boxes of Downbeat Magazine. That left us the computer room which had a waist high pile of software – much of it unopened. I think the man might be have been a beta tester for Borland. The software stopped arriving around 2003 – just prior to Windows XP. We couldn’t get any hits on it so we left it behind and tackled the videos instead. Great collection –lots of MGM musicals but they’ve been re-released on DVD so they were worthless. We both found enough $20 dollar or so videos with good ranks so it wasn’t time spent in vain

At 3:30 we checked out and painfully crawled into the car and headed home. I'd spent $550 and my friend dropped $900. The CDs were $3 each so we had one loaded car. I'm to tried to do the math but that's a lot of CDs - and we barely made a dent in the collection.

It's been a rather amazing 13 months. Friends of the Library Sales doors are closing but windows are opening elsewhere. November, 2006 was the month of the BookMan, September, 2007 Spiritual Man and December, 2007 ushered in JazzMan.

Reasons for the Long Silence

Last Thursday
Get to work at 7, teach till 2:30, teach after school Primary Gifted & Talented class till 3:45. Take 3 of the Primary Gifted and Talented to kids to daycare (pacifying them with my GPS). Go to post office. Go to thrift store next to post office (find a $40 & $30 book, a Halloween flag and 2 books to donate to my school library). Pick up Spring Rolls at the Vietnamese place for dinner, 5:30, open library for Family Library Night. 8pm. Remove 77 people from library by turning off the computers. Go home. Answer e-mails, list the 2 books, pack books. Go to bed.

Last Friday
Get to work at 6:45 (have to put library back together again after Family Library Night), work till 2:30 (check out 400 books and teach 6 classes + lunch in library for 30+ kids). Rush home, meet a friend who drove in from MacGregor. We , drive to Galveston for the annual Friends of the Library Sale.. Arrive at sale at 4:30. Doors open at 5. Shop the sale till they kick us at 7:30 (awesome sale – they weeded the art books-spend $110, and have a $400 book in the lot). Have dinner, drive back to Houston, We kill half of a big bottle of wine, go to bed.

Last Saturday
Get up at 6:30, arrive at the Heights Friends of the Library sale by by 7:30. Buy books (spend $120) , Go to Zen center sale, buy more books (spend $30) . Go to brunch with 2 other book sellers and talk shop for 2 hours.. Go to Half Price Books. Buy more books (spend $40)- including 10 Betsy Tacy books . Come home Do laundry, clean up kitchen, clean up after cats (one has a new habit of pucking). Drink rest of the wine while listing books (that might not have been the brightest of moves) .

6:30pm The Universe calls (via Lou): Spiritual Man has more books .
Guess what I’m did last Sunday at 2pm?

It’s beginning to look like the Soccer’s Apprentice has switched from buckets of water to boxes of books

Houston, We Have Found the Motherlobe

It was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad garage sale day till the last sale – which was not advertised and we almost didn’t go to – my friend was hot and my friend was tired.

“Let’s just do this one, it’s only a few blocks away. I said. Then we can call it a day”.

It’s almost noon. Old house in the “arty part” of Houston. Sale was in the back, in a garage apartment occupied by a self proclaimed ‘natural healer & herbiest”. We walk up and there are 2 big tables piled with books. Big, thick fat books. Books without dust jackets and shiny picture covers. Books published by Gulf, Mosby, Wiley & Academic Press. I scan the first 3 and suddenly have $600 worth of inventory in my hand. We each fill up 2 boxes.

“Folks just give me books” says the guy, “ I need to clear them out, in fact just threw some away, go look”. I lift the lid of the trash can and pull out the first book - $250. Gives new meaning to the phrase “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure”.

“Got more inside – you want to go look? “. Is the Pope Catholic?

2 hours later my friend calls her husband to come and pick her up – there isn’t enough room in my car for all the books.

I have 12 boxes of academic, technical and medical books, all of which I scanned. Most rank in 2,000,000 and up but for those prices they can sit and wait for a buyer

I paid: $100!

My friend has the same. And paid the same.

The “Profits” screen of my Axim read $10,000+ when we’d finished.

On my way home I stopped at a sandwich shop next to Half Price Books to grab a bite to eat.

For some odd reason I had no desire at all to go inside and check out the Clearance Shelf.

