things to do in Bryson City Archives - Ashley Hackshaw / Lil Blue Boo

Official Used Book Store Business

October 5, 2014 by Ashley Hackshaw

Last week it was my first morning opening up the used book store in downtown Bryson City:

Wake up lovely books….

The large room was silent. I hit the light switches and the lights blinked and flickered a few times before turning on. Fluorescent lights always remind me of the book Langoliers by Stephen King, when the world is catching up to time and waking up. The buzz is the first thing that’s noticed.

I rolled out the book cart, which used to be the most dangerous job at the bookstore because it is extremely heavy and the grade at the front door is not very forgiving. But this was a new book cart, the old one (with the wheel that like to fall off and dump the books alongside Everett Street) has been demoted to the back of the store.

And then I turned the “Closed” signs to “Open” at 10am. Open for business.

I sat there most of the day wondering what it used to be like. The bookstore used to be part of the old Bennett drugstore, one half of it to be exact. The hallway in the center has been walled off making it now two spaces.

Bennett’s Drug Store dates back all the way to 1905 and operated up until 1990 in the same family. A big red Coca-Cola drink cooler used to block the door of the soda fountain so that you had to enter through the drug store entrance. Early marketing genius.

You can see the arch of the soda fountain in the back right of this old photo, tucked behind the first four sets of shelving: (click on the photo to enlarge)

(I cannot find a source for this old photo…anyone know?)

“The antique marble soda fountain remains from an earlier time when the store was part of the old Bennett’s Drug Store. The fountain has a marble topped counter from Italy with six stools; the lighted back bar with stained glass murals and marble columns is also from Italy.” –Postcards from the Smokies

I would just love to know how a soda fountain from Italy ended up in a Bryson City drugstore.

Donna, my friend and a cook at the inn, used to flip burgers at the soda shop years ago. More than one person has told me about the peanut butter milk shakes. I drool. Teresa, the manager of the book store, has told me what history she knows of every building surrounding the place.

Last Thursday was a typical day. It was cool so I left the front door open and customers drifted in and out. I ate a Krispy Kreme donut and drank a fountain diet coke from the Hot Spot. When the book store was quiet I read through a book of Emily Dickinson’s poetry and a book of letters from the Carpathia regarding the Titanic. I ended up buying the Titanic book for $4.00. I thought my mom would like it too. Throughout the morning I met customers from Florida, Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama and Charleston, SC. I had a long conversation about midwives and Amish communities with a woman I’d met at the Hemlock Inn a few days prior. Three people dropped off book donations. One had two boxes of encyclopedias which the bookstore doesn’t take in anymore because there just isn’t room. And I guess no one wants encyclopedias these days. I took the encyclopedia donations. I’ll figure out what to do with them at some point. I just didn’t want them to end up in a dump somewhere. I love encyclopedias. There must be a huge encyclopedia retirement home somewhere right? At one point during the morning I could hear Ivan, the owner of the Calby’s Antiques (the other half of the original drug store), playing the pipe organ next door. A customer and I both had our ears to the wall listening.

I probably shouldn’t tell you about the scary trap door in the floor that supposedly leads to the basement of the bookstore. I bet there’s some really old stuff down there. Or maybe just a secret racket ball court? (you have no idea what I’m talking about unless you’ve seen the movie Door in the Floor with Jeff Bridges). The trap door used to have a lock on it at some point, which makes it even more mysterious.

I probably shouldn’t tell you this either, but the first day I worked the bookstore by myself and closed it…I accidentally took the cash register key home with me. I’m going to get fired from my first retail job, I thought, even though I work for free. I went really early the next morning to drop the key back off so it would be like nothing happened, and thought for sure I wouldn’t see anyone. As I got to the back door, and started to unlock it…I heard someone yell “Hey there Ashley!” It turns out the old mayor (not old like old, but old like ex) likes to wash his deck at 7:45am. For 5 seconds I pretended to be invisible. Then I turned and waved like a boss: “Hey, yeah, um, just doing some super-important-official-8am-used-book-store-business!”

