Happy Birthday to Us

It’s almost here. July 4, 2008, will mark the 15th anniversary of Dog Ears Books in Northport, Michigan, but I’m posting the story early, since our country’s birthday is the more important reason to celebrate the Fourth, and I’ll probably be too busy that day to get anything new online. Following, then, is my essay on the history of Dog Ears Books that will appear in the August-September issue of the BookWomen journal out of St. Paul, Minnesota:

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“You’re living my dream!” people sometimes exclaim. “When I retire, I want to open a bookstore!” That is a sensible approach. Have a career first, arrange for reliable retirement income, then open a bookstore as a hobby. I didn’t do it that way.

I worked in offices for two decades, and when my son turned 18, I was the one who went away to school. Returning to northern Michigan to complete my doctoral dissertation away from the distractions of teaching, I needed work, and—no surprise here--my husband and I had too many books for our small house. “We have to be ruthless,” he said to me, attacking his bookshelves while I pawed through my boxes. “Everything we’re not going to re-read has to go!” Soon the living room floor was filled with stacks of boxes of very good books.

We had enough books, clearly, to open a small shop, and someone we knew had a vacant shed we could rent for the season in Northport. No business plan, no research, no retail experience. Swim or sink!

Ours were used books. We had a dog. Dog Ears! I can tell much of its story in a series of partial lists.

Here are some things I remember from that summer of 1993: putting up our homemade shelves in June, feeling like a real, working part of the community getting ready for the tourist season… sweeping the sidewalk every morning in July, nervous about meeting “strangers” again that day…overhearing passers-by repeat the name of our shop, “Dog Ears,” over and over again in delight… feeling gratified every time someone asked, “Do you have a poetry section?” Some evenings we opened the shop again after dinner, and as darkness fell, the little lighted shed looked and felt cozier and cozier. I remember meeting for the first time people who are still my friends today, and I remember also the first books they bought from me that summer 15 years ago.

There were lessons to learn: how to identify first editions; how important dust jackets are to value; how easy it is to buy too many books and to pay too much for them; that it’s never a good idea to store books in a basement; that books in storage don’t pay their rent; that even free books can be costly to store; that sometimes “No, thank you” is the best answer you can give; that the majority of Americans consider themselves shy; that most people are not as shy with strange dogs as they are with strange human beings; that almost everyone who loves books thinks that “No one reads books any more.”

We moved Dog Ears Books to nearby Traverse City the following spring, but when the two-year lease ran out I was ready to come back to Northport. A booklet I made up for our tenth anniversary noted various milestones in that decade: creation of a garden outside the shop on the corner of Mill and Nagonaba; our old dog Nikki’s participation in the Northport Dog Parade; adding the first new books to my shop inventory; moving to a larger, more comfortable building (with plumbing and heat!) next door; completing my Ph.D. in philosophy; shifting from community college instruction in Traverse City to tutoring part-time in the local public school.

Because the truth is (and this will not surprise BookWomen readers, I’m sure) that making a living with an independent bookstore is not an easy gig. I won’t list the sacrifices (hint: one is health insurance), and I’m certainly not saying the joys don’t outweigh the agonies, but I’ve supplemented bookstore income over the years in a variety of ways: teaching, tutoring, freelance editing, garden maintenance and orchard work. Also, anyone in the book world can attest to how much that world has changed in the last 15 years. Just when I thought I had it figured out, “it” would change, and that’s been true of book searches and online selling and library book sales. It’s also been true of the economy in general, not only in northern Michigan but across the country. Again, swim or sink!

A couple of years ago, midway through a discouraging winter, a great piece of good fortune came my way. An architectural designer from Grand Rapids, married to a well-established artist and preparing a career change of his own from architecture to fine art, bought an old building in downtown Northport, the old Ford dealership showroom and garage from the second decade of the twentieth century. Woody Palmer wanted to launch an art gallery and needed someone to do sales. We first danced cautiously around the idea of a business collaboration at a friend’s winter place in Suwanee, Florida, and by the following December I had a crew of volunteers helping me move my bookstore back to the street where it had been born. Dog Ears Books and the Painted Horse Gallery—our own fancy dog and pony show on Waukazoo Street! It was exciting. It was nerve-wracking. It was a leap of faith. When I reflect on the 15-year history of Dog Ears Books, though, I realize all those things can be said of every step along the way. It helps to have a dream and to be independent in spirit. It also helps to be as stubborn as a mule.

Our little village is at the end of a peninsula, and the regional economy is mixed, agriculture and tourism, both seasonal in nature. Declining public school enrollment led to community crisis a few years back when one faction thought the high school should be closed for good. (It’s still open.) The town’s first-ever sewer system is now almost completed, and real estate transfers and remodeling projects are finally going forward downtown, but when we invited the public into our remodeled space at 106 Waukazoo for our Grand Opening last year, one of the feelings most often expressed by enthusiastic visitors and clientele was gratitude. Residents were thrilled that the bookstore hadn’t left town or gone out of business, and they were grateful to Woody for buying and remodeling the building to house Dog Ears Books and his own beautiful new gallery. Waukazoo Revival, I call it.

Contingency over time becomes necessity. You wouldn’t miss the person you love after decades together if you’d never met in the first place. It was just chance that David and I found the first bare-bones, no-frills shed in Northport when our personal home library threatened to bury us alive, but now Northport is part of Dog Ears Books, as the bookstore is part of the village. I could have been something other than a bookseller, but along came a choice of roads, and this is the direction I took.

We have a new, young dog now. Old Nikki and I (younger then) both had to overcome our shyness in the bookstore, which was good for both of us. Nowadays, although Sarah and I sometimes chafe at the long hours indoors, she’s a terrific after-hours companion in woods and field. David’s enthusiasm for schlepping boxes of books has waned; on the other hand, he's still brimming with ideas for the bookstore and very satisfied, as am I, with all the wonderful people we continue to meet, thanks to Dog Ears Books.

So after 105 dog years in the book business, I can say, “It’s a hard way to make a living, but it’s a good life.”

(Thanks to Mollie at BookWomen for allowing this sneak preview to their late summer issue.)