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Tag: Bookshops in Lincoln Nebraska

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Bookshop Memories  —  Yellowed Pages, Lincoln, Nebraska

Yellowed Pages  — Lincoln, NE 

‘Mug, Book, Smoking Materials and Crackers’ by John Frederick Peto, Dayton Art Institute (public domain)

When my family first moved to Lincoln, Nebraska, in 1986, we lived at the edge of a section of town known as University Place. UniPlace is a small district nestled between Nebraska Wesleyan University and the East campus of the University of Nebraska. Besides the mixed residential neighborhoods of droopy old houses converted into apartment buildings, there’s an old commercial district a few blocks long with two and three-story brick buildings from the turn of the 20th Century. To my young eyes, the architecture was old and interesting. However, there were not many places on that commercial strip on 48th Street a young family would go. There was an old-time barbershop on a corner where my Mom or Dad would take me for a fresh buzz cut every couple of months, but other than that, it was bars and pawn shops. Except for Yellowed Pages.

Yellowed Pages felt yellowed and crumbly inside. The owner smoked, so everything in the store smelled of tobacco smoke. And that was long before the building next door, an HVAC and plumbing supply shop, burned to the ground around 2002. As a young man, I lived in the neighborhood again, just a couple of blocks away from the bookshop, and my apartment had soot coming out of the ductwork. The bookshop closed later, around 2014. 

I went back to the old bookshop in those last months it was open. It had changed a lot from my childhood memories of the late-1980s. It wasn’t smoky; the books were nice. But, the neighborhood had changed too. The city tore down something on the mini-downtown stretch, and a police station was put in. A more prominent police presence didn’t keep people from rifling through my car a few times. Someone stole my girlfriend’s stereo and some other stuff from her car. They took the radio out of my truck, plugged it back in, and left it on the floor, wires strung out of the dash. I know they unplugged it and plugged it back in since all the radio pre-sets had been wiped. Maybe they realized it was junk no one would buy, or maybe they felt bad for me. But, the wig shop was gone, the bars were gone, pawnshops were relocated or cleaned up, and the old barbershop was long gone. Boutiques were in, and the used bookshop had to go—a sign of the times in a gentrifying neighborhood. I moved away too.

About the Author: Benjamin L. Clark writes and works as a museum curator.

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Bookshop Memories: A Novel Idea – Lincoln, Nebraska

A Novel Idea – Lincoln, NE

A Novel Idea opened in the early 1990s downtown, closer to the University of Nebraska’s campus than most of the other used bookstores in town. Downtown Lincoln was changing. It was becoming a destination for people who had moved to the suburbs a generation earlier. It was gentrifying. However, this area closest to the university has long been filled with various commercial enterprises. Bars thrived, of course, but now other smaller shops were opening. Even little shops you could generously describe as boutiques. A Novel Idea seems to have been established when increased pedestrian traffic began to grow, and not just on Nebraska football game days.

The shop featured at least one cat that I recall, except that it existed. I don’t remember the cat’s name. The workers were friendly, and I don’t know if I ever met the owners, but maybe those friendly smiles were from them. I didn’t go there often. It seemed more like a “standard used bookstore,” if that makes sense. Where you could find a book that is still in print, just cheaper than the original cover price. A good place to find a classic, not so much the strange and unexpected, for the book you could not conceive of existing. It was a good place to check if you had a specific book you were looking for. They did not seem to specialize in anything in particular. They did not keep a large stock of old books. 

The clientele also skewed younger than the other downtown shops, probably due to its proximity to the University of Nebraska’s main campus. So, it was a better place to find pretty, smart hippy girls who wore tank tops without bras and sometimes didn’t shave their armpits. If you were looking for such people in the ‘90s.

One of the other things I recall was that the older books were kept in the very low-ceilinged basement, and I can remember bumping my head pretty hard down there once. I may have even done it more than once. Also, the basement’s cement floor must be one of the waviest ever poured. I had worked on some paving crews around then and never could quite figure out what would make it like that.

About the Author: Benjamin L. Clark writes and works as a museum curator.

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Bookshop Memories: Bluestem Books, Lincoln, Nebraska

Bluestem Books – Lincoln, NE

Growing up in Lincoln, Nebraska, in the 1980s and ’90s, there was a bookshop in the scuzzier part of downtown in an old brick building, under a towering overpass that took you out to the interstate on the east side of town. It was a tiny corner of our modest town that felt like a much bigger city. There were pigeons. 

