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. 

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.