Ephemeral Assays: Photo Finish

I’ve always had mixed feelings about thoroughbred flat track and steeplechase racing. Many of the horses probably like it on some level, but they get hurt and killed too (though others retire to the greenest of all pastures). It seems to be mainly about idle amusement and gambling addictions, with the burden on the beasts. Historic and gorgeous Saratoga Springs is nearby though—the track there being voted one of the top ten sports venues in the world—and I’ve begun to enjoy going up with my wife and father-in-law, who are longtime fans. I’ve even developed a pretty good long odds system that does not require tons of research and fretting. Hit a $400 triple on a $2 bet last time.

Anyway, two things led to the abandonment of yet another personal moral boycott. Traveling around Ireland some years back, we spent time in a slow-serving pub whose walls were plastered with interesting framed clippings on various derby races. It somehow seemed richer than my admittedly limited knowledge of American racing traditions, from the myth of Seabiscuit to the preoccupation with winning the elusive Triple Crown. Not long after, I ran into an unusual yard sale in the boondocks far from home, and the eccentric proprietress hinted at further riches inside the house. During a private appointment some months later, she produced a thick black binder of British horse racing photos, I expressed minor interest, along with major interest in another item actually of little interest, and the price barriers were hurdled. This prize languished at home for some months before I finally made a project of it. 

These turned out to be hundreds of glossy captioned newspaper file photos, mostly from the late 1960s and ‘70s, averaging about 8” by 10” in size. Most are stamped Syndication International of London (“This photograph must not be used for advertising”), which distributed them to Photo Trends of New York (“For onetime editorial use only. Pix must be returned used or unused”). There were no clues about who amassed rather than returned these, but he or she was clearly in a related industry, such as sportswriting. They are all great photos, as this representative sampling demonstrates, because they made the editorial cut to begin with. The distraction of color is stripped from evocative black and white images, and many of these are all the more intense because of the high monetary and mortal stakes involved. Be warned that some are pretty graphic.

File photo hounds love the captions on the reverse too, but some of the scans are not clear enough, others were faded to begin with, and there is only so much room, so in most cases excerpts appear with the images when you click to enlarge. I kind of got sucked into the whole milieu though, as British horse racing captions are like little well-written history lessons sprinkled with humor and social commentary. Lester Piggott on Dahlia beats out the Queen’s horse Highclere in the richest ever race in Britain, “But she didn’t seem to mind as she gave Lester right royal congratulations.” Jockey Willie Carson advises visiting American upstart Steve Cauthen to “Follow me, but not too close.” Blakeney’s owner “earned himself a special place in horserace history by becoming the first man to breed, train and own a Derby winner since 1908.” “No doubt about it, Australian jockey George Moore is the punters’ pet. He took over the title on Wednesday (7-6-67) when he rode Derby favorite Royal Palace to victory at Epsom. George’s win has got the bookies really worried. Some of them have laid 1000-1 against him winning the five Classic races. George has won three already.” “National Hunt Jockey John Buckingham sprang to fame back in 1967 when he won the coveted Grand National steeplechase classic at Aintree. Admittedly he was lucky then, for that was the year of the fantastic incident when almost the entire field crashed at one fence—the leaders falling and bringing down the rest in a scene of unbelievable chaos.

Buckingham, near the back on the unfancied, unheard of horse Foinavon suddenly appeared, picked his way carefully through the wreckage, and came home alone to win. In spite of his luck, it didn’t make the remaining fences any less massive, and he required all his skill, with sensitive fingers playing on reins as if they were butterfly wings, knees exerting only gentle persuasive pressure, and a subtle shift of weight, to bring Foinavon home for a remarkable victory. But when Buckingham took part in a Donkey Derby at Stoneleigh, Warwickshire, he found that skill was of no use whatsoever. In company with three other top jockeys, Buckingham was taking part to raise money to repair the village church. Faced with a particularly obstinate mount, Buckingham tried everything he knew to coax the donkey over a small obstacle. He cuddled it, whispered into its ear—no doubt promising the proverbial carrot. But it all got him nowhere, and the race was won by a 16-year-old girl who galloped home with lengths to spare.”