I wonder why?

P.S. We went back twice during the week and bought still more books.

13 Things about Thrift Shops

Thirteen Things about Thrift Stores 1. Child having a tantrum 2. Several small children making a mess of the toy area with no parent in sight 3. A woman chatting so loudly on her cell phone that the rest of us know way more about her love life than we want to! 4. Multiple copies of "What to Expect When You're Expecting" 5. Several woman who are already expecting 6. A Singing Billy Bass (may or may not work) - not that anyone cares 7. Someone plaintively asking if there is a bathroom (there never is) 8. A pervasive smell of sweat and mothballs 9. Last years fad holiday gift - Blooming Onion makers are no longer all the rage 10. A Clear Channel Communication radio station - and during the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas it's Christmas Carols 24/7 11. Zillions of Beanie Babies - the bubble burst on those long ago 12. Numerous customers in need of a wardrobe makeover - and a good dentist 13. Treasure! Such as the 13 Leather Bound Franklin Signed First Edition books I found today Links to other Thursday Thirteens! 1. (leave your link in comments, I’ll add you here!)

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How Not to Have a Garage Sale

Standard garage sale ad: Moving, books, clothes, furniture, household items and so on and so forth.

Location: Very up scale part of town where the cute bungalows are losing the battle to the brick MacMansions. Large corner lot, where it is apparent brick had triumphed over wood shingles.
A favorite haunt of serious garage sale shoppers who are not to be trifled with

We pull up at 7:45. The doors to the triple (told you brick was triumphant) garage door are shut tight. A crowd has already gathered and we recognize several folks we’d seen at earlier garage sales. At 7:55 a car pulls into the driveway, almost mowing down a few of the early birds, and a woman gets out.

“It doesn’t start till 9, I made a mistake in the ad”.

Incredulous looks from the masses – garage sale rules are such that 8 means 7 and if the ad lists the wrong time you go with the flow. Etiquette also says that you don’t park in your own driveway if you are hosting the sale. Nor run over your customers.

“Let me get things organized and I”ll start the sale”

The throng is stunned into silence.

She opens the garage door and the horde, not believing her streams on in. She closes it, almost decapitating a few of them in the process.

After about 10 minutes the doors open up again. The teaming masses; who are by now whipped into a frenzy once again rushthe doors and start to grab at everthing they see. Again, garage sale rules are that if it’s in the front of the garage it must be for sale. Rejects litter the driveway and people start to squirrel little heaps here and there.

“Get out”
“Put that down”
“That’s not for sale”
“I’m not ready to start the sale”
“I need to close the doors and get ready”
“I need to ask you to get out of the garage”

Everyone ignores her. Finally, she once again lowers the doors and people scramble for safety.
.
We; by the way are standing to the side, not quite believing what we’re seeing.
It’s like watching a very bad Fellini film.

The doors open again. It’s apparent she has nothing sorted nor are things priced. For sale items are right next to not for sale items and there isn’t any way to tell them apart. Stuff is strewn all about the driveway, which is also sprinkled with broken grass from toppled vases.
.
We shake our heads and depart, leaving the women to her customers – or perhaps her vultures.

I suspect Marie Antoinette felt much the same way when the Paris mob stormed the palace.

House O' Cookbooks

The ad on Booksalefinder.com was enough to make any bookseller salivate:
50,000 COOKBOOKS!!!
Collection from a gourmet chef east of Houston Texas who filled her home with approximately 50,000 cookbooks
Dali Cookbook
Some 1800's
Many early 1900's including church and Jr. League
Later 1920's to present Jr. League, church, hospital etc.
Lady traveled - All regions of the country are well represented.
Pepin, Child, Claiborne, Beard, Rombauer
Many country cookbooks
Sets!
Something for everyone
Priced just like a Friends of the Library sale

I called made an appointment and headed toward east toward Baytown – home of the refineries and oil processing plants. I pulled up to a very ordinary brick 3 bedroom tract house, built in the 1960s with small rooms and low ceilings. House consisted of a living room, with dining room off the living room, which opened into the kitchen, family room across the back and 3 small bedrooms. The house was almost devoid of furniture – a shabby couch, an enormous big screen TV, dining room table and chairs and an off limits bedroom. And of course bookshelves.

