The Book Sale Lady:

Among other things, I keep adding to my book collection.  This poor house.  Cary looked at the new chickens in the living room and said, I think we (me) shouldn't bring home anything new that we cannot eat.  Good point, by woman does not live on bread alone.  I don't usually feel like shopping, and it is hard to get me to buy new clothes or new shoes.  He usually suggests that I go and do that.  So, in the long run, I think he's getting off pretty cheap on my spending habits.

Sometimes, I get into what I consider a "gathering" frame of mind.  I stock up on food, batteries, soap, shampoo and things like that, if they are on sale.   My one weakness is used books.  They are easy to get and barely cost anything, if you know where to go.  At the La Pine Library is where I find my best deals.  They have a little room that is open on Tuesdays and Saturdays (times are at the bottom of this post), staffed with volunteers.  It has no windows. The prices range from .25 to $1.00 and yesterday I spent $20.00, so you can figure out how thrilled I was with the number of great books I got for that amount.

There was a nice lady, chatty and friendly, who was working yesterday.  I don't even know her name, even though I know she was born in 1932, has lived in La Pine since the early 1970's and once went on a trip to Louisiana with her girlfriend several decades ago.  They road up and down the Mississippi on a stern-wheeler tour.  I learned all this when I found a like new copy of "The Green Mile", and said, oh, I didn't know that this story was by Stephen King.  (We have been watching the movie on t.v., lately, and it stars Tom Hanks.  I always cry at the end.)  She had never read the book or seen the movie, come to find out.

Back to the lady.  She told me that the tour theme was "Big Houses".  The first place they stopped at was a prison, where they stayed for four hours.  The met the warden and he told them how it used to be one of the worse prisons in the country, until he took over.  The warden treated everybody with respect, calling the prisoners Mr. Smith and Mr. Jones.  He put all the prisoners to work.  If they were lazy, they went into time out for 6 months and had all their food ground into mush.  The food was nutritious, but mush none-the-less.  I don't know if this was where The Green Mile was filmed or not.  I'll have to check it out.

The lady and her friend got back on the boat and went to another big house.  This one was a mansion, owned by an heiress of the Sears family, of Sears and Roebuck.  Come to find out, I had been there too, in 2000, when my ex-husband (the nicer one), took me on a wonderful trip to New Orleans.  We took a van tour one day, and one of the places we went was to that Sears house.  It was so funny that both my new friend and I had visited that place and had narrowed down our mutual connection within 15 minutes of meeting.  Six degrees of separation at it's best!  Here is a link to that house, which is named Longue Vue: http://www.longuevue.com/pages/house.htm#

The lady was very interested in why I was buying so many books, on so many different interests and topics.  Children' books, fiction novels, herbal healing, baseball history, crafts, etc.  She asked, well, what are you doing, making a library?  I guess I am.  I told her about the back bedroom, which is kind of like a mini family room and all of the things that are stuffed in there, and about all of the books.  I think I could teach school now with what I have on hand.  If the need ever came up. The lady thought that sounded like a great idea.  Thank you, nice lady, for supporting my efforts.

BOOK NOOK - La Pine Library. 
Tuesdays 10am -1pm & Saturdays 1pm – 4pm. Hard Cover Books: $1.00; Paperbacks 50cents; Children’s Books: 25 cents.  Call 312-1090 for more info.