Mercurial Season, with Books

The first day of spring arrives at this time every year—usually more than once. I mean, one day it’s warm and sunny, the next two it’s chilly and drab. 

A few days ago the temperature topped 70 degrees for the first time. This means that everyone gets out of work at 3 p.m. At any rate, that was the rule at Bookmen, and I try to remain faithful to it, which isn’t difficult these days; I hardly have any work to do.

One gray day recently, we made an effort to cook up something special. Hilary spent the morning and a good part of the afternoon at the potting studio in Minnetonka. But we’d marked out an itinerary, and when she got home we set off.

Our first stop was Pioneer Park on the east bank of the Mississippi in Northeast. We took a stroll across the railroad bridge and made our way around Nicollet Island, on the lookout for stray buffleheads and early arriving kinglets. My thoughts turned to the history of the island I’d helped Chris and Rushica Hage put together a decade ago. Nowadays few are aware, perhaps, that most of the attractive clapboard houses we were admiring during our stroll were moved there from South Minneapolis during the 1960s as part of an urban renewal project. It remains one of the few neighborhoods in the vicinity that has been neither neglected nor overbuilt.

Our next stop was Kramarczuk’s deli, where we picked up a few tasty-looking dessert items. Then it was on to Eat My Words used bookstore, which has recently relocated to the western fringe of Southeast, right around the corner from Brasa and only a block or two from the apartment where Hilary and I lived in 1975. (Egad!) 

Hilary was looking for a copy of Wuthering Heights for her book club. No luck. "That type of thing goes pretty quick," the young man behind the counter told us. But before we left she did buy a slim paperback copy of James Thurber’s My Life and Hard Times. It was an inspired choice.

On the way home we stopped briefly at Gorka Palace to pick up an order of chicken biryani and beef korma we’d ordered before leaving the house. Everything fell into place like clockwork.

After dinner we sat around in the living room reading  goofy narratives with titles like “The Night the Bed Fell on Father” and “The Car We Had to Push.” To add to the fun, I fetched copies of S. J. Perelman’s Last Laugh and Robert Benchley’s My Ten Years in a Quandary: and How They Grew from the other room.

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The next morning was as bright as the previous afternoon has been overcast, but a sharp wind made it as chilly as ever—possibly more so. In the midst of scanning the news—terrible as ever—Hilary noticed an article reporting the opening of a new bookstore in St. Anthony Park in the building where Micawber’s used to be. We decided to get out into the day and take a look.

It’s a small shop, utilizing only two of the tree rooms Micawber’s stocked. Stepping in from the bright morning, the lighting struck me as poor. And to my eyes, the shelves seemed to contain a large number of paperbacks with unpleasantly colorful pastel bindings. I don’t know why. The few used books I spotted had been stocked on rotating wooden spindles that looked cute, but tottered, creaked, and groaned when you tried to spin them.

Then again, I have so many books at home that few retail bookstores hold my interest for long.

A few minutes later, perusing the sale items in the public library a block away, I came upon a thick, good-as-new, hardcover biography of Adam Smith, priced at fifty cents. I was thumbing through it when it occurred to me that I already owned a biography of Adam Smith back home, half the size, waiting on the shelf, unread.

Later that afternoon we took one final jaunt in search of Wuthering Heights. The website of Magers and Quinn, in Uptown, reported several copies and editions in stock.

It was a pleasant drive down the parkway, though the skies had turned gray again and the ice on Cedar Lake was even grayer. Having parked the car on a side street near the store, we walked past a block of shuttered restaurants, several of which we’d had it in mind to try, but never did.

Magers and Quinn is the best bookstore around, in my opinion. And I was happy to see there were plenty of people inside, browsing. Hilary hunted down the edition of Wuthering Heights she was looking for, while I drifted through the archway to the chaotic remainder shelves on the back wall. I thumbed briefly through an astonishingly thick volume of Elizabeth Bishop’s collected letters, then hit on a less massive Oxford edition of the complete poems of Robert Herrick, priced at two dollars. Bingo!

I know next to nothing about Herrick, which is why I bought the book. I’m finding his religious poems less uncanny than those of George Herbert, and his amorous secular poems less brilliant than Donne’s. 

I’m not giving up on him yet. After all, he did write these famous lines:

Gather ye rose-buds while ye may,

Old time is still a flying;

And this same flower that smiles today,

Tomorrow will be dying.

But let's get real: he’s no match for Thurber.