Rick Simonson

35 and (Not) Counting
June 29, 2008

Sunday, June 29

After a spring that was colder and wetter than any longtimers can recall, summer finally came to Seattle and the Northwest in the form of some near-record-setting ninety-degree days this weekend.

The second of these is concluding now, as I write this on Sunday evening, in from sitting on the front step. As the sky had darkened a few hours ago, a big Midwest-looking sky full of portent had rolled in. The portent is starting to show itself off.  I felt a bit Midwestern sitting there - no porch swing, but still, a little idleness such as isn't given to the self too often. Neighbors strolling by doing the dog walk. Something else lumbering by, in the shadows across the way - a big cat? No, a raccoon. Then the lightning flashes off to the southeast, a rarity for this part of the country. Closer, closer ... the still air, only a little lightness to it. 

On this day, Elliott Bay, the store I work at, turned thirty-five years of age. June 29, 1973: Walter Carr, freshly transplanted from Colorado Springs, with Nanci McCrackin (employee #1) and a few others on hand, opened the door to the little storefront on Main Street for the first time, the scent of fresh-milled cedar shelves still wafting strongly. I was around all the proceedings - working at the time in a restaurant around the corner - it took awhile for the employment thing to happen. And then, to the surprise of those that know me, it was to do construction work before it was to do anything so dainty as receiving or shelving.

If there was any special observance today, it happened without my being there. My guess is we let this one go by as one day as important (yes) as any other. Sometimes things are done for 35th anniversaries, sometimes not. It's about the last of such years noted. The 0-numbered years get their observance. 

Some of these landmark anniversaries have been memorable for reasons that don't feel so celebratory. Ten years ago, though only Walt and Maggie Carr and maybe two others at the time knew it, the 25th anniversary was celebrated with a sense that it was going to be the last anniversary. His plans at that point were to close the store, thinking it unlikely that anyone would be found to buy. Thankfully, the unlikely happened.

I remember barely surviving the 10th anniversary. It was decided we should celebrate with a 40% off sale. The store was so mobbed for most all its thirteen hours of being open that we had to maintain a line out the door, let people in as people left. This was in the days before the inventory was computerized. It took a week to post the day's sales from handwritten receipts (even tape recordings) onto our index card system.

There was a nice party for the 30th - almost like a reunion. For myself, who's been around and through it all, it was a bit staggering - going from this clump of people from the late 70s to that from the mid-80s, to another from a decade later, sometimes trying to introduce a current staffer to someone from twenty years before.

The parties and the celebrating are good. But so was this quiet evening of sitting and watching the sky, being thankful for the thirty-five years its been (and more than a bit astonished, too), thinking of those who've been a part of it, and part of the larger bookworld it's been part of, coming in to type a few words, then moving on the little stack that is currently saying, Read me. The pages keep turning. Real pages.

Posted by Rick Simonson on June 29, 2008 | Comments (1)