There were a lot of books. A whole lot of books. A whole, whole, whole lot of books. There aren't enough adjectives in the English language to describe how many books there were.

The collection was a combination of a labor of love and an out of control case of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder crossed with Hoarders Disease gone wild. Many, many, many reaching to the ceiling bookcases most of which were the grey metal steel shelving variety used in garages . The carpet was gone and the shelves stood on the bare slab - which had cracked under the weight of the books. They lined the walls and made paths through in the middle of the rooms - the aisles were barely wide enough for one person. The rooms looked like mouse mazes (complete with mouse droppings). The books were double and triple stacked. It was an archaeological excavation of books.

After an hour or two, I wasn’t to sure about the “Gourmet Cook” tag. The owner loved Southern Living, Betters Homes and Gardens, Cookbook book clubs and Readers Digest. Every cookbook published by those folks was there. In triplicate. Or quadruplicate. Or quintuplicate. Or who knows how many triplicate. I stumbled across 5 copies of 1 book - in 5 different places. Many of the books were still in their shrink wrap and had never been opened. There were books, phamplets, card sets, community cookbooks, here a cookbook, there a cookbook, everywhere a cookbook.

There is no way to look for books in a systematic manner. I decided if I was meant to find it I was meant to find it and just sort of wandered around pulling off titles that looked promising.

The gentleman running the sale said the owner was “encouraged” to move to an assisted living facility. I told him I'd like to come back in a couple of weeks when the first layer was gone so that I could have a look at the second layer. And that still leaves the third layer!

Oddly, the kitchen was rather small and the appliances were outdated. There were none of the accessories of a serious cook – no knife sets, no Kitchen Aide Mixer, no Pasta Maker. I think the lady was so busy collecting that she never had time to cook!

Things Found in Books

Booksellers are always finding things in books – usually bookmarks and sales slips. I’ve heard tales of booksellers stumbling across $100 bills in old books but I’ve never been so lucky.

Last Sunday my friend Lou and I went to the mother of all book estate sales and encountered an extravaganza of items stuffed into books. The former owner didn’t own a home, he owned a library. Every room of the 4 bed room tract house was wall to wall to wall bookshelves, ditto the hall and the closets.

They weren’t all old Readers Digest Condensed Books, Book of the Month Club books and ancient textbooks either. The bulk of the collection was like new non-fiction hardbacks of the scholarly persuasion. The man was Renaissance Man with interests ranging from evolution to geology to art to archaeology with an intense specialty in military history.

Not only did he buy books, he noted when he’d acquired each volume and he rated them on style and content. The end papers had such comments as “inadequate maps”, “inaccurate information p. 232” or “style 1 star”. He also collected ephemera about the subject of each book and tucked them into the books. Every piece was carefully clipped and dated. The findings ranged from newspaper clippings to articles to maps. A biography of Wendell Wilkie yielded a Wendell Wilkie postage stamp.

Every clipping but one I found matched the books. The one exception was a wedding announcement, which I found in a 1948 Geology textbook. The clipping details the marriage of Marjorie Cortelyou to Mr. Charles David Allen. My bookman is named Albert who married Margaret Allen so the lady in question isn’t his wife. However, Albert attended MIT and Marjorie hailed from Princeton so it’s possible they knew each other. In addition, Margeret's maiden name was Allen so perhaps they were sisters or cousins.



A bit of Goggling produced obituaries for Albert, Margret and Marjorie (who went by Martha in her later years).Marjorie is wearing a full wedding dress and veil and judging from her hair style she married in the late 1940s. Unlike most brides she’s not looking directly at the photographer and her face isn’t aglow with happiness. She’s looking to the side and her face is pensive and thoughtful. Who or what was she thinking of and why did Albert keep the clipping till the day he died?