In many cases I felt the need or desire for more information. When the location of champion Red Rum’s half-size bronze statue “was to have taken pride of place in Lord Street, at the heart of Southport’s shopping district,” but was relegated by the town council to a covered arcade off the main street instead, the owner and trainer did not attend the unveiling. “Red Rum has done more for Southport than anybody. It is disgraceful that his statue should be [illegible].” I wondered what those last two or three captioned words were, if Red Rum’s people actually boycotted or were just busy elsewhere, if the council changed its plans because the statue did not come out very well, and where it stands today. A nice linked Wikipedia entry with a photo of the still-arcaded Southport statue provides the following. “Red Rum was bred at Rossenarra Stud in Kells, County Kilkenny, Ireland by Martyn Molony and started off in life running in cheap races as a sprinter. After being passed from training yard to training yard, he found his footing when Liverpool car dealer Ginger McCain bought him for his client Noel Le Mare and famously trained the horse on the sands at Southport, Merseyside. McCain, who also won the Grand National in 2004 with Amberleigh House, took Red Rum for a therapeutic swim in the sea off Southport before every Grand National—Red Rum suffered most of his life from a debilitating, incurable bone disease in his foot.” Red Rum is said to be the most famous racehorse the world has ever seen. He lived to the age of thirty, and is buried near the final post at Aintree where he won three Grand Nationals and placed second in two others. 

Googling some faded spellings of personal names, it seems the controversy is still alive all these years later, according to a 2004Guardian piece which is conflated into one paragraph here. “He was the only horse to win the Grand National three times; he was once crowned BBC Sports Personality of the Year (despite being equine) and he appeared at the switch-on of Blackpool illuminations. But people who worked with him say the bronze half life-sized statue of Red Rum looks more like a donkey. Now the statue is at the centre of an extraordinary spat after plans were announced to move it temporarily to an exhibition of Red Rum memorabilia at Newmarket. Ginger McCain, Red Rum’s trainer, and his wife Beryl say the National Horseracing Museum in Suffolk should not borrow the statue for its forthcoming exhibition. Mrs McCain said: ‘We will not have that statue in the exhibition. It is absolutely dreadful. Nobody in the horseracing industry likes it. It doesn’t even look like him—it looks more like a donkey.’ The statue, housed in a shopping arcade in Southport, Merseyside, was described by Mr McCain when it was unveiled in 1979 as ‘a bit plump and heavy.’ He added that the horse looked ‘thick-set and short.’ But it is incredibly popular, drawing hundreds of fans every year who pay homage to the great horse and occasionally leave packets of his favourite sweets, Polo mints. Annette Yarrow, the sculptor of the bronze, said yesterday: ‘He certainly does not look like a donkey and there are many other people who were very happy with it. One of the problems at the time was about the cost, but I did it at cost price.’ Fans called for a life-size model which was later installed at Aintree racecourse. It is the only statue which has been approved by the McCains. Hilary Bracegirdle, director of the National Horseracing Museum, said the row put her in an awkward position: ‘I think the difficulty is if you love horses then you know them to be as individual as your own son’s face. Clearly, Mr McCain is very passionate about Red Rum and feels it hasn’t done him justice. It is a terribly difficult position for me to be in and I had absolutely no idea they didn’t approve of the statue.’” Looks like Hilary Bracegirdle didn’t do all of her homework, wot?

Newspaper file photos are fairly uncommon. Only so many were distributed, and most of those have been discarded over the years. The medium is very sturdy if cared for correctly, but quite fragile if not. In terms of value, very specific topics with easily searchable terms do well. The champion “Shergar” will sell, for example, where “horse racing photo” will get left in the dust. Look for captioned file photos in good condition, complete with legible names and dates. Earlier file photo captions were on strips of paper taped to the reverse, while newer examples are usually printed right on the reverse. EBay is still your best bet for marketing photographica that is somewhere between very good and stellar, and if you have many examples to offer in the same subject area run them consecutively and build up a following. Most of these horsey pics went to England, and they averaged around $25 each, with many in excess of $100, up to around $300. That will buy a lot of $2 bets and cold beers next August.

Shawn Purcell operates Balopticon Books & Ephemera and can be contacted at http://www.balopticon.com.

#ephemera

Book Review: Of Bookmen & Printers, by Ward Ritchie

Of Bookmen & Printers: A Gathering of Memories, by Ward Ritchie. Los Angeles, CA: Dawson’s Book Shop, 1989.

Books about booksellers can be overly aware of how legendary they are, or steeped in formality and tradition, but this California-style treatment is just plain laid back and likeable. The author quit law school and went off to study printing with a French master in the late 1920s, became a denizen of book row in downtown Los Angeles when there was still a there there, set up the Ward Ritchie Press, and became intimately involved with important booksellers, Californiana collectors, and printers along the way. Rare books were at their feet like nuggets of gold, the sun shone on endless scented orange fields, and the printer’s ink and red wine flowed.

