Rick Simonson

This Is Who I Am (Getting There)
April 6, 2008

For those of us who do frontlist buying, this present patch of early spring is about the only part of a year that represents something akin to 'down-time.' We're talking relative here, knowing there is really no such thing. This is as close as we get, though. The break between fall lists and winter/spring lists is sometimes negligible, and in a store such as ours, blurred by busyness in August and September, there's that commotion to contend with. After the winter lists - forget it - it's all the fall season jockeying of what's coming in, what needs re-ordering, what will fare how for the holidays.

So now it is. The problem with such times, unless one's been pro-active and made getaway plans, is that other things tend to fill the 'voids.' Having had two big trips, on an invited basis, on short notice in the past six months, the idea of travel hasn't come as readily to mind as it otherwise might, much less remembering how to go about it. No invitations have been forthcoming, either.

And this Friday past, there was still actual buying to be done. The last portion of the last commission rep to be in the door - Ted Terry, he of bookselling universes secular and non-secular, sometimes taking a later, longer route to get it all done, was in to finish up. There is yet one appointment to do - seeing Brian Brash who comes out from New York to take the art book line, Actar, around. No saying the season is over yet.

Ted's appointment was done - an hour's worth of ordering, we had a little lunch, falling into old-times talk ... recounting the sequence of his British import lines - Merrimack, Salem House, Trafalgar, hashing over a few others that have come and gone along. I think we've been doing this for over twenty-five years now. It's that way, that long, with him and a few others - George Carroll, Ted Lucia, and John Murray - I do believe.

At the outset, the afternoon looked as though it could go forever, a vast prairie blank in terms of what was on the board. Nothing was scheduled. Email seemed quiet, the phone, too. Friday. There was a list, many items had long been on. Finally, some of the to-dos would be done, there was that resolve. There was also the plan to make a single run up a bit north and make two needed stops in doing so. One was to drop a computer off at a repair shop. The other was to deliver a few hundred copies of a book - Seattle photographer Rosanne Olson's This Is Who I Am - to a photo studio where, a day later, there would be a book publication party.

The computer was in hand and due for its appointed time. But there were no books to take. Every bell-ring of the loading dock door had anticipation, but no dice. We had gotten a call about 'scheduling' the delivery, so we knew things should be along. Finally, I bit the bullet on going, and did the computer drop-off.

Back whence I came, the afternoon further along (and being Friday), there was then the call of the day. Steve Pace of Workman on the line, calling from New York. Later in the day it was than here, but duty is duty - in this case delivering complicated news.

In the course of his message, there was relief, consternation (mild), and a chuckle. The relief was that the copies of Rosanne Olson's books were here ... but not quite. As he put it, I'm sorry we're not getting them to you. I could listen between the lines. That meant a warehouse. Yes, he said. I can go, I said. I heard relief on his end of the line. The other person most involved in this mini-drama was sales rep Kurtis Lowe - at that moment driving all the way back from Montana to be of assistance. Alas, that couldn't have included making the pickup, given he barely would have been over the state line from Idaho, 250 miles east, when the warehouse closed.

Steve proceeded to tell me where this trucking company warehouse was. The part that was complicated was the trouble he had with the street the warehouse is ... I listened past that for the more important information, what town. That word was Sumner. Sumner ... that was a 'fur' piece down ... there was quick route calculating, which freeway to which freeway to which freeway ... Friday rush hour coming ... a sigh or two. It could be done. But first I had to help Mr. Pace. He got all tangled up trying to pronounce the street the warehouse was on. I could barely tell what sound was coming out of his mouth, but took an educated guess: Puyallup? Yes, he realized that must be it. Puyallup, I told him, that is a good-sized town (next town from Sumner). It's a tribe, it's a river, it's even a state fair (people who go to the state fair 'do the Puyallup').

I have a feeling that if Costco's head buying offices were located in Puyallup instead of Issaquah, Steve would known his way through Puyallup.

It somehow felt appropriate, this all upon me. If I accept out-of-the-blue bids to Miami or Beijing, then a sudden summons to Sumner should be taken in stride. I did half-wonder if I should have packed lunch or dinner. Who knew when I'd return?

Besides the hummed-to humdrum part of the drive - remembering which AM stations had traffic reports when - the ride gave rise to book-related ruminating. This has been your life. I could go back to 1977, driving Elliott Bay founder Walter Carr's Volvo over Lake Washington, twice a week, more during the holiday rush, to the Bellevue warehouse Ingram briefly operated up this way for a time. There was a 35-cent toll for the bridge. That was Ingram Delivery in those days. 

