The Path of the Bookseller

The bookstore across the street from us is having an Inaugural Ball tonight: forty dollars per person, with formal dress, dancing, and champagne.

We pulled the old 13 inch TV out of the breakroom this morning and hooked up the rabbit ears.  It still worked. Reception on one station was just good enough for us to make out sounds and images. We set it up on a small table near the info desk, with free samples of our French Roast coffee and Snickerdoodle cookies on another table next to it.

It was great.

We hadn’t had any solid plans for the inauguration, but realized in early morning that we really wanted to do something. I thought of setting my little laptop up in the cafe, but the seven inch screen and tiny speakers would have been unsatisfying, and I didn’t subscribe to the non-free WiFi there.

I suggested bribing one of the cafe regulars who did have a laptop and subscribed to our WiFi, offering a free medium drink in exchange for letting people stand around and gawk at his computer during the ceremony. My manager was magnanimous: “What the hell, let’s offer them a large.” But we went with the TV instead.

I spent most of the morning putting non-returnable objects, marked at fifty percent off, on the former calendar racks. I pulled from the boxes a seemingly endless array of board games, iPod accessories, luggage tag holders, and bath oils. (Yes, we are still officially a bookstore.) At about 10 AM, I paused to set up the TV and tables.

I turned the TV on at a little before 11:30, and panicked a bit until it noticed that it had power and figured out what it was to do with the signal that it was receiving. The worker in the cafe brewed up a pot of coffee, and cut up a couple of snickerdoodles and put the pieces in tiny cups, where they looked like something between medications and communion host. The party was on.

At first, I stood alone near the TV, there at the center of the store where I could see both of the store’s entrances and most of the sales floor. Other workers gradually joined me, as well as most of the few customers who wandered through the store during the event.

By the moment of the inauguration itself, all of us were standing by the TV — all except me, since I was answering a phone call from a customer who was irate that we didn’t have the obscure, expensive textbook that he needed for a course tomorrow. We positioned ourselves so that we could see the places where we were supposed to be, the cafe workers keeping an eye on the cafe, the cashiers shuttling back and forth to see if anyone was approaching the registers. I pulled out my cell phone and took a picture to capture the moment, though I understand that corporate guidelines keep me from posting it.

Our manager eventually set out folding chairs (”This is history. No one should miss this.”), and most of us, including customers, sat down to watch. When the announcer asked for people to stand, most of us stood.

When President Obama finished his speech, a customer looked around, waved her copy of Dreams From My Father in the air, and announced, “I’m ready to buy my book now.” The cashiers drifted back to the registers, and we began, very gradually, to disperse.

I kept the TV running through the closing benediction, then shut it down. It sat there, mute, for some time, until I took down the table and moved the TV back to the break room. There it will remain, at least until, less than a month from now, the analog signals shut down and render it obsolete,

Things at the store returned to January’s usual slow drip of activity: helping customers, setting up displays, and shelving, always shelving. Still, a sense that something special had happened hung in the air. And each time I passed our Obama display, I heard myself thinking: I was there, if only virtually. This is the start of the revolution we’ve been singing about for decades. And I voted. I helped it happen. We all made it happen. And everyone is cheering.

It’s a good start.