The Time I went Book Hauling in Tupelo, Ms: A Flash Essay

A Book Haul Story

A few weeks ago I was on a pro­duc­tiv­i­ty high after being on a hot streak for read­ing and writ­ing every day—thank you col­lege finals for screw­ing that up. Along with this benev­o­lent rush came a book-shop­ping fer­vor where my eyes got big­ger than my stom­ach. For ref­er­ence on how “fil­l­able” my stom­ach was: I didn’t have a prop­er book­shelf; I was behind on some of my school read­ings; and I had a read­ing list that was prob­a­bly three times the height of my dog. That be damned, how­ev­er, because what’s bet­ter than used book shop­ping when you’re feel­ing like the man. 

I attend school in a small Mis­sis­sip­pi town so my bib­lio-shop­ping lust was lim­it­ed. There’s one awe­some book­store that has a new and used book sec­tion. And while the store is fun and has great events, I haven’t found it to be one of those book­stores where I get lost in the shelves. It’s noth­ing against the store itself, it just isn’t my fla­vor and I can be picky. 

This boiled up to me stew­ing on my couch one Sat­ur­day bored and rest­less. For no oth­er rea­son than to jam stim­uli in my brain I decid­ed to google if there were any book­stores in the near­by town of Tupe­lo, MS. There were three, and two of them were used.

Bin­go. I texted my friend Tobias and we had a trip planned with­in the hour.

Tobias and I climbed into his car the fol­low­ing Mon­day and began our hour-long dri­ve. Tobias and I attend­ed school togeth­er and he’s one of my fra­ter­ni­ty broth­ers. He is also a fel­low book nerd and we always talk about what we’re read­ing when we catch up over a beer. He also has a “book plug” with access to books deemed dam­aged by the local book­store. I’m a lit­tle fuzzy on the details; all I know is that he received a first-edi­tion copy of The Lord of the Rings by Tolkien–maps included–for free and I’m jeal­ous. 

The dri­ve was won­der­ful. The road was bor­dered by a thick, healthy green mass bun­dled togeth­er in such a mess that you couldn’t tell which leaf belonged to what tree. Although the trees and kudzu were clumped in a wad, the stur­di­ness of its col­or gave me a light and secure feel­ing. How­ev­er I felt, I didn’t get bored of it. The dri­ve passed by in what seemed like one con­ver­sa­tion. I was in Tupe­lo before I knew it. 

Tobias pulled off of the high­way and into the town square. He eyed a park­ing spot and asked me if we were close enough to walk. It looked close on my phone so I said yes. Ten min­utes lat­er I real­ized that what had looked like “five blocks from here” was a good mile and a half. We had walked too far, how­ev­er, and both had to pee. We saw what looked like the cor­ner of a gas sta­tion sign and speed-walked over only to see that it was a Sher­win-Williams. We cursed but then cheered when we looked next door and saw a cof­fee shop.

After the quick stop at the cof­fee shop, we made our way to the first used book­store. It was won­der­ful. I can still smell its dusty air and the maze-like feel­ing of being sur­round­ed by tall book­shelves with no genre or last ini­tial sig­ni­fiers. Tobias and I real­ized there would be no way to parse through it all so we decid­ed to dive in head first and swim around from shelf to shelf until we got tired. I don’t know how long we were in there but it felt like no time had passed and for­ev­er at once. 

I had con­sid­ered buy­ing a book by Tim O’Brian who wrote The Things They Car­ried. I read that book in high school and remem­bered lov­ing the lan­guage. The oth­er con­sid­er­a­tions were two ran­dom short sto­ry col­lec­tions I came across. Despite their temp­ta­tions, I wasn’t moved enough and decid­ed to leave emp­ty-hand­ed. 

The next store was sparse and spa­cious. It took hold in a cor­ner of a local depart­ment store with green accents over every door frame, win­dow, and room. It looked like it hadn’t been redec­o­rat­ed since the ‘50s and instead of the smell of dust, I got what I like to call the “Barnes & Noble smell”. 

I was a lit­tle dis­ap­point­ed. The store came across as more of a show­room for books rather than a den for book­ish hoard­ers like myself; each book­shelf had enough space around it to fill a spot­light and the selec­tion was rather lim­it­ed. It was all New York Times’s best-sell­ers and what I con­sid­er “white-mom book club books”. It took me five sec­onds to know all I would be doing was star­ing at the cov­ers of books I wouldn’t want to read the back of. Tobias, how­ev­er, found some books by some local south­ern authors. So all was not for naught. 

Tobias and I then took a brief sec­ond to gath­er with the employ­ees of the down­town estab­lish­ments on the side­walk. I had for­got­ten that the eclipse was that day. We could only see clouds but every­one seemed insis­tent on stub­born hope or at least the oppor­tu­ni­ty to sit around and chat instead of work. It was pret­ty cool to see. I won­dered how often I had seen a com­mu­ni­ty gath­er like that. The side­walks had been emp­ty the entire time I was in that store and then in a blink, they were filled with smiles and con­ver­sa­tions. 

The last book­store on our list was the Good­will Book­store. I only men­tion the name because I thought it was a fluke when I saw it on Google. I only knew Good­will as a thrift store and the descrip­tion made it sound like a stand­alone brick-and-mor­tar book ped­dler. That’s what it end­ed up being and it was pret­ty cool. It was sim­ple, small, and spa­cious. Instead of a maze of tall brown shelves, it was alley­ways of car­pet fenced with short long shelves. I end­ed up with a copy of Thomas Wolfe’s “The Night in Ques­tion”.

Vis­it­ing these stores in Tupe­lo was a joy and an excel­lent exer­cise in adding to my titan-sized read­ing list. Though the list may be long now, my final exams have just wrapped up and I have three months of child­like free­dom when I can read what­ev­er I want. So to my read­ing list, enjoy your length now because I’m com­ing for those pages.

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