Constable: Always a spot for bookstore in our souls
A generation ago, a Daily Herald business story envisioned a world where “megabookstores” would swallow local bookstores. “Within the past five years, Crown, Barnes & Noble and Borders have combined to open more than 30 book superstores in the metropolitan area,” the story noted/warned.
Just as a meteor probably brought a sudden end to the dinosaurs' reign, the Internet drove some of those “megabookstores” into extinction in the blink of an eye. If you bought a book recently, you didn't buy it at Crown Books. Or Borders.
On Saturday, the Arlington Heights Barnes & Noble store near Rand and Arlington Heights roads will close. Others remain open.
I still miss Drummer and Thumbs New and Used Books, the little neighborhood bookstore that occupied a far bigger space than its cramped storefront on Campbell Street in the old downtown Arlington Heights.
“It's been 15 years since I closed the bookstore,” says Rob Baker, 56, former owner of Drummer and Thumbs. “And I was walking outside of Jewel the other day and a man sees me and yells, ‘We need another book store in Arlington Heights.'”
That happens much more than you'd think, says Baker, who still gets recognized as “the book guy.” He was making a living selling books when he decided to close the bookstore in 2001 and begin a new chapter of his life. A graduate of Purdue University with a degree in microbiology, Baker returned to DePaul University while running the bookstore to get a degree in English and a master's degree in education. For the past eight years, he's been a teacher at Barrington High School, where he still sees students with the passion for reading.
“In seventh grade, I read Agatha Christie's ‘And Then There Were None.' I just loved it. I read it seven times in a row,” says Baker. Books remain a huge part of his life, but the places where he buys them have changed.
“When I turned 16, I got a job at Kroch's & Brentano's at Randhurst,” says Baker, who was following in the footsteps of his older brother, Rick. “It was a great bookstore. I loved it. I was in paperbacks.”
After he graduated from the now-defunct Arlington Heights High School in 1978, Baker witnessed other closings. “Crown came along and knocked Kroch's & Brentano's out of business,” Baker says. “Then Borders knocked Crown out of business. And then came the internet. So many businesses have changed because of the internet.”
Painfully aware of that subject as a newspaper columnist, I'd rather chat about what a neighborhood bookstore means.
“It was really great from Day One. People came in every day. We got to know them all very, very well,” remembers Baker. His mother, Sheila, who died in 2010, helped him run Drummer and Thumbs, which was named after the family's dog and cat.
Going into a bookstore should be an adventure. Baker could relate to the escapist value of books because he had an earlier career as a travel agent (another career altered by the internet). Working at an agency in Berkeley, California, he'd see all these “great bookstores, three and four stories tall,” he says, explaining how that gave him the inspiration to come back to Arlington Heights and open Drummer and Thumbs.
“We had used books. That made it easier,” says Baker, recalling how he'd read a 100-page listing of books people wanted from across the nation and then mail them a postcard if he had it. He remembers the time a customer used his dying wish to come into the bookstore one last time, that day he found a first edition of Theodore Dreiser's “Sister Carrie” at a suburban estate sale, or the effort it took to find an old cowboy book that then-Chicago Tribune columnist Bob Greene was trying to find for a person in one of his columns.
“We sold a lot through the internet, but it wasn't as fun,” Baker says.
He doesn't see a day when bookstores are relegated only to cyberspace. Earlier this month, the American Booksellers Association announced an increase to 1,775 members operating 2,311 locations. Far below the old days of more than 3,000 members, that number still marks seven consecutive years of growth since 1,401 members ran 1,651 locations in 2009.
Anderson's Bookshops, the fifth-generation, family-run Naperville institution, boasts a gift shop, a steady stream of author appearances and special events, as well as additional bookstores in Downers Grove and La Grange. Last week, famed children's author Judy Blume, 78, told The Guardian how much she enjoys running her new, small bookstore in Key West, Florida.
“I just think people are so hungry for a real bookstore again.” Blume says.
“You never know what you might find,” Baker says. “There's something serendipitous that can happen at a used bookstore.”