Of Bookmen & Printers is actually a compilation of mostly previously published material, somewhat revised here. Its chapters therefore can stand on their own, having grown out of talks that were later published, limited edition printings, and journal articles. It begins with, “For Ward a Foreword,” by Lawrence Clark Powell. “A Bookman’s Los Angeles in the 1930s” sets the stage. Other chapters are titled, “Jake Zeitlin, When He Was Joyous Young,” “Paul Landacre, Artist and Wood Engraver,” “Merle Armitage, His Many Loves and Varied Lives,” “Robinson Jeffers, Recollections of the Poet,” “Jane Grabhorn, The Roguish Printer of the Jumbo Press,” “Paris Adventure with François-Louis Schmied,” “John Cage, The Maniac of Music,” “St. John Hornby and the Ashendene Press,” “A Requiem for Lawrence Clark Powell,” and “Virginia City and the Genesis of a Cookbook,”—this last one a bit out of place—followed by an index. It is modest in nature; stronger on impressions than bookish details; and more about fine printing, private presses, and often eccentric authors than bookselling; but it all works together well and is highly recommended. Only 500 copies were printed, designed by the author and issued without a dust jacket. I just scored a nice signed copy from a California bookseller, and there are a good dozen still out there at reasonable prices. Some excerpts follow. 

“In the 1930s Los Angeles was not exactly a small town, but it had an intimacy which the subsequent years have lost. There was such a concentration of business that one could run into a dozen acquaintances while walking not more than a few blocks. The big red Pacific Electric cars brought shoppers from miles around, and the yellow street cars crisscrossed the city, all leading to the area we called ‘downtown.’

“To me the heart was where the bookstores were. Along with a few bars and some mangy upstairs hotels of questionable morality, they lined both sides of West Sixth Street from Grand Avenue nearly to Figueroa. A few shops hung on the fringes, such as Dawson’s, a block away at the corner of Wilshire and Grand, and Louis Epstein’s bookstore over on Eighth Street. A half a million books or more were to be seen within this area of a few blocks, and booklovers flocked to the lure. There was variety in both books and establishments. For instance, in Ralph Howey’s little English nook one could sink into a soft leather chair and chat about books while stroking a binding by Cobden-Sanderson or looking at the pages of an edition printed by Giambattista Bodoni. Each book was in its place, immaculate and carefully chosen. Or up the street a block, one could gingerly slip into David Kohn’s Curio Book Shop, where a hundred thousand books were crammed helter-skelter in bins, piled on the floor, stacked in the basement, with only a bare semblance of order. It was a grimy job searching here for a treasure, since more than a decade of dust was mingled with the books; but for the hunter it was a delightful challenge. No one could possibly anticipate what might be discovered in the mélange. Kohn usually stood noncommittally in the doorway, hat pulled down to his ears, seemingly uninterested, while emitting an occasional eructation that echoed down the canyon of Sixth Street and created minor disturbances in the hotel cribs on the upstairs floors.

“Mingled with these shops were Bunster Creeley’s Abbey Bookshop, Ben Epstein’s Argonaut, Borden’s, Roger’s, Lofland’s, Holmes’s huge emporium of books, several incidental shops whose names I have long forgotten, and, of course, Jake Zeitlin’s bookshop and gallery.

“The aficionados of books were regular visitors to most of these shops, but there gradually developed a division of affection which found the serious, older, and Californiana collectors gathering around ‘Club’ Dawson, while the younger writers, artists, and printers loitered at ‘Club’ Zeitlin.

“Zeitlin’s first shop was on Hope Street across from the Bible Institute, but he soon moved to 705 ½ West Sixth Street in a little half-store, just big enough for a couple of hundred books and a minimal gallery where he hung the prints and drawings of local artists. It was here I first saw the books of the great printers of the 1920s—Eric Gill, Francis Meynell of the Nonesuch Press, Robert Gibbings of the Golden Cockerel Press, and Edwin and Robert Grabhorn of San Francisco. Jake gathered around him a stimulating group of artists and writers—Paul Landacre, Will Connell, Merle Armitage, Arthur Millier, Paul Jordan-Smith, Phil Townsend Hanna, W. W. Robinson, and many others including printers Bruce McCallister, Gregg Anderson, Grant Dahlstrom, and Saul Marks. One dropped by Zeitlin’s to see the new books from England and to talk to Jake. There was stimulating action there.

