There was a used bookstore in my hometown my father liked to frequent, but its odor of furniture polish and musty cloth covers was a turn off. As a child, I was desperate to align myself with the Honeycomb Kids generation. The glossy best sellers and
Playgirls at B. Dalton’s in the Glendale Mall seemed more sophisticated, and thus more my style.
It wasn’t ‘til I was a teenager, passing through Madison, Wisconsin on a family trip, that I realized the error of my ways. I was, by then, interested in theater and art and any taste of the counterculture I could truffle up amid the Preppy Handbook craze.
Paul’s Bookstore on State Street seemed like the sort of place where that itch could be scratched...