Robin Agnew
The Ann Arbor Art Fairs, which happen every year during four
of the hottest and/or wettest days in July (often both, as in this year), take
over our town. About 500,000 people come
through the city for the 4 day event, bringing with them mayhem, dollars, and
human interest galore (as well as art, or course).
We’re off the main path of the art fair which is actually a
good thing – it gives us room to set up on the sidewalk right in front of our
store (which wouldn’t be the case if we were on Main
St.) and we’re between two of the larger parking
structures in town. We hustle a ton of
dollar books – every one we sell makes us a little happier, and our book load a
little lighter.
Of course we also sell the books that cost more, inside the
store, and lots of people have made us a stop, including artists who need good
reading materials for booth sitting. We
have one lovely family from Richmond, Va, who come every year – the parents are
classics profs, and like historical mysteries, their daughter likes Harry
Potter (she has 73 different editions of all the various installments), and the
twin sons, majoring in math, love Deaver, Connelly, Lehane, Child and
interestingly, David Hewson, an author that’s seemingly enjoyed by the whole
family. This year I got the guys started
on Robert Crais and the Dad on Elizabeth George, two authors I love hand selling, both because they’re terrific and
because people always want more.
We had another man from Ohio
who, like my husband, loves Kem Nunn.
Any other Nunn-ites out there?
You know who you are and you are few and far between. I got him started
on Jack O’Connell, another fave of my husband’s. Another woman stumbled in, looking desperate
– she demanded to know where the Asey Mao section was. Luckily I have been selling books long enough
to lead her to the luckily large pile of Phoebe Atwood Taylor books we
have. She found five she’d been
searching for.
All day there’s a swarm of people walking by and buying
dollar books – one very elderly golf enthusiast had to make sure the golf book
we had on the dollar table was really a dollar.
He then wanted to know where the REST of our golf section was. I was saddened to tell him – as well as
another elegant, browsing man – that we only sold mysteries. The elegant browser left with a copy of Farewell, My Lovely.
Oh, and the blood? A
elderly woman who lives up the street stumbled on the sidewalk and gashed her
forehead open