“But the favorite haunt of the bookmen of Los Angeles was the spot on Grand Avenue at the corner of Wilshire. There they encountered Ernest Dawson, a master merchandiser of books. He regularly juggled them from table to table and from shelf to shelf. As a result, it always appeared that a new library of books had arrived, keeping his customers constantly interested and inveterate repeaters. There were other inducements. ‘Father’ Dawson, as he was known, never wished to have a book in stock too long. If it lingered on the shelves for over six months, he’d itch to get rid of it. Before long he’d slash the price, and if it didn’t sell then, he’d cut the price again. This created an incentive to visit Dawson’s regularly, since one could never tell when these reductions would take place. Inevitably, this also led to a game of waiting, watching, and returning as often as possible to check on those books which one might want but thought might again be a victim of Father Dawson’s price-cutting pencil. This game of wits sometimes paid off, but often a less patient book-watcher spoiled the game by buying the book one was stalking.

“Books were comparatively cheap in the 1930s—great bargains by today’s standards—but most of us didn’t have much money to fritter on them. Dawson provided for the impoverished with a table of bargains at the street entrance. Here for from ten cents to fifty cents were the books from which I built much of my own library. While books provided a part of the excitement of a visit to Dawson’s in those days, more came in observing the parade of bookmen who would drop by several times a week.

“I remember many of them in hero worship. I was young and in love with books, and these were men of stature in that world. I doubt if Los Angeles will ever again know quite such an assemblage of bookmen. And for them this kingdom of books was concentrated in such a few blocks that there was an almost constant meeting and mingling.”

“Some of the most interesting books I ever bought on the bargain counter at Dawson’s were from the library of A. Gaylord Beaman, which they sold after his death. He was a man whose catholic tastes encompassed literature and incidental private press products. Gay was a member of the Zamorano Club and the Authors Club of Hollywood. His business was insurance, but his avocation was authors. No author ever came to Los Angeles without being met at the station by Gay Beaman. He’d greet them and dine them and then take them through the routine of Sixth Street’s book row before rounding the corner to Dawson’s. Many an author I met there, brought by Gay Beaman—Sherwood Anderson, Rockwell Kent, Christopher Morley, among them. The Authors Club in the late 1930s was the domain of Rupert Hughes. What a storyteller he was—quite risqué, but funny. He was always followed with a good anecdote by Irwin S. Cobb, also usually rather off-color. As I remember it, Beaman at those meetings was continually table-hopping—greeting, chatting, and seldom eating. He brought Somerset Maugham to one luncheon in 1941, and, as was customary, Maugham was asked to say a few words.

“He told of an interesting experience he had had recently. Cuba, it seems, hired an advertising agency to promote the sale of Havana cigars. It proposed a campaign based upon a series of short, short stories in which both a beautiful girl and a windfall of money came as a direct result of smoking a cigar. The agency wrote Maugham inquiring if he’d be willing to write five such sketches for them. He replied that since he wrote to make a living, he was not averse to the proposition and would be willing to write the five stories for $25,000.

“This extravagant request, for those days, rather shook the agency, and it wrote back to inquire if the sum suggested might not be a little too high. Maugham replied that since this was to be his first experience in writing commercial advertisements, it might be considered that he was selling his virginity, and he had been told by women of the profession that this was a priceless commodity and worth much more that the usual payment. He hardly expected a reply and never received one.”

“Some of the best parties I remember were given in the patio of his [Robert Woods] hillside house on Briarcliffe Road. He’d gather all of the Californiana crowd. Wagner and Hodge would relax and expound. J. Frank Dobie came from Texas a couple of times, saying they were the best parties he ever attended east or west. I can well understand his appreciation, with a dozen or two of our local collectors and historians on hand with whom to talk. He’d never been surrounded by such wealth anywhere.”

“Gregg Layne, along with Will Robinson, had the most intimate and detailed knowledge of anyone of Los Angeles history. It seems a pity that a whole lifetime’s accumulation of information such as his should be lost with him. As far as I know he left no notes or jottings and very few written articles. Will Robinson has mentioned to me that one of his great regrets is not having made notes of the conversations he had with Gregg about local history. His knowledge was incredible. I remember a Zamorano meeting at which he talked about the streets of early Los Angeles, and pausing for every street number, he recalled that building’s history, its inhabitants, and an interesting anecdote of early happenings there.