And a few weeks ago, to shake things up a bit I took my 1954 Hermes Rocket typewriter (the one featured in my Dear Friend letters) and set it on the counter. I put a piece of paper in it and typed:

leave me (the typewriter) a message….

Then I even typed a fake message to get things started:

hey typewriter.

And no one would type on it.

So I left another fake message:

is typing writing?

Granted it was a slow day, but I couldn’t convince one single person to leave a message. It’s like they were scared of a typewriter. Or me. But they did buy books, so maybe it wasn’t me. Maybe it was the typewriter. I’ll try again sometime soon. Hopefully I get a few brave customers. And my first fake message will be:

BE BRAVE AND TYPE.

P.S. I was invited to the volunteer appreciation dinner next week….so I’m still employed at my free job.

More info:

Friends of the Marianna Black Library Used Book Store
32 Everett St, Bryson City, NC 28713
Raises money to help with the rising costs of Free Library Services in Bryson City, North Carolina.
Hours: Monday – Saturday: 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. Closed on Sunday
More things to do in Bryson City, NC.

The Language of Frogs

September 11, 2014 by Ashley Hackshaw

Midday it started raining and I just sat in my truck on the bridge to kill time before I was supposed to show up at the used book store. I sat on the passenger side and people probably thought I was waiting on someone but really I was just letting 45 minutes pass. I pulled a book out from under the seat to read a while and thought it was a weird coincidence that the book was Extremely Loud and incredibly Close, a book about September 11. I’ve read that book over and over again but from all different starting points. Never in order. And parts like the elephant crying get to me because I see things like stonehenge in a plate of potato quarters and I like walking the cemetery at night but get sidetracked trying to piece together broken headstones:

I took the world into me, rearranged it, and sent it back out as a question: “Do you like me? –Jonathan Safran Foer

Recently I saw a ghost at the cemetery but that’s a story for another day, so back to sitting there reading in the truck: I saw at least four people I knew walk by. Small town USA. Then I saw a man with a hunting rifle walk by but he’d just come out of the guns and ice cream shop. Totally normal. As I sat there I realized that I could tell when a truck was coming over the bridge, not by the sound it made but by how much the concrete would shake. A freight truck and a beer truck crossed simultaneously and the bridge pretty much went all earthquakey. The speed limit on the bridge is 20 mph but people are always going much faster.

When it’s not raining I like to walk along the shops and the river. Here it seems like they used to build old buildings against old buildings so when a building comes down sometimes the inside of the building is left on the exterior of the one next door. In other words: if you build the first building you have to build 4 walls…but if you build the 2nd or 3rd etc you only have to build 3 walls. The wall on the side of the building near the river says PRO with tan, orange and brown racing stripes all the way down the side…it reminds me of a bowling alley, but I don’t think it was. Buford’s Barbershop is on the corner of the bridge across from the “bowling alley”. Everyone swears it’s structurally sound but I’m worried Buford is going to fall in the river one day. Every few days I visually measure the crack between Buford’s place and the flower shop next door to make sure it’s not getting any wider. I’ve only seen Buford cutting hair once or twice. I think he’s only open when he feels like being open. He’s got a TV with rabbit ears and so I look forward to meeting Buford one day…but maybe outside of the barbershop.

At the bookstore I decided to sweep outside and get some of the cobwebs down. While sweeping I ran into a man I’d met at the coffee shop a few weeks ago. He’d been talking about Kerouac and I oddly enough had brought a book of Kerouac’s journals with me (Windblown World). I gave it to him and told him to just drop it back off at the coffee shop when he was done with it. I didn’t even know his name. But then running into him at the grocery store I recognized him and we said hey and he thanked me for the book. And after talking about Kerouac for a few minutes he told me this haiku he’d written. I can’t remember it word for word so I’m butchering it and it probably isn’t even a haiku anymore since I didn’t even think to count the syllables or phrases or whatever a haiku consists of:

Credit or Debit. The girl at the grocery store speaks to me in frog.

Flipping through the old books in the used book store I end up looking for handwriting. I found this little mouse drawn in a book dated 1898. I could tell it was written with a fountain pen: On the next page was this handwritten poem:

Love is painful it is true, but not to love is painful too, But oh! it gives the greatest pain to love and not be loved again.

