This little paperback exchange was already closed when I moved to Sidney, Montana, in 2010. I relocated there to become the executive director of the local arts and historical organization and museum. The family that owned the small bookshop were avid readers and also ran a busy insurance agency at 204 2nd Ave NE. I believe they opened the bookshop mainly to satisfy their own insatiable reading habits. During the early 2000s, with the Bakken oil boom, there wasn’t enough time or staff to manage both, so the little paperback exchange bookshop next to their insurance office closed sometime before 2010. I became acquainted with this family through the museum where I was the director, and they had been engaged in the community for many years, even serving on the board of directors. Eventually, after being a little pushy about my genuine interest and curiosity, I was invited to visit the bookshop, which one day they simply shut down, turning off the lights and closing the door—like a dream for book lovers, reminiscent of Tutankhamun’s tomb.
“You mean, it’s still there?” I asked circa 2012.
“Of course.”
‘Of course?’ I asked myself. If it’s closed, then it’s closed. How could it still be there? In a part of the world where people shut the door and walk away from failures, decrepit old cabins, and sagging sod houses stand as proof, so I don’t know why I hadn’t thought a bookshop might be the same. Maybe because commercial space, like all other space in Sidney, had shot up in value in those years, it didn’t seem like anything was going unused and sitting idle. Including it among the failures of homesteads that went bust sounds harsh, but it may not be entirely wrong. Of course, a space like that can’t sit unused forever. Checking in recently, it looks to be a tattoo shop.
On the day we designated for my visit, I stopped by the family’s insurance office. The daughter grabbed a key and led me around the corner to a connected building. She turned the key and popped on the light, apologizing for the state of things. Yes, it had seen better days, but it wasn’t a wreck. I quickly noticed it had been a paperback exchange, which makes sense in a dusty northeastern Montana town that relies on booms and has not learned enough from the busts. A town whose recent history sounds more like something from Hollywood’s depiction of western America in the 19th century than real-life 21st-century life in America’s West. Those who loved to read, that I’d found so far, loved westerns, or romance novels, or mysteries, or spy novels, and that was about it.
Rows upon rows of shelves still filled with fading romance novels. Taking in as much as I could, I thought of one of my favorite writers, Ernest Haycox. This was probably prime hunting ground for books by the acclaimed, though now nearly forgotten, Western writer. I’d inhaled most of the Sacketts series by Louis L’Amour as a kid, and like someone who can’t stand the idea of eating a whole chocolate cake alone, I hadn’t read many Westerns since. But a friend and writing mentor from when I lived in Oklahoma City introduced me to Ernest Haycox’s work, and I pick up his books whenever I find them. This seemed like a good place to look. His books were fun and packed with action and adventure, but the detail and economy of words are a lesson for writers, even several decades after his heyday. Haycox cut his teeth writing for pulp magazines, so each one was a writer’s workshop.
Unexpectedly, between a section of Nurse Romance Novels and Step-Family Romance Novels, I stumbled into a section of non-fiction. After a cursory examination, I figured it was mostly castoffs from local returning college students in the 1980s and early ‘90s. Nothing was very appealing. Then, in a town that considered pizza “ethnic food,” I found a beautiful vintage copy of The Palm Wine Drinkard by Nigerian author Amos Tutuola. A short list of potential owners—people who might have actually read this book—flashed through my mind. I grabbed it, eager for a voice that didn’t speak in the local accent that pushed every vowel through the nose. I’d also recently finished Neil Gaiman’s American Gods for the first time and was eager to read something mythic and possibly a little abstract.
Still looking for any Westerns at all, I kept looking, confident that there must be some here somewhere. And then Haycox appeared. I don’t remember exactly which one; the titles can be unremarkable. I made my way around the piles on the floor, the toppled heaps in the cobwebby flickers of the last fluorescent tubes sputtering light into the cold space. I grabbed the new-to-me Haycox eagerly, flipping it open curious to see if any previous owner had left a mark. No one had, but I don’t know what I was expecting. This was the only book of his on the small shelf of Westerns, mostly Louis L’Amour, again, and Longarm novels, which I was never into. “Thanks!” I told the daughter. I showed her the two books.
She smiled, “That’ll be $1.50.”
I found $3 and told her to keep the change. We laughed the whole time, bantering our way through our mutual embarrassment over not just loving what some would consider the lowest genre fiction, but old genre fiction. And for me, not only did I love it, I needed to dig it up. She finally understood what I had been talking about for the couple of years that she and her family knew me. I was a book addict. I’m not only a reader, but I also needed to hunt. I had to find my own treasures.
Some of the books I flipped through in my search had a large shop ink stamp inside. Maybe inside the front cover, or on the title page. My two books didn’t have the stamp, so I asked if she still had the stamp. She was a little bewildered but already indulgent, so she found it and stamped a sheet of paper with red ink. I confessed I had a collection of such things. Of course, I can’t find this stamp now, but if it ever turns up, I’ll be sure to add it to this article.
It’s places like that, at the edges of the world where books matter that can be the true lifelines for those who love books. These places will have surprises and treasures that the local library quit shelving decades earlier. A place where serendipity weighs heavily in the air, if only you blow a little dust off the books to find it.
About the Author: Benjamin L. Clark writes and works as a museum curator.
Historical Fiction for the Historian