Bankrupt bookstore still a treasure trove of memories

Business was more than brisk Monday afternoon at the Borders store at 2190 N. Rainbow Blvd. It wasn't quite a Christmas crowd, but it was pretty close.

With the behemoth bookstore chain going out of business, bargains were plentiful. Placards shouted the big news. "Everything Must Go!" blared one sign. "Everything on Sale!" roared another.

The children's section was a hive of Harry Potter hunters. Greeting cards were plucked from racks in bunches, and the usually tidy rows of musical CDs look liked they'd been shuffled by an inebriated blackjack dealer.

For many, Borders' demise simply was an opportunity for savings. Sure, 11,000 employees would lose their jobs, and that was very sad, but did you see the latest Grisham novel at 20 percent off?

Others felt pangs of nostalgia, but noted accurately that the corporation miscalculated its market, moved too slowly to adapt to the discount sales online offered by Amazon.com and wasn't on the leading edge of digital publishing technology. All true and all missing the point.

When daughter Amelia and I arrived at the store on its busiest Monday in our memories, I couldn't help thinking of the time I first saw her stand on her own two feet.

It was at that Borders store on Rainbow back in 1997. I was doing a signing for my book "No Limit: The Rise and Fall of Bob Stupak and Las Vegas' Stratosphere Tower." The crowd wasn't bad that day, but Amelia stole the show when she rose from a crouch on wobbly legs and stood just long enough to take her parents' breath away.

After her brain cancer battle, she uses a wheelchair to move through the crowd, which was no mean feat that afternoon at Borders. The bookstore has remained one of her favorite stops.

Meandering through the crowd Monday, I met Sarah Comroe and Paul Schultz, two of Borders' target demographic: avid, educated readers. They really like Borders, but in recent years have found themselves browsing there before buying their books at a discount online. They own Kindles, so the shape of the married substitute teachers' personal library has changed. And Paul notes that even during Borders' highly publicized going-out-of-business sale the prices still might not be cheaper than the offerings at Amazon.

But they like the feel of a bookstore with its plentiful titles and unusual finds, Paul says.

Betraying her Kindle and her technology, Sarah adds, "I still prefer books you can hold in your hand. I like to be able to fold the corner."

That's one act of heresy that as a boy would have generated a scolding from my grandmother. But her point is well taken: There's something about the feel of the pages of a book.

Perhaps that feeling eventually will fade, and one day readers will wax weepy-eyed about their first Kindle, but I kind of doubt it.

Our shopping limit reached, we proceeded to the checkout counter and our Borders bookstore friend, Julie. Amelia loaded up on drawing and painting books.

Pencils, charcoal and pastels are her latest thing. I bought Coltrane's "Love Supreme" from the discount jazz rack and one of Simenon's Maigret novels. These days I can use all the tenor and mystery I can get.

From a cost standpoint, we might have done as well or better by shopping online. We would have saved money on gasoline, but that would have bypassed the experience. Staying home wouldn't have plucked from memory one of the happiest snapshots of my life.

Bookstores, even carefully choreographed corporate ones with CDs and cappuccinos, are optimistic places that believe in the power of the written word to entertain, inform and occasionally enlighten. They have something that's missing from online stores and literary chat rooms, and it's not just an espresso machine.

On Monday, we bought our books and said our sentimental goodbyes to one of our favorite neighborhood bookstores. Our Borders wasn't a feisty, independent bookseller, a "Little Shop Around the Corner." It was part of a big, corporate chain that crashed and burned.

But while it lived, it generated memories. And as one of those children's books will surely remind you, even giants have feelings.

John L. Smith's column appears Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. E-mail him at Smith@reviewjournal.com or call
(702) 383-0295. He also blogs at
lvrj.com/blogs/Smith