Paper: Houston ChronicleDate: Thu 09/21/2006Section: BPage: Edition: 3 Star
SINGLETON
ALBERT ELWOOD SINGLETON, JR passed away peacefully at his home in Houston on September Saturday September 16, 2006 surrounded by his loving family. Al was born on December 27, 1923 in Portsmouth, Ohio to Albert Elwood Singleton and May Sharp Singleton. Al attended college at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston until he joined the army. He served in the Second World War with the 75th division and received disabling wounds. After his honorable discharge from the Armed Services, Al resumed his college studies at Virginia Polytechnical Institute in Blacksburg, Virginia, where he received his Baccalaureate in Mining Engineering and went on to an advanced degree in Geology from Colombia University, New York. There he met, fell in love with and married his beloved Missy, (Margaret Laura Allen) to whom he was wed for over 50 years until her death in 2002. Al spent a productive career with Chevron Oil. The happiest times of his career were spent as a field geologist in the oil camps drilling wells all over Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah. Houston was next, where he headed the geophysical processing center. His last posting was in London where he negotiated drilling rights on behalf of Chevron in the North Sea. After Al retired he indulged his lifelong love affair with reading. books and knowledge. He is survived by his children, Matthew A. Singleton of Grapevine, TX; David M. Singleton of Galveston, TX; Nicholas D. Singleton of Houston, TX; and Anne E. Singleton of Houston, TX; as well as his daughters-in-law, Jenny Singleton, Mary Jo Singleton, Peggy Sweeney and son-in-law, Jack Douglas. His grandchildren are Amy E. Singleton of Houston, TX; Will Singleton and Katie Singleton of Grapevine, TX; Trent Singleton and Thomas Singleton of Galveston, TX; Gwen Singleton and Timothy Singleton of Houston, TX; and Jackson Douglas of Houston, TX, and dog, Chespah. We will remember and miss him for his intellect, sharp wit and insight and love. He will live forever in our hearts. Al requested that he be cremated with no formal service but that a "Celebration of Life" be hosted in his honor. Details to follow. In lieu of flowers the family has requested that a donation be made to your favorite charity or foundation.
ANNE E. SINGLETON

Paper: Houston ChronicleDate: Thursday 02/07/2002Section: APage: Edition: 3
SINGLETON
MARGARET LAURA (ALLEN) SINGLETON Our beautiful, beloved wife, mother, sister, friend departed peacefully on February 4, 2002. Born March 2, 1928 in Huntington, West Virginia, she is survived by: husband of 50 years Albert E.; three sons Matthew, David and Nicholas; daughter Anne; eight grandchildren and brother Thomas. She attended Connecticut College and graduated from College of Wooster with a BA in Education and later received her Masters Degree in Education from Banks Street School. She was a world traveler, bird-watcher and consummate lover of life! Our hearts are breaking that she is gone yet joyful that we have known her. A celebration of her life will be announced at a later date. The family suggests in lieu of flowers a memorial to her favorite volunteer activity, The Houston Audubon Society.440 Wilchester Blvd., Houston, Texas 77079-7199.

Martha C. Allen
Martha Cortelyou ("Marnie") Allen, 81, of Charlottesville, Va., formerly of Princeton, died April 9 at home after a lengthy illness.
The daughter of Rose P. and Raymond V. Cortelyou, she was born in Princeton.
She attended Princeton High School and earned a bachelor of arts in English from Oberlin College.
She lived for much of her life in Princeton and Rocky Hill before moving to Puerto Rico in 1977. While in Rocky Hill, she directed a pre-school program and was active in community affairs, helping to found a Meals-On-Wheels program in Princeton. She was instrumental in founding the Rocky Hill Library.
During the 1980s, she served as director of library outreach programs throughout New Jersey for the New Jersey Committee for the Humanities, a state-based program of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
She was predeceased by her first husband, Charles David Allen, in 1979. In 1993 she married Joseph Blotner, biographer of William Faulkner and Robert Penn Warren. She moved to Charlottesville in 1995 following Prof. Blotner's retirement from the English Department at the University of Michigan.
She is survived by three sons, Peter Jackson, Christopher Talbot, and Stephen Noyes Allen; a sister, Priscilla Cortelyou Little of Washington, D.C.; a brother, the Rev. James Upton Cortelyou of Lake Luzerne, N.Y.; two step-daughters, Tracy Willoughby of Ann Arbor, Mich. and Pamela Blotner of Berkeley, Calif.; and six grandchildren.
A celebration of her life for her friends and family will be held at Stonebridge at Montgomery at 2 p.m. on Saturday, June 17.
In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to Princeton Hospice.





Marjorie (Martha) later in her life