“Layne’s knowledge of Californiana gave him an advantage over most of the local booksellers. He accumulated one outstanding library that he sold to Mrs. Edward L. Doheny, who in turn gave it to the University of Southern California. With nary a moment’s hesitation he began another, which eventually was purchased by UCLA. For most of his life he sold draftsmen’s materials, but upon retiring he was retained by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power to write a history of the development of water in the Los Angeles area. He worked five years on it and, later, often remarked that it was the best unpublished $30,000 history ever locally written. The reluctance of the department to publish it is beclouded in politics and finances.

“Larry Powell grabbed him for the UCLA Library when he left city employment, and the final year of his life was most enjoyably spent ferreting out the invaluable books of the Robert Cowan Library. UCLA had bought Cowan’s collection of Californiana and, following the then usual procedure, had not kept them intact and segregated within their Californiana or Special Collections. They had been distributed into the general collection of a million books. Gregg’s last days were happy ones, ferreting out these treasures and reassembling a rare library.

“Zeitlin’s Bookstore was the first to abandon the area of Sixth Street, moving in the 1930s to the old carriage house of the Earl house on Wilshire Boulevard, an extension of the Otis Art Institute. Others left as their ramshackle quarters were demolished and banks and high-rise building took over. Dawson was ousted from his corner at Wilshire and Grand, but he hung to the area on Figueroa near Sixth for several years when this building, too, surrendered to progress. Now there is not a remnant, not a trace left in the area of those bookstores which so well served the book collectors of Los Angeles during the 1930s and 1940s.

“Few from those days have survived. Others have come but are scattered like leaves in a wind about a city that has lost its central core.”

“Not too long after this bizarre affair [in which a bookstore customer claiming to be Rockwell Kent was wined and dined], I read that the real Rockwell Kent was planning a lecture tour that would bring him West. He had belonged to the same college fraternity as Larry Powell and I, and we cautiously wrote him and asked if he’d consider giving the annual Phi Gamma Delta lecture at Occidental College. He agreed.

“Jake, Larry, and I attended his lecture and afterward drove him up to my print shop studio for a dinner of spaghetti and quantities of red wine. He regaled us with tales of his undergraduate pranks and his adventures in Alaska and Newfoundland, among others. The wine had made us friends, and Jake suggested that the Primavera Press would like to print Larry’s recently completed thesis on Robinson Jeffers if Rockwell would illustrate it. Kent took another long swig of wine and agreed.

“I made some hurried sketches of what we’d need, including pictorial initials for each chapter opening. Of course Kent wanted to know what the letters would be. Fearful that if I delayed he might change his mind, I wrote down a dozen or so random letters that popped into my mind. Kent stuffed my notes in his pockets, and, surprisingly enough, in a couple of weeks a package of drawings arrived from him. Powell considerately rewrote all of the opening paragraphs of the chapters in his book to accommodate my haphazard choices of initial letters.”

“This was a beautiful press, much more decorative than most Washington presses. Willard Morgan discovered it in rusty pieces in the mining ghost town of Bodie. By local tradition, which Paul would hardly dispute, it had once been used by Mark Twain, but that is quite apocryphal. Morgan deposited it with Landacre, who lovingly scraped it, painted it, and reassembled it. It was a large press that was difficult for Paul to handle alone, but he would pull mightily from the front while Margaret pushed with all her strength from the back. Together they were able to hand-print editions of fifty or sixty copies from Paul’s blocks. It often took them several weeks to complete even a portion of that number. Sometimes the full edition was never completed, as they would print copies only when they had an order.”

“At that time I had an old ranch house on the eastern edge of Hollywood where William S. Hart had lived as a foreman when he was working cattle in the hills around what is now known as Silver Lake. Early movie producers, desperately needing a cowboy, had picked him up and made him an early star despite his lack of acting ability. The original Disney Studios were just up the street, and most of the artists lived and loved in the neighborhood. Our house was on a hillside of Griffith Park Boulevard and was possibly the oldest house in Hollywood. I had dug into the hillside beneath it to create a printing studio with typecases, presses, a whitewashed brick fireplace, a grand piano, and a large library. It was a hangout for the artists at Disney and others in the vicinity. Larry Powell aptly christened it ‘Ritchie’s Roadhouse.’”

“Among the many attractive books published by the Colt Press was a series of small cookbooks. For one of these, The Epicure in China, Jane [Grabhorn] had brazenly lifted the recipes from the food page of theSan Francisco Examiner. Soon after the book’s publication, the Examiner called to ask if it might be allowed to reprint her fine recipes in the food section, for which it was willing to pay her. She was happy to accept the offer.”

