You know you are getting old when:

[tonyb]

I have a couple of sets of friends who once owned bricks-and-mortar used (mostly, but some new stock) bookstores on Capitol Hill in Seattle. One friend had a total of three stores at one time, but that's going back more than 20 years. She's now down to one struggling survivor. The other friends went online-only several years ago. Their business had been a money maker pretty much from the start, but a decade or so of providing employment to people who made more off the operation than they did, with little sign that would improve, prompted their shift to online-only sales.

What I most miss about such shops is stumbling across volumes I wouldn't have encountered, nor would have thought myself interested in, if not for my browsings there. You go in looking for one thing and come out with some very different thing. Or two.

Among the reasons I hate moving (I hope to never do it again) is moving my books. No, I don't wish to be rid of them, even if it is indeed likely that I will never again open most of them. There is a method to my arrangement of them, which makes sense to me if nobody else. A person who thought she was being helpful during one move took it upon herself to arrange the books BY SIZE! That'll never happen again.

 

[2jakes]

I have a room which I call the "weight-room" because at one time
there were barbells to workout in that room.

Now I have mountains of "collectibles" in there.
It is difficult to locate the weights anymore.
Tennis & cycling keep me in shape now.

When I go in that room for a certain item in mind.
I usually come out with something else as well that I forgot I had.
It can be a book, painting, bicycle part or leather jacket.

I always feel good as If I just went to a store that carries only
things that I enjoy.

 

[ChrisB]

Buying a book online will get you exactly what you were looking for. But the best part of browsing a book store was finding what I wasn't looking for.

And there is the card catalog in the library. My library did away with it 20 years ago. There are adults who have never even seen one, let alone used one.

 

[2jakes]

Buying a book online will get you exactly what you were looking for. But the best part of browsing a book store was finding what I wasn't looking for.

And there is the card catalog in the library. My library did away with it 20 years ago. There are adults who have never even seen one, let alone used one.

I once purchased a book at
a flea market.
I later noticed that there was a library card inside with a "return date" of Sep 65.
The library no longer exists.
I've always wondered how much
in late fees if the book was
returned.

 

[kaiser]

Borders Books at the corner of Southfield and 13 mile was a pick up joint in the late 1980's.

 

[Stearmen]

I once purchased a book at
a flea market.
I later noticed that there was a library card inside with a "return date" of Sep 65.
The library no longer exists.
I've always wondered how much
in late fees if the book was
returned.

At $0.02 a day, I figure a little over $1,000.00. Just send the check to me and I will take care of it!

 

[green papaya]

when the closest thing to Playboy magazine when you were a kid was the SEARS ROEBUCK catalog Women's Lingerie dept.

 

[tonyb]

I inherited from a recently departed sister-in-law a set of three-by-five black and white photos, 10 in all, in a pair of matching frames, each with five shots arranged vertically. These are all informal portraits of sorts, taken when the subjects, myself among them, were in our late teens and early 20s.

Five of those 10 subjects are now deceased, two of them in recent months.

 

[Stearmen]

View attachment 66518

when the closest thing to Playboy magazine when you were a kid was the SEARS ROEBUCK catalog Women's Lingerie dept.

Like a friend of mine said to me once, "a Sears Allstate motorcycle and the lingerie section of the Sears catalog, what more did a 12 year old boy need?"

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

I inherited from a recently departed sister-in-law a set of three-by-five black and white photos, 10 in all, in a pair of matching frames, each with five shots arranged vertically. These are all informal portraits of sorts, taken when the subjects, myself among them, were in our late teens and early 20s.

Five of those 10 subjects are now deceased, two of them in recent months.

Recently I was in a morbid mood and wondered who might attend my funeral. With growing horror I realized that almost everyone I could think of was already dead. If I live just a few years longer I'll just have to give instructions to put my ashes in a sack and toss them in the nearest river. Nobody will be there to care.

 

[GHT]

If I live just a few years longer I'll just have to give instructions to put my ashes in a sack and toss them in the nearest river. Nobody will be there to care.

Well at least you won't have the same commotion as happened at Larry La Prise's, author of the Hokey Cokey, funeral. All went well until they came to put him in his coffin. They got his left leg in, and that's when the trouble started.

 

[Harp]

View attachment 66518

when the closest thing to Playboy magazine when you were a kid ...

Long ago and far away when I was a kid I served in a military bodyguard detail for a Playboy Playmate USO tour.

 

[tonyb]

Well at least you won't have the same commotion as happened at Larry La Prise's, author of the Hokey Cokey, funeral. All went well until they came to put him in his coffin. They got his left leg in, and that's when the trouble started.

Over here it's called "The Hokey Pokey," so it took me a second or three to get the joke.

In that vein ...

Did you hear the sad news about that fellow who overdosed on Viagra? Killed him, it did. And the worst of it was that at the funeral, when they tried to close the coffin lid ...

 

[Zombie_61]

One of my uncles had a nearly life-long love affair with alcohol. When he died several years ago they cremated his body in accordance with his wishes; took 'em three days to put out the fire.

 

[LizzieMaine]

"I'll stick a wick in your mouth and use you as an alcohol lamp!"

"You weren't born, you were squeezed out of a bar rag!"

"If my father was a gate-leg table, your father was under it!"

-- Charlie McCarthy to W. C. Fields.

 

[tonyb]

"I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying that I approved of it."

-- Mark Twain

 

[Lean'n'mean]

I'll just have to give instructions to put my ashes in a sack and toss them in the nearest river

That would be inciting the illegal disposal of human remains & wilful pollution of a water course.

 

[tonyb]

"I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying that I approved of it."

-- Mark Twain

Further research indicates this may be a misattribution. Good quote anyway, though.

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

That would be inciting the illegal disposal of human remains & wilful pollution of a water course.

They can sue me.

 

[Zombie_61]

That would be inciting the illegal disposal of human remains & wilful pollution of a water course.

Only if they catch you.

Further research indicates this may be a misattribution. Good quote anyway, though.

It does sound like something Mr. Clemens might have said.