Paperbacks

If you’ve been around the Peninsula — especially the North End — long enough, you may remember Tom’s 2-for-1 book store — buy two used paperbacks, get one free.  The store was first located on Bay Avenue; later on Pacific Hiway.   (And never mind that you can still find it listed on the internet at www.merchantcircle.com where it is purported to “specialize in Bookstores.”  No matter where or when, though, it was old and funky and always seemed to be under construction.

I think it was while he was still on Bay Avenue that Tom was making improvements to his porch.  During the process, he had an assortment of lumber and other building materials stacked hither and thither and, like the merchandise in the store, itself, there seemed little rhyme nor reason to the order (read: clutter) of things.  So… it came as no surprise but with a great deal of sympathetic humor that the Chinook Observer announced that Tom had “fallen over a broad on his back porch” and had broken his leg.  I think there were probably drinks all ’round on the strength of that report… and for some time to come.

Today, I do believe that the Observer has done it again.  This time it was in Cate Gable’s column and the subject, more-or-less broadly (ahem) was our recent landline and internet outage.  Here is what she reported:  I was alerted to the situation about a week into it by dear friend Sydney Stevens.  She and Nyel both have cell phones but they had no land line and no internet service; so Sydney could not post her daily and now famous (“infamous”?) Oysterville Daybook blog. I heard tell that folks hither and yawn began calling around to find out if Sydney was OK. Her “bonus daughter” Marta in California even got calls — “What’s going on with Sydney’s radio silence?” When I caught up to her by cell, she said, “Give Cyndy Hayward a call too. She has some information you might be interested in.”  

“Hither and yawn!”  Wow!  I do hope it was a spell-check error and not just some momentary surge of truth serum relative to Cate’s feelings about the Oysterville Daybook.  Nyel and I got a great chuckle out of it.  I truly think it has more potential than Tom’s back porch broad! But I may be biased.