The chapter on Charles Harry St. John Hornby of the Ashendene Press is particularly interesting. Ritchie paid him a visit in England between his printer’s apprenticeship and his return to California in 1931, and was warmly received in a house full of magnificent books and early manuscripts. “After tea we descended into the garden in back of the house and to the small building he’d built for the press. There was a trickling stream running through the property, and Hornby pointed out where Nell Gwyn, the mistress of Charles II, was said to bathe in the nude.” Hornby had received early encouragement from William Morris, and lavished the same on those who sent him samples of their work, including the author. The remaining passages are from a talk Hornby gave to an audience of accomplished printers at the Double Crown Club at this time, attended by the impressionable Ward Ritchie.

“I had a good deal of difficulty with the dampening at first as I found, as I had found before, that the paper cockled badly. Eventually I got over this by using interleaving sheets considerably larger that the paper itself. These I dampened with a sponge and left under 112 pounds pressure for twelve hours, afterwards interleaving the printing sheets and leaving them under pressure for a further twelve hours. This is the method I employ to this day. I also at this time in 1896 procured a really good ink from the firm of Janecke & Schneeman of Hanover. My presswork from 1896 onwards showed a marked improvement, but I always labored with the disadvantage of having to do my work at odd times, whenever I could snatch a spare hour or two. This naturally did not conduce the best work and I am afraid that my books savoured of amateurishness in many ways. But I did not profess to be anything more than an amateur. I was printing entirely for my own amusement, and such little books as I did I gave away to my friends and others whom I found were interested in the Press. I did not offer any to the public. I received some encouragement from American collectors, but very little in this country.”

“I consulted with the omniscient Robert Proctor at the British Museum and, after examining numerous fifteenth-century books, decided that I would like to have a type modeled upon the Subiaco type of Sweynham and Pannartz, with which three books had been printed in 1465 before these printers moved to Rome. Morris at one time made experiments with this type but never went so far as having it cut. Walker and Cockerell, who were then in partnership, made photographs for me from a vellum copy of Cicero’s De Oratore in the British Museum: My type was cut by E. P. Prince and cast on a great primer body by Miller & Richard. In these days of high prices it may be of interest to record that the total bill for photographing and cutting amounted to only 100 pounds. I was a very proud man when the first dozen letters reached me and I was able to set up a few specimen lines. I still think, as I thought then, that it is a very noble type. Its possession made me ambitious to produce something more important than I had hitherto done. I bought a larger press and had a new make of paper of larger size and decided to print La Commedia di Dante in three small octavo volumes. Of these the Inferno appeared in 1902. It was the last book done entirely by my own hand, and it gave me many a hard day’s work.”

“The setting-up and printing of 150 copies of this book was a very heavy tax on the spare time of a busy man, and I decided that I must either give up the idea of producing important books or take on a regular pressman. I decided on the latter course and engaged George Faulkner, who had had his training at the Oxford University Press and who is with me to this day. He required a good deal of licking into shape but eventually developed into a very good and careful pressman. I did not engage a regular compositor, continuing to do most of the setting-up myself with the help of my cousin and Faulkner, whom I taught and who luckily, in those days, was not trammeled by a trade union.”

“With the appearance of the Inferno of Dante I made another change in the policy of the Press. Hitherto, as I have said, I did not issue my books to the public. But I found that there was a growing interest in them amongst collectors, and I was continually getting letters from people anxious to acquire them. I could not give away copies to all and sundry, so I came to the conclusion that the only thing to do was to issue a prospectus in the ordinary way and accept subscriptions. There is really no other way of getting books into the hands of those interested in them. The expenses of the Press, with its more ambitious programme, were growing and might grow still further. I had to think about recovering at least some of them. I do not know how other Private Presses have fared, but I think it may interest you to know that after thirty-five years, throwing in my services for nothing, I am about ‘all square’ without profit or loss. I hope, therefore, that I have given good value for the money. The profit I have had, and it is a rich return, is the immense interest and pleasure I have gotten out of the Press. For the consolation of others who may be thinking of following in my footsteps I might add that I have probably run my Press rather extravagantly and that there may be something to be made out of a Private Press in these days by anyone who does really good work and who is indifferent to whether or not any profit will result. But I should not advise the venture as a quick road to fortune even thought it may lead to fame.”

Shawn Purcell operates Balopticon Books & Ephemera and can be contacted at http://www.balopticon.com.

