HOW TO ASK FOR A BOOK [R, 1-9-25]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Adventures of An Old Man—HOW TO ASK FOR A BOOK [R, 1-9-25]

 

Daughter Katie Kennedy, the author, [1] got me Benjamin Stevenson’s Everyone on This Train is a Suspect, for Christmas. It is a sequel. The narrator, Ernest Cunningham, claims to be a reliable narrator, but that is the sort of thing an unreliable narrator would say [2], and in an era of unreliable narrators, I decided I should go to Morgenstern’s book store to get Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone, to read the first book first.

A book store is a popular place after Christmas. I got the very last parking place, a handicapped slot, as far from the door as possible, which seems an odd place to put the handicapped parking places. I guess it’s because there is a cut in the curb there for folks who can’t do high stepping anymore. Like me.

 

Whenever I can, I practice “possibility communication” rather than phatic communication.  I try to say something that fits the situation but elicits a response that tells me something about the other person. So, I said to the young woman at the counter, “Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone.” She said, “But are you a reliable narrator?”

Which reminds me, of course, of the time I wanted Elaine Palencia’s new book. I went to the Lincoln Square Walden’s in Urbana, IL and told the woman at the counter, “I want A Small Caucasian Woman.” Then I realized she was a large, non-Caucasian woman. She spread out her arms, and said, “Honey, why you want a small, Caucasian woman?”

The Morgenstern’s clerk laughed so hard when I told her about that she almost lost her retainer. It was very gratifying.

Then there was the time when Pages For All Ages was still in the Round Barn Center in Champaign, IL and I wanted the book by my clergy colleague, Dick Watts, written with Dom Crossan. I said to the clerk, “Who Is Jesus?” He perked up and said, “I know the answer to that!” I was afraid he might try to evangelize me, but he led me straight away to the proper shelf. [3]

As I waited for quite a while, as two clerks, communicating on tiny walkie-talkies hung around their necks, looked in every nook and cranny [4] for Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone—no problem, since Morgenstern’s is a great atmosphere, and I was in a red leather chair—I saw a very handsome man [Looks a lot like me] with wispy white hair and beard, on a walker, its basket full of big books, accompanied by a young, 70ish woman, who looked both proud and exasperated and said to me, “That’s my father. He’s 101 years old. He still buys long books.” He smirked a smirk that said, “I buy green bananas, too.”

The peripatetic clerks finally found Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone on the table just inside the front door. I was a bit disappointed. It meant I would have to get up out of that comfortable chair. As the clerk got into her cash register/computer to check me out, she asked, a bit suspiciously, “Is Helen McFarland your wife?” When I admitted it, she said, “Then you get a discount.”

Gotta love indie book stores.

John Robert McFarland

1] Hearts on Thin Ice, What Goes Up, Learning to Swear in America, The Constitution Decoded, The Presidents Decoded, etc

2] In my own books and blogs, I have tried to be a reliable narrator, but my family says I have not always succeeded.

3] Which reminds me of the preacher who was trying to make a call in a lakeside community where the streets had no names and most of them dead-ended. He asked several people for directions, but they were all like “Go to where the laundromat was before it burned, and take the alley behind the tavern, and…” He remained lost, until one guy in a pickup said, “Follow me and I’ll lead you there.” The preacher reported, “For the first time in my life, I understood the difference between good advice and a savior.”

4] One of our daughters said, “Because of you, I was thirty years old before I found out that it is not true that nooks are for left-handed people and crannies for the right-handed.”