Bluestem Books was an institution by then. There were always cats around, and no one cared if you stayed and browsed or just sat and read for hours on end. Even as a teen doing his best grunge impression day in and out browsing the history, essays, and mystery sections. There was an old green chair in a little nook that was a coveted spot. People would circulate through the store, accidentally sneaking up on one another because there were virtually no open lines of sight because of the tight, full shelves. 

The building was also ancient, for Lincoln. The wavy glass in the drafty windows and crumbly brick gave the building a charming derelict feel it may have deserved. Doorways had been knocked through brick walls, giving the shop a rambling layout. The wood floors creaked dreadfully, though muffled under threadbare, faded rugs. Old cast iron pipes passed through here and there, their purposes unclear. Strange metal fittings studded the concrete vault ceilings in places. I wondered if portions of the bookshop had once served as a meat locker or some other weigh-station for once-living things headed out on the nearby rail lines. 

It was always warm in there. It probably had more to do with an old boiler heating system, but that was my recollection of it. Going there on an intensely cold day, howling winds that wanted to slam the door on you as you wrenched it open. The door may have been kept attached to the building with a long, old storm door spring to help it eventually snap shut. The spring sang a stretched-out springy twang and thwack back into the door as it closed. There was a faded, soiled note taped to the door with instructions on how to use the door. “Hold on tight on windy days,” or “Don’t let the door slam,” or something like that. 

Near that old green chair were a couple of short shelves dedicated to series like Everyman’s Library and The Modern Library — small vintage uniform editions of classics and some contemporary fiction, “contemporary” meaning 1920-1965 or so, arguably the heyday of such series. It was there that I saw the Modern Library series as a series — the recognizable books were a great size and affordable, and they looked cool on the shelf. Looking cool on the shelf is a virtue we don’t admit often enough as book lovers. 

I don’t remember if I bought any Modern Library books there that early … I may have. I never had a lot of money, but I sometimes had a job after school, so I had a little spending money in my teens. I don’t remember buying much there in my teenage years, really. But it felt good to be somewhere where I could buy books. 

After leaving Lincoln for college, I would try to come back whenever I was back in town. I’d bring friends sometimes but usually come alone. It was the kind of bookshop that in some ways was better to go alone. 

Reading one of the John Dunning biblio-mystery novels featuring his rare bookseller/ detective, Cliff Janeway, which takes place mostly around Denver, I sat upright one night where toward the end they mention Bluestem Books in Lincoln by name. My book world had been so insular, so much part of my niner life that it was strange to think this author had been there too and wrote about it, and it came into my hands. I took my battered paperback down to Scott at Bluestem and had him autograph it. He laughed and told me he’d had a few others, but not in a long time. 

Around 2000, they added a bookshop dog, who was a delightful addition, and quite a departure from the cats they had. A floofy friendly thing a little less broad than an ottoman and about as tall named Don Diego. I’m not a cat person, but I remember one cat named Thurber who had been awarded employee of the month for several months (and years) running. But then Diego was different. He was eventually awarded the title of Director of Customer Relations, a role to which he was perfectly suited. He was a Havanese, a breed of dog I had to look up later after I’d asked the owners about him. “He’s hypoallergenic!” they claimed. Don Diego’s grand-niece Maribel is now filling in since his retirement. 

Bluestem Books magnet featuring Havanese dog, Don Diego
Don Diego de la Bluestem. And the old address under the overpass.

Even by the mid-1990s, things were changing in downtown Lincoln’s western district, soon to be ubiquitously known as “The Haymarket.” The thrift stores and vacant storefronts that were home to the homeless and pigeons were beginning to change. Fresh brown paper went over the windows, and work trucks began to fill the alleyways. Eventually, it became Lincoln’s hotspot, to the betterment of local tax revenues, no doubt, but losing its seedy charm. 

Bluestem had to move too, eventually but managed to find a larger location not too far away, but it’ll always be the old building in the shade of an overpass I used to think was a meat-locker by the railroad tracks on the bad side of downtown that I’ll hold in my heart.  

About the Author: Benjamin L. Clark writes and works as a museum curator.

