Rare Book Monthly
Articles - November - 2004 Issue
Book Shopping in the Pacific Northwest
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We stopped in Seattle on the way home, planning to spend a couple of days, but the traffic was fiendish and there were so many people, that we just shook our heads in weariness. Seattle is a trip on its own, I think. We were headed back to Portland, where we had left the books we bought the week before, when we made one more stop for iced tea in a small town called Mt. Vernon, Washington. We almost didn't go into the used bookstore as we were pretty well burned out with cranky Washingtonian book dealers and book shopping in general, but we were sure glad we did. Eaton's Books in Mt. Vernon is a used bookstore with friendly owners, a good selection of books, reasonable prices, and a good dealer discount. We loaded up three more boxes of books and zipped on down the highway to Portland.
There is a really great company in Portland, McMennamin's. They buy up historic building sites and reuse them for restaurants, B&Bs, hotels and theaters where you can eat a burger and have their own label wine or beer while you watch a movie. There are a number of them in Oregon and they have expanded into Washington. On the way back to Portland, we stopped one final time in Centralia, Washington, to have a glass of wine and a snack. What a fun little town; lots of restoration and rebuilding going on. Lo and behold, directly across the street from the McMennamin's restored hotel there, we saw a sign on the street "Book Sale, 50% off". Oh dear, I knew we were in trouble. We made a beeline for the place, went up a flight of steps and walked into a bookstore called Tilikum Books & Bindery. Geary Lockhard is the bookseller, a cheerful and pleasant gentleman who runs the bookstore, and his wife, Ronda Lockhard, owns the bindery and has been repairing and binding quality books for some years. If you need a binder, here is their email address, tilikumbb@hotmail.com. Well, you can guess, we came out of that store with about four more boxes of books and Blanche, our Subaru, groaned when we stowed them in back.
This time we meant it, no more book shopping. We went to Portland, stayed the night with pals, had dim sum for lunch the next day and headed home via a visit to friends near Cedarville, California, where our pal Michael has a bookstore called Floating Island Books. Next morning it was a short, four-hour drive home. It was a great trip; we took our time, had lots of fun, saw lots of gorgeous country, visited with good pals, and got home rested and relaxed. But then, we had to unload the car!