The terrain I was passing through now was mostly lush, deeply green river valley land. In sequence, the rivers:  the Duwamish; further south, the Green; further south yet, the Puyallup - all rivers draining from nearby headwaters in the Cascade mountains, slowed through the verdant lowlands. Only the green that should be growing that local produce - these could be your best vegetables - is much more the grey and beige of warehouses, office parks, strip malls, shopping centers.

For books, it was like a  graveyard tour of book wholesaler warehouses. That started about nine blocks south of Elliott Bay, where Pacific Pipeline's first real warehouse had been, back in the old pick-book-yourselves, pre-computer days of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Then they grew. Nearby, also in Duwamish lands, was the home of almost-forgotten Moving Books. Then down along the way, in Green River country - where Tukwila, Kent, and Renton all lie - there had been two different larger Pacific Pipeline warehouses (including the final resting place, o unnecessary tragedy, that demise). There was also Koen Pacific's come-and-gone quarters. Driving along, there were memories of making this drive to these places, most often for emergency pick-ups, much like this. Over thirty years now.

Then there was Partners West, the very alive and bustling Partners known and thoroughly appreciated today - and yes, my car almost automatically beckoned me, This is where we're going, yes? To see Gloria (Genee) and Phil (Garrett) and the others there? Many a-time this trip has been made, though enough appreciation can never be expressed for how many times we've been spared the drive for some last-minute pickup (desperately) needed, by the most kind-soul'd act of someone dropping them by on the way home. It felt a little unfaithful, frankly, driving on from there. Beyond Partners ... it was all murky, where going had to be gone.

Enough miles finally passed (how grey were my valleys, how many there were), enough yawns were yawned, enough stop-and-go sequences endured (I sighed with more sympathy than ever for those who do the freeway stop-and-go commute over distances every working day, how is this done?), and Puyallup Street in Sumner was located, along with the trucking company. In a vast warehouse full of who-knows-what there was a little pallet with the boxes of our books. I suspected produce was kept in there, it was so cold. 

To that end, I tried not to think of the contents of the books.  Rosanne Olson's This is Who I Am (Artisan) is a photo-and-text book, a sensitive, beautiful book, of women writing about their relationship to their bodies, and their bodies relative to what is stereotypically portrayed as the prevailing norm. With the texts are Rosanne Olson's photographs of the women and their bodies - all ages, most races and body types. At most the women are 'wearing' diaphanous pieces of fabric. Many, not that. I hoped the closed boxes and closed book covers made them feel warmer.

Going back to Seattle, it was as if the car found some threaded needle. True, this was going against the general rush-hour flow, but various routes, road changes, slips across, were managed, there was a general zipping through, past Elliott Bay and downtown - during which time the sky's grey had given way to a glorious burst-out of late day brightness, the sun, the golden sun. It was God-beams everywhere, anything the sun touched turned to gold. That sun on the new green of budded trees, a sight beyond words.

Alas, all that glitters is not long ... back up north, in Ballard, for a second time in the day, it took ten extra minutes of waiting it out, parked, before the books could be brought in, as a righteous, hail-laced downpour gushed down. As the light would not last, neither would this. The rains did cease. Delivery was finally made.

It was then back to the bookstore, a day ending and a week. The things left on the desk to be done still needed to be. Twenty-four hours later, the piles would still be there, only then I'd be running through to get supplies - bags, offsite stuff, change, newsletters - needed for booksales at the festive publication night party. I'd need to be ready for banter, smiles, music, toasts, saying the price, sensing and being caught up in the forms of happiness that can abound. Gratitude, honor, humility, pride ... about much, one's self, one's being, being human. A beautiful first book. Meeting others who were part of it, everyone realizing it's not just one person. 

That would be fine and fun enough for Saturday (I'd be good and glad for it), but for Friday night, I was heading the other way, seeking to be off the road, seeking quiet, finding the place where the books would be, and the light to read them by.

The sky kept changing, it was suddenly clear again, the clouds parted, the clear blue above and beyond, vivid as if never seen before but being seen now. Long may it glow. I was getting there. Soon it would be dark.  

Posted by Rick Simonson on April 6, 2008 | Comments (0)