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Bookshop Memories: Barnes & Noble – Lincoln, Nebraska

Barnes & Noble – Lincoln, NE

When Barnes and Noble arrived in Lincoln, Nebraska, in the spring of 1994, they staked out a huge chunk of prime real estate right on “O” Street. It cleared a fiefdom from the car dealership that ran nearly uninterrupted for eight blocks on both sides of Lincoln’s main street. This giant new store was a big deal. Not only did they bring easy access to a cosmopolitan newsstand, but of course, that hallmark and highmark of modern western culture: Starbucks coffee. Finally, we could buy fancy, expensive coffee drinks and not have to go all the way downtown for the pleasure. And it was from a brand we had heard of on television. 

My Dad, who owns a small business, had rented a pleasant office nearby several years earlier on a bank building’s fourth floor. He was thrilled. Who knows how many hours he killed there during the week looking through car magazines, bringing home the occasional Hemmings Motor News or the aspirational DuPont Registry for us to get a glimpse into how wealthy people live. “This house has its own waterpark!” One night he came home with an espresso machine. It wasn’t one sold by Starbucks, I’m sure. However, we cannot doubt the inspiration for buying the contraption. This strange, exotic machine stayed in its box in the pantry for some time, though I don’t know why. Perhaps we were intimidated by it.

One day I was home playing hooky, sometime in the seventh grade, and I dug the machine out and plugged it in for the first time. By then, I was regularly drinking sweet milky coffee concoctions. It was time to learn about the real thing. I read the manual, opened the little packet of pre-ground, measured coffee pods, and let it rip. Soon, I was dissolving Werther’s Original candies to mix in. Italian branded flavored syrups had already appeared in our home to make Italian sodas, so the idea to sweeten it up wasn’t a new one. I had one waiting for Dad when he came home. I was lucky my head didn’t explode with what was probably a near-lethal amount of caffeine in my young body.

When Barnes & Noble came to town, going to the bookshop became less remarkable. In those years, the store was clean, cool, and bright—a respite in a hectic day, not a dive into some subject, writer, or experience. We were just going to grab a coffee, maybe browse a little and go.

Festooned with holiday decorations and a table of ladies ready to wrap gifts, I quickly made it my preferred place to buy gifts during the holidays. The big wood double doors, with the little panes of glass, swung easy and offered a warm welcome in the winter. The ladies were from some good society doing good works. Their wrapping paper was thick and subdued, and it was only a donation to have them quickly wrap up all these rectangles. I’ve never been great at wrapping gifts, so it was an easy choice. 

It was the ’90s, I was in high school, and I didn’t have much money to spend. So, another thing I loved at Barnes & Noble was that they carried Dover Thrift Editions. If you’re not familiar with this series of books, they are the absolute most cheaply produced paperback books of all time. And with our annual 14-hour drive each way to Michigan for Christmas at my Grandparents’ ahead of me and a weeklong stay with virtually no television and early bedtimes — it was a reading paradise. Yes, I could read our assigned books for school, but I already wanted to read other stuff. And the Dover Thrift copies of Treasure Island, Robinson Crusoe, and The Hound of the Baskervilles fit easily in my bookbag and only cost a dollar or maybe two each, at the most. B&N would even put them on sale for half-price, so $10 would buy a lot. It was almost as good as the used book sale in the mall’s basement each summer, but these books were *new*. 

The wallpaper graphic covers today give me a warm, Christmassy feeling, awakening memories of laying in the rollaway bed in my grandparents’ basement in northwestern Michigan, the little basement well-windows filled with snow diffusing morning daylight bright enough to read by. Grandma cooking a full breakfast upstairs and a few murmured Good Mornings meant the coffee pot was already on its second run. 

I didn’t own a lot of new books. Most of the books on my shelves were claimed from my parents’ shelves or bought at the used book sales put on by the retired teachers association. They had books as cheap as 10 cents back then. I could come away with a grocery stack about to split for a few dollars, stuffed with wonderful old Modern Library editions, the solid colored Penguin paperbacks, and anything else that struck my fancy. Writing that memory, in particular, makes me feel like when my grandfather would reminisce about going to the movies, buying a candy bar, taking the streetcar home, and leftover change still clanking in his pocket from the quarter his mother gave him for his outing. 

It feels strange to feel nostalgia for Barnes & Noble in the 1990s. Having the behemoth come to town felt like a declaration of war against the small independent shops. However, many of them were just fine in the end. The bookshops at the mall took the brunt of the blow — places like Walden Books and B. Dalton. At least that’s how it looked to a teenager in Lincoln, Nebraska. 

About the Author: Benjamin L. Clark writes and works as a museum curator.