I have a purpose this morning, other than to practice making photographs; I would like to own a particular book written and autographed by Larry McMurtry, and I would have to ask someone knowledgeable about his work to know which book I have in mind.
In some store fronts, t-shirts with quotes from his novels were available for purchase. Realtor and McMurtry's nephew, Matt, offers the t-shirts at his office next door to Booked Up No. 4. I, though, searched, not for a quote, but for a scene in one of his books, and it is that novel, whichever one it is, that I set out to find.
Update: Good story written by Alyssa Johnston about the sale in the Times Record News, and
another published in the New York Times written by John Williams.
Zooming down Highway 79 on my way to Archer City.
Smile! Archer County courthouse. (The clouds! They embellish pictures.)
I HDR-ed this image for effect.
The Royal Theatre. Here they viewed "The Last Picture Show"
as part of The Last Book Sale festivities.
No telling who or what pulls up (myself included)
to eat a nice home-cooked meal at the Wildcatter Cafe,
just around the corner from Booked Up No. 4 and up the street
from Booked Up Nos. 1 - 3.
Fabulous old facades in the old town.
A man with an old suitcase walks up Main Street.
Could his suitcase contain a treasured antiquarian book or two, or a change of undies?
Or nothing, mused MyMrMallory, for perhaps he is a character in the show. After his observation, I felt a desire burble inside me to know more about McMurtry's work just to know if -- should MyMrMallory be correct -- which character in which novel this mystery man portrays.
I lean against the glass to look in the front windows of the various locations of Booked Up.
This is Booked Up No. 2.
Purchasers piled their books into boxes, then piled boxes into trucks and trailers.
This is number four.
Booked Up on Main Street.
Pictured, the nice gals who sold me a signed copy by McMurtry.
I asked them, "In which novel, or was it in an article, does McMurtry write about a young character (based on McMurtry's recollections) who looks across the way to a mansion, and that he would see a light in the mansion remain lit well into the night? The character also mentions that the resident of that mansion would drive his Packard down to the road to retrieve his mail from the mailbox."
One of them said, "Oh, yes. I remember reading that, too. Is it in Paradise, or is it in Benjamin Warren?"
"I don't remember seeing it in Paradise," said the other. "We'll ask Larry when he comes in."
Then, the first gal turned to the mysterious man with the suitcase. I hadn't seen him enter the building, and hadn't expected him there, since he walked up Main Street, away from the shop, not down and toward the shop. "Bob, do you know where Larry talks about the time he was a boy and he'd look out the way to Mr. Taylor's house?"
"That would be in Benjamin Warren," said mystery Bob.
"Then that would be the autographed book I'd like to buy today," I said, pleased that someone knowledgeable about McMurtry's work had walked in at the very moment I needed him. Strangely. I wondered fleetingly if his suitcase contained, gently bundled, a copy of Benjamin Warren.
An interesting thing to me is that the local folks of Archer county often refer to Larry McMurtry's house in Archer City as "Mr. Taylor's house," the man who built the house in the late nineteen-teens or early nineteen-twenties. He died in the mid-nineteen fifties, and the house was subsequently sold the the Archer City Country Club. McMurtry later bought the house from them, the golfers muttering through clenched teeth, "He gave us an offer we could not refuse," or so the myth among Taylor's descendants goes.
The scene in the novel supposedly reflects the recollections of the writer's youth. Mr. Taylor did read into the wee hours of the night, and he did own a Packard, I heard say from his descendants. I would like to own a copy of the book because it reflects a part of the history of Archer City.
Other interesting things about Mr. Taylor's house sound like made-up stories: His (first) wife haunts the house, and she (or is it his second?) kept a chicken in the fireplace upstairs while living there. Interesting in that the local folks tell stories about the house and the original owners, and according to one of McMurtry's relatives, so does he, complaining that he feels her ghost during some of his sleepless nights. It is nice, though, aside from Mrs. Taylor's ghost and chicken, that people remember Mr. Taylor with some unspoken fondness, the same kind of unspoken fondness I perceived for Larry McMurtry during my short visit to Archer City.
Bookshelves hold over 100,000 volumes in Booked Up,
minus one autographed novel that I will cherish owning.
Nikon D4, 17-35mm, 100 and 800 ISO, f16 and f2.8.
1988 Jaguar XJS.
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