A Moving Experience: Abracadabra Bookshop

Before getting into the book business, I taught Colorado & Western American History at a local college. I couldn’t help noticing that every time there was a budget crunch, they laid off faculty members (never administrators!). This did not give one a sense of security, so I decided to be prepared. Using my private collection of about 600 books on the American West, I opened the surprisingly named Western Americana Bookshop in a corner of the Nepenthes Café, a period coffee shop in downtown Denver. It prospered, even though I was only able to spend a few hours a week there.

This was January, 1977, and within a few months, I was offered the stock from the famed Stage House II, Boulder’s best bookshop. This was my first experience moving approximately 10,000 books. Dick Schwartz, the owner of Stage House II, kindly packed all the books for us, and we rented a U-Haul to move them to Denver, where we initially stored them. That was easy. Realizing we could not get 10,000 books into the 180 square foot corner of the coffee shop, we relocated to Court Place, in upper downtown Denver. The space was located above a bowling alley, and was a former city department, conveniently divided into sections with half-walls. These made for great sectional organization of the books into their various subjects, with plenty of room for further purchases. Within a year or so, we had grown to 25,000 books, and the bowling alley building had been purchased by the Hare Krishnas, as sharp an investment group as I have ever known. They closed the alley, and turned off the old boiler, which provided heat. I turned it back on, and they threatened me with a lawsuit. We decided it was time to move again!

It was 1981, in the late Spring—May in fact—when we moved into our own quarters at 3827 West 32nd Avenue, behind a fine old Victorian mansion. The former owners had run an antique shop there for about 30 years, slowly selling off bits of the house. With fear in our hearts, we negotiated an enormous mortgage and bought the whole place. Our second moving experience reflected our growing knowledge of the art of moving books. We rented a stake bed truck, exploited the labor of our 6’4″ son-in-law, and other friends, and parking the truck in the alley, were able to pass the boxes of books out the window, into the sure hands of Blaine Eno, who neatly piled them up. While it took three days to pack the books, it took but one to move them to the new location, and another three days to put them on the shelf. Over the next few weeks, we gradually alphabetized them.

At this new location in Denver we grew to about 40,000 volumes aided by Ms. Kennedy, Bruce Albright and others. We had about 2,200 square feet of space, but space being a vacuum, we managed to fill every possible corner. It was a popular location despite being a little out of the way. I began to develop my thesis that location, location, location, does not apply to the book business. Now it is a well known fact that books breed in the dark, and we did not stop buying, so by 1994 we had outgrown our space, and decided to move again, this time to 32 South Broadway, where we quickly grew to over 80,000 volumes.

One of the things we had learned in our previous moves was to pack our books as alphabetically as possible. I secured hundreds of boxes, all free from the local supermarket, and we hired extra help to pack them, section by section by section. I would assign a person to a particular subject, and with a magic marker they recorded the letters of the alphabet corresponding to the authors within that subject right on the box. Thus one person would pack all the books on Colorado, marking each box “A-C, Colorado”, etc. In the meantime, we built bookcases in our new location on Broadway, so that we could put the appropriate subject right into place as we unloaded. Again, U-Haul provided a now large truck, and with plenty of help, we moved the entire 40,000 volumes from shelf to shelf in three days. We were getting pretty proficient at the moving business.

During the period 1994-1999, we were blessed with the able management of John Snurka, and the skillful sales ability of Ken Chapin and Caren Eno. These were the golden years of Booksearch before the Internet really got going. Thanks to John, who had learned computer skills while serving in the Navy, we were on the leading edge of technology, and listed our stock on Bookquest, the first online database. Dreamy days indeed! Broadway was a very busy main street, and clients flocked in through the doors. Well, at least a dozen a day. People all over the country were calling us to find books, and the transition from bookscouting to internet database searching was in full swing. For a brief two months in 1999 I actually thought I was going to get rich in the book business!

But the internet was a two-headed beast. Soon people were finding their own books, and no longer needed us. Business declined. Seeing the writing on the wall, Ken and John headed for other pastures. We eventually caught on to the reality of what was happening. Shop business was also declining, as more and more people abandoned book shops to buy online. The online business slowly improved, and we made that our main emphasis—adding books to the computer. Dull stuff indeed compared to the joys of discussing the merits of books and their subjects with real, live people. During this period, I did a study of the numbers of book buyers in Denver, and was appalled to learn that they comprised less than 1% of the population. In 2001, we decided to move again, for a variety of reasons. We looked for greener pastures, a change of environment from Denver, and to move closer to family. Thus we headed to the Texas coastal town of Rockport.

