Book Spots Of My Youth

Last Monday, Terrie wrote about New York City's "Book Row" for My Town Monday, so I figured I'd write about four spots I visited frequently for books as a child: my parents' bookshelves, our small town library and bookstore, and the pharmacy.

I spent much of my childhood on the far east end of Long Island, before the LIE (the Long Island Expressway, aka "the longest parking lot in the world") made traveling out to the "boonies" easy. (A history of the LIE.) Thus, before "the Hamptons" were "the Hamptons." East Hampton, where we lived, was one block long and sort of half a block wide (the half-block had both the hardware store and the pizza parlor, but that was about it). Mostly--as far as kids were concerned--town consisted of the five-and-ten, White's Pharmacy, the single movie theater and the bookstore. Oh, yeah, and the butcher shop, which had a donut-making machine in the window. Krispy Kreme? Ick. Dreesen's spoiled me for life...there's never been a donut to compare to theirs, which came out of the oil fresh and hot, then were coated however you wanted.

There were some stores, like the dress shop and the health food store, that interested adults, but didn't really call to us as children. There were no chain stores or fast food restaurants. They were strictly forbidden by the Ladies Village Improvement Society. (The LVIS had a used bookstore in their building in later years, but I was more apt to donate to it than to find anything there I hadn't already read.)

Like I said, there was a single movie theater. The movie didn't change all that often and my parents limited the amount of tv we watched, which didn't matter that much in East Hampton anyway, given that the reception was often spotty. So for entertainment once it got too dark outside to play, we read.

First, I read all the books in the bookshelves in our house. There were some books there from my mother's youth--Betty Gordon, Betty Wales, and the like--my siblings' books, and my father's mysteries. It was in those bookshelves that I first ran across Travis McGee and and Hercule Poirot. I am pretty sure the Mary Stewart and Phyllis A Whitney books on those shelves belonged to my mother, but they could as easily have been left by some family friend who stayed with us.

But even though we had many visitors, they would leave only a few new books over the course of a year, and there are only so many times you can read The Gnu And The Guru Go Behind The Beyond or The Mysterious Disappearance of Leon (I Mean Noel), so it didn't take long to get through the "playroom" bookshelves.

So soon enough, it was off to the library.

Our house was about a mile and a half from town. The library, conveniently located about half a mile before getting to the village, was a perfect break when walking or biking to or fro. It wasn't a big library, by any means, and it was definitely geared for kids (little kids who were there with their parents, not big kids who rode their bikes over themselves), but it was still a great spot to browse.

The bookstore in town was geared toward fancier reading. Lots of New York Times bestsellers, "literary fiction," etc. Often open late, it was the perfect for post-kiddie-movie trip. The "genre fiction" aisles were small, but the books were crammed in, so I could usually find something to read.

And if I couldn't? If all the fantasy novels looked dull, and the thrillers didn't thrill, there was always the drugstore where, in addition to the "bestseller" rack, they had the "category romance" rack, and a couple of racks of pulp fiction at its finest. These books, all ridiculously short, were only appropriate for one evening's entertainment. But luckily, the racks were refilled once a month, so I could be guaranteed new material every few weeks.

All in all, podunk, Long Island, wasn't a bad place for a geeky kid with a bent for genre fiction.