So then, the last Saturday of April is known as Independent Bookstore Day, and now that we’ve got a brick & mortar shop that fancies itself a bit of an independent bookstore, it’s a day that’s taken on some significance for us. Last year we celebrated for the first time with a weekend event that ran Saturday and Sunday. This year, we’ve added Friday evening, as well. And that’s tonight. If you’re local to Lake Worth, please come join us this weekend for our Independent Bookstore Days celebration! We’ll be open tonight, Friday April 24, from 6 to 9 PM, and then Saturday & Sunday, April 25 & 26, from 11 AM to 4 PM each day. We’ll be operating our 1950s Nolan Proof Press (you’ll be printing the cover for a book on that press), and then we’ll teach you how to make your own single signature pamphlet book using that letterpress-printed cover. We’ll be writing a Community Exquisite Corpse story (the old literary game invented by the Surrealists in which you write two sentences based solely on the previous two sentences that were written). We’d love for you to write two sentences of your own. And we’ll be serving my sister’s homemade cookies (three kinds, I think) and our newest coffee arrival at the shop: Horn & Hardart Automat Coffee, roasted in small batches in Philadelphia. The printing, the book, the story, and the coffee and cookies: these are all free and on the house. Books and coffee, after all, go together like peas in a pod. We’re also open, of course, for wonderfully eclectic shopping… including an awful lot of wonderful books.
Let’s go back to that Automat Coffee. Do you know the Horn & Hardart Automat? I think it was 1972 when Thelma DeMarco, an old friend of the family, brought me to Madison Square Garden in New York City to see a matinee performance of “The Ice Capades”. It was just the two of us. And when the show was over, Thelma took me to the Automat for dinner. Granted, I was just a little boy, but I’d never seen anything like it, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it since. All the food was on display in little windows, and Thelma put coins in the slot to open the little glass door for each thing we ate. I’m quite certain I had pie.
Mom remembers the Automat, too, from her working days at an umbrella factory in New York City. The Automat was a great place for a quick delicious meal. The first Horn & Hardart Automat opened in Philadelphia in 1902 at 818 Chestnut Street, and in 1912, Horn & Hardart opened their first New York location on Times Square. At their peak in the 1930s to 1950s, there were more than one hundred Automats throughout New York and Philadelphia… including the one where Mom ate when she worked at the umbrella factory in the 1940s, and the one where I ate after The Ice Capades show in 1972.
The coffee at the Automat was served out of a dolphin-shaped dispenser in the wall. The coffee was good then, and it’s good now, too. We’re really excited to offer it in our shop now. We’ll gladly ship it to you, too! And if you don’t have a local independent bookstore near you… we will also gladly ship books to you. CLICK HERE to shop, and a million thank yous.
John & Seth