I first started to go to Phoenix Bookstore not by choice, but by force. It was my dad who began to make me sit through his scouring for books, and, like the good child I was, I would beg for mercy to leave. I pulled the “Dad, can we go now?” Or the “Dad, you need to leave some books for the others.” Of course, since I was about 12 years old, I had no sympathy for others—well, maybe except kittens. Ah, those were the days: I was corrupted by television, living in a new city, and had no friends. I didn’t understand the beauty of a few words printed on wrinkled paper.
I had outgrown the predictable, yet oddly enjoyable Goosebumps series, and my teachers forbade me to read any more Steinbeck, so I was in a rut. However, the more I began to travel the “far” distance from Santa Maria to Phoenix Books in San Luis Obispo, the more the call of literature and other printed matter grew on me. The store that had walls the same hue as the binding of an aged paperback was slowly transforming me into a slave to literature, but I didn’t sell myself to Hemingway right away. It took time.
What actually baited me was the music corner. Back then I would have been ashamed to admit this, but the sheet music that made me want to go to the bookstore every chance I could was “Climb Every Mountain” from The Sound of Music. I always searched through the boxes of music like a pig for truffles.
I came down for a period from my bookstore urges and would only go to Boo Boo Records next door and, even though I didn’t have any money, would just stand in the store so I could look cool and tough—two things I have never been. Soon, however, I would return, and I would return with full enlightenment, just like Luke in Return
of the Jedi.
I was talking with someone—I forget who—and she was telling me that I should read two books: Absolute Beginners by Colin MacInnes and On the Road by Jack Kerouac. The first I had been dying to read because it was a book about a mod, and I had declared myself a mod a year before. I couldn’t find the book in the United States no matter how hard I searched, but Kerouac was my lucky charm. I went to Phoenix Books, and I looked all over, but I could not find On the Road. I scanned all through the paperback fiction, the hardback fiction, but no dice. I threw my arms up in surrender, and I began to slowly walk as if I had lost a war.
The cosmos works in mysterious ways: I found a whole section dedicated to beat writers and off beats. There, I found Anthony Burgess, Allen Ginsberg, Henry Miller, and Jack Kerouac’s On the Road.
This is only my story of numerous day trips involving a bookstore in San Luis Obispo. Anyone can relive it, minus the duration—this adventure took almost 10 years—by going to 990 Monterey St. in San Luis Obispo. The place is something the average bookworm will adore: books stacked to the ceiling, books in an upstairs, books on the floor. Books galore! And the genres they carry vary more than the Rolling Stones’ catalog: There’s sci-fi, ancient literature, poetry, classic literature, science, history, art—a bit too much for me to list and not surpass my maximum word capacity. And the scenery isn’t that bad.
Trust me, this is a straightforward message about a journey. If I were trying to sell something, I would have channeled Billy Mays.
Intern Henry Houston is looking for Dean Moriarty. Contact him at intern@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Aug 27 – Sep 3, 2009.
