My friend Pat and I had to meet somewhere between here and there to plan the bookstore for our Yearly Meeting next month. I suggested a bookstore with a coffee shop, thinking something like Barnes and Noble with Starbuck's. I have little imagination sometimes. Pat suggested Readmore Books in Richmond, Indiana.
I drove my 72 minutes or so to get there and felt a bit doubtful, the closer I got to 901 East Main Street in Richmond. This is downtown Richmond, where the buildings are old and a little tattered looking. A block or two from Readmore was an area where you might want to lock your car doors. I've lived in places like that, when I was young, pretty, poor and guarded by my own perception of reality. Now I'm an aging female with illusions of wealth and a paranoid streak. I lock my doors.
Readmore was on a corner - no parking, which I think was a good sign for downtown Richmond. It had seemed to me most of Richmond was off in the outskirts, parked in the fancier areas where the fancy bookstore is. Not the one I'd suggested, but a discount chain bookstore with miles of books, many of them remainders - and in the back a large somewhat impersonal coffee shop with decent coffee and an offering of decent pastries and sandwiches.
Readmore doesn't look anything like that. Small, cramped in the corner, with signage that was hand done. Not some cutesy store bought to look hand done, but real stuff, painfully handwritten on plain white paper and taped to the door.
I stepped closer, expecting the sign to announce "Out of Business". But no, it was today's lunch specials. In I went and found myself in a tiny shop with a lot of magazines and a few books, a lot of tables and some smiling people, among them my friend Pat.
Pat and I spent a good three hours there, our papers spread out over two tables, our laptops plugged in around the corner behind the magazine rack (we were shown how to do it carefully so it would be less likely someone would trip on the exposed cords).
For my food, time and electric usage, I spent a total of $7.35 and forgot to leave a tip, for which I feel awful. (I'll go back and leave a big one, that's for sure - but in my mind, I was treating it like a bookstore, where I never leave tips, when in fact it is mostly local small corner restaurant, and a very good one!)
We ate breakfast, drank tea, talked on and on about the books on our ordering list (and other topics not on the approved Quaker discussion list).
While we were sitting there, someone came in asked if there was any rhubarb pie today. He was told there wasn't any today and then asked when he'd be back in.
"Well, most likely Thursday" the visitor said.
"Alright, then, there'll be rhubarb for you on Thursday," the woman behind the counter said.
I didn't need any pie, the breakfast - definitely homemade - was filling. Still, when I'd looked up the directions to get here, there was mention of the pies. Driving all this way, the least I could do was look at the pies. No rhubarb, of course. And I do like a good rhubarb pie. but there were a couple of pieces of apple pie still unclaimed, some kind of pie with nuts across the top and an uncut creamy pie that looked dreamy.
So when I ordered my slice of apple pie (which, by the way, was a generous slice indeed), I asked that friendly young woman behind the counter if the pies were homemade there.
Oh yes," she assured me. "Homemade pie is the best."
I had to agree.
Pat had something else, I'm not sure what. I was so busy moaning and stuffing my mouth with chunks of fresh apple pie, I didn't take the time to try to figure out specifically which pie Pat was moaning over.
Today I was trying to explain this to a young friend - he seemed to understand and I didn't have to apologize for loving a small bookstore that was more a pie shop to me than a bookstore.
"Hmm," he said, "would you rather go to a bookstore with a lot of books and no pies, or a bookstore with few books but great pies?"
Good question - and I think we all know the answer.
I hope many people stop on in.. I live over an hour's drive away in another state, but I'm planning to go back again real soon. Not so much for the books, but for the ambiance, the friendliness. And OK, the pies.
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