Mirando hacia atrás: los libros del centro de San Josétore Fila (parte 2)

En 1978, comencé a trabajar a tiempo parcial en una librería de libros usados.tore cerca de la esquina de las avenidas Lincoln y Curtner llamado Myron's Books (más tarde Lincoln Avenue Books). Myron estaba vagamente relacionado con Pat y Joan Hayes, los propietarios de Reciclar libros on the southwest corner of San Fernando and Third Streets (at left in photo above), and in 1979 he arranged for me to work there too. Working at Recycle was a lot of fun with an interesting variety of both staff and customers.  One day the manager, a San Jose State student named Jim Zook, offered to take me up onto the roof.  Our journey began in the customer bathroom.  We climbed onto the toilet tank and into the attic access in the ceiling.  Then we climbed a ladder in the attic that led up to the roof.  From the roof, we climbed up another ladder on the side of the neighboring building onto its roof, and then down into the second story de ese edificio.

El segundo story of the adjoining building had been apartments, but was then vacant as the block was slated for eventual demolition.  Entering from the attic, we somehow lowered ourselves into the lobby at the top of the street level staircase.  Like a scene from the Twilight Zone, había un escritorio de empleado lleno de papeles, libros de recibos y sellos de goma que parecían haber sido abandonados de repente décadas antes.

Y alrededor de esta espeluznante escena paseaban palomas, aparentemente entrando por alguna que otra ventana abierta. Jim había traído consigo un vacío Quaker Oats container that he’d fashioned into a homemade camera.  His plan was to leave a frame of exposed film in the window of one of the rooms during the night to pick up the lights of passing cars.  While he set this up, I explored the other apartments.  In one, I found a very decrepit looking Persian rug.  Lifting a corner of the rug, I saw that it had been padded with newspapers from the 1930s.  Even in 1979, these papers were already nearing fifty years old, laid down before my parents were born. As I lifted them to read I noticed that, because they’d been stepped on so many times, they were more like cloth than paper.

Poco tiempo después de esta pequeña aventura, Recycle Books tuvo que abandonar este lugar y trasladarse a la calle Santa Clara, cerca de la esquina de la calle Cuarta. El negocio se vendió muchos años después y continúa operando en The Alameda cerca de Race Calle.

Lectura adicional en el California Room

• Recorte de archivos: Libro Stores
• Recorte de archivos: Downtown
• Dirección de la ciudad de San Josétories
• Fotos aéreas 1981