We were, in part, motivated by the large numbers of Texas book buyers that we had accumulated as a result of our Booksearch. People came from all over to Rockport to vacation, and we thought that this might be a way to find new customers, and grow the book business. We had, by now, around 80,000 volumes. Following the experience of our previous move, we hired eight extra people, armed them with magic markers, and assigned each a subject. We quickly ran out of boxes, and for the first time, purchased 1.5 cubic foot boxes, the perfect size for moving. There are people who sell second-hand boxes, and I bought 1,100 at 50 cents a piece, much below what you would pay for new boxes—and they were just as good. All I had to do was call and say I needed a couple of hundred more boxes, and a little van would show up within the hour and unload them. I also called a broker who provided us with a driver and a 60 foot tractor trailer for $1,250 for the trip to Texas. Despite the fact that he came down and looked at the books and thought they would all fit in one trailer, it turned out that, after loading it, we were 50% over the weight limit. Though 80,000 books will fit in one trailer, you need two. My wallet grew thinner.

The transfer of the excess weight was done by the truckers and the broker’s staff at their location. Big mistake. Though the loss was not large, a few of these boxes must have fallen off the proverbial truck! However, on the bright side, we had them down in Rockport three days later, and on the shelf in three days more. Alphabetizing was fairly easy due to the letters and subjects being on each box. And again, I had arranged for some of the shelves to be built ahead of time, at our new location at 601 East Market Street. We could look out our front door, and there, barely 500 yards away (and slightly downhill) were the waters of Aransas Bay! Ah, Paradise.

We found the people exceptionally friendly, and other Texas book dealers were helpful and generous in their sharing of clients and expertise. We were pleasantly surprised at the amount of business that came in the door. Texans are serious about their books, and especially about the history of their state. We even contemplated whether or not this could be a booktown, like Hay-on-Wye. But Texas had a dark side—taxes. In 2004 we were notified of their intention to tax out-of-print books annually as inventory. Now a book dealer may keep stock for years, and paying inventory tax year after year on the same item will kill you. Also, their real estate taxes are astronomical. There was no interest on the part of Texas politicians to correct this error, even though we engaged in a minor campaign to encourage them to do so. Politicians don’t read books, apparently.

We stayed in Rockport for three years. We enjoyed the Third Coast, and especially the people. But we were being taxed to death. So, after a nation-wide examination of taxes, and who had the least, we decided to move back to Denver. There are other states with low taxes, like Mississippi and New Mexico, but Colorado is pretty good. Armed with the experience of our previous moves, I had saved the boxes, accumulated more, lined up two tractor trailers, and put an ad in the paper for people to pack books. I expected four to five. This was, after all, a town of only 15,000 people. But 50 people showed up, and I kept 40 of them. More magic markers were needed. A training class in book packing and the need to pack alphabetically was held. And three hours later, every book was packed and ready to go! The first trailer was there, and it took only four hours to load. We did the same with the second trailer. Clearly, I have missed my calling! Lock, stock and 80,000+ volumes were on the road and so were we. It took less than two days for the trucks to make the 1,200 mile journey, and we were ready for them when they arrived. I called ahead to the day labor people in Denver, and ordered eight people to unload, which was accomplished in six hours, total, both trailers. I selected four of the brightest to shelve, and one worked for me for two weeks making sure that every shelf was in alphabetical order.

The books arrived in good order, because of careful packing. I pack as many as possible flat, with larger books standing on edge to fill out the box. Well, most of the time. There was very little damage. This year we purchased in excess of 15,000 volumes, and are now around 100,000. We have plenty of space at our new location. I think we do. Surely we must. If anyone is interested in around 1,800 1.5 cubic foot boxes, don’t hesitate to get in touch.

We are now comfortably established in a business condo about 150 yards from I-70 at Quebec in Denver, at 7030 East 46th Avenue Drive, Unit E. On a clear day, we take in the majesty of the Rocky Mountains, from Pike’s Peak to Long’s Peak. Our business is now mostly on the internet. I am not getting rich in the book business, but I keep hoping. Or not. It isn’t, and never has been, about money. Being around books all day, and occasionally enjoying a good talk with a customer on some aspect of the book world, is not all bad. In fact, it is still terrific fun. I look forward to getting into the shop every day. It sure beats working for a living.

Please feel free to contact me for further information.

Alan Culpin operates the Abracadabra Bookshop in Denver, CO, and can be contacted at http://www.abrabks.com.

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