Beckham Book Store- A Little Shop of Wonders

The Boston Herald

Beverly Beckham

NEW ORLEANS - This time I walk to Decatur Street to find it. It used to be on another street, in the middle of the French Quarter, just around the corner from the Place D'Armes, where we have stayed every other time we've been in New Orleans.

This time we are lodged at the Prince Conti and when I ask how to get to Beckham's Bookshop, I am told the small store I remember is closed, but that there is a bigger shop not too far away.

Always when I come to this city, I visit this place. It's nothing special, just a shop that sells secondhand books. There must be thousands, perhaps millions, nationwide.

But this one has my name. I walked through its doors the first time because of the sign hanging above it. I was curious, went in seeking its personal history, and found it. I remember reading yellowed newspaper clippings pinned to the wall, articles that detailed the store's beginnings. I remember copying down information in a notepad and speaking to someone, an old man. Was it Mr. Beckham? I think so. But I'm not sure.

I never did anything with the history of the place, for the second I turned my eyes away from the clippings toward the books I became immersed in the aisles and aisles of novels I'd never heard of, biographies I'd read when I was a child but hadn't thought about in years. Poetry. Plays. Old books. Not-so-old books. Stephen King. Stephen Crane. Robert Frost. Robert Ludlum. Books I lightly touched as I walked by. Books I took off the shelf and hugged like old friends.

I discovered riches in the small, dusky shop, which I bought and lugged home, in the taxi, through the airport, on a plane. Through another airport. On another plane. "Why did you have to buy so many books?" my husband asked, carrying a bag full. How could I not? Which would I have left behind? "To Kill A Mockingbird?" "Marjorie Morningstar?" "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn?" "Mrs. Mike?" "Angle of Repose?" "A Time to Love and A Time to Die?"

Every bookstore is a treasure, worlds bound between cardboard, someone else's research and sweat and opinions and dreams and pleasures and agonies for pennies a page. What an incredible thing it is to be able to pay so little for so much.

But a book store full of used books is an even greater treasure. Who were these people whose names are embossed on the covers of novels printed nearly a century ago? Novels with old fashioned titles and dressed-for-a-prom prose. No sentences ending with prepositions here. No run-ons, either. Was this the author's only book? Did it fulfill his dream? Change her life? Alter their futures?

And who were the people whose names are written in neat lettering in the front of these books? This book belongs to Mary Burke. Emily Flint. William Lubbell. "To Molly, on the occasion of your 19th birthday. With love, Arthur." Did Molly read the book Arthur gave her and treasure it all her life? Did it arrive here only after her death, unearthed in a trunk in an attic? Or was Arthur just a passing figure, unimportant to Molly, the book never read, tossed aside, and forgotten?

So many histories within these walls. So much information. I pick up "All About the Symphony Orchestra," a child's book, really, written in 1961, not so old. I was a teenager then. Inside are pictures of instruments and short paragraphs detailing how they sound and what they contribute to an orchestra. A gem of a book. Full of useful facts. How can I leave it?

I look through a collection of stories from "Seventeen," young girl's stories written when I was a young girl. I felt so old, then. So worldly and wise. Now I smile at the innocence of these tales, at the dated phrases, at the shy, silly patter. How can I leave this on the shelf? This is history, not just these girls', but mine.

I buy too many books, I know, books I don't need and will probably never read. But I cannot leave them behind. I will browse through them, eventually, and absorb some small thing - a phrase, a fact, a feeling. And these intimations of other lives lived, of other dreams dreamed, will connect me with people and ideas which would remain concealed, but for old books and old bookstores, in which the past is as accessible as today.