I sold a few books today and bought even more. They were books I was looking for so I figure that I technically saved money. One of the new employees at the inn stopped by to say hi and I sold him a magazine. Tonight my friends gave me directions to their house and the directions consisted mostly of: turn left at the gas station and right at the huge rock and when you see the chickens you’ve found us. Walking down to our cottage tonight I dodged a few frogs but spoke to them: credit or debit. credit or debit. Perhaps that’s what they’ve been saying all along. Accounting 101.

We could imagine all sorts of universes unlike this one, but this is the one that happened. –Jonathan Safran Foer

Trainspotting

August 28, 2014 by Ashley Hackshaw

I rode the train by myself yesterday. The Great Smoky Mountains Railroad.

I was late (and almost missed it) because I chatted with the parking lot attendant too long about how locals with season passes should get free parking….my idea, not his.

I was assigned boarding section 5 and when I asked someone where that was they said:

Well it’s after 4….and if you get to 6 you’ve gone too far.

I never got as far as section 4 because I was forced to board at section 3. I walked through all the train cars to get to section 5. When I reached section 5, the woman I sat next to was worried because an older man had just suffered from a heart attack as he boarded. I told her that luckily the hospital was on top of the hill next to us so he would probably be okay. She seemed relieved.

At the start of the trip, I bought the $10 book because the man on the train said it was the best thing I would come across all day. And it was. I sat and followed the map mile marker by mile marker. I slowly learned how to read a topographical map by matching up the scenery outside to what was in the book. Like this adorable gingerbread farmhouse:

I met a couple in their 70’s that were on their honeymoon. We had a discussion about hickory nuts and pontoon boats. I listened to the train musicians sing an amazing rendition of Rock Me Momma…but then spent 20 minutes contemplating what “rock me momma like a wagon wheel” meant. A lady with hot pink lipstick asked the musicians to play a song for the newlyweds. Her mother had matching hot pink lipstick.

At the train’s “intermission” point I ate a huge BBQ sandwich by myself at a picnic table. I threw an animated fit when I brushed a red ant off my neck and the red ant WENT DOWN MY SHIRT. A couple next to me stopped sipping their cold beers for a second to ask me if I was okay.

I watched a little boy pretend to talk on a police scanner in a foreign language. He had a toy gun in his holster and looked ready to use it.

I refilled my Diet Coke and asked a couple if they would watch it for me so I wouldn’t have to take it into the bathroom. They looked like my grandparents….and the probability of being roofied at the Nantahala Outdoor Center is very, very low.

I asked three different people what time the train was going to leave. They each replied: when the horn blows. Well thanks for nothin’….

I walked by the Nantahala River and collected driftwood. I spotted a shoe that had washed up at the bottom of the rapids. I thought about the fact that Deliverance was filmed on the Nantahala.

I observed a man sitting on a rock in the middle of the river deep in thought.

I restyled my hair using the cool river water.

I walked along the edge of the train in awe of it’s underbelly. I wondered if anyone would survive laying on the track as the train rolled over (i.e. is there enough space for a human underneath). I was tempted to leave a few coins on the track to come back for later.

The train blew it’s 5 minute warning, and I definitely flinched. I hopped back on, in the wrong car again.

On the way back I eavesdropped on a conversation concerning Ferragamo shoes. They sounded very expensive.

I talked with the man who had been sitting on a rock in the middle of the river and learned he was a landlord in NYC. I also learned that he used to live in a bus year and years ago that he’d outfitted with a fireplace. I asked if he still had the bus (because I might be interested in a bus). He said he had just abandoned it and that someone else was probably enjoying a sweet bus right about now. (Hey Craig!)

The rocking of the train was so peaceful I thought about coming back one day for a nap.

As I got off the train, I saw a house for sale right in front of the depot and thought it would be a great place for a lemonade stand.

It took about 4.5 hours round trip. And that was that.

Develop interest in life as you see it; in people, things, literature, music – the world is rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself. -Henry Miller

I do forget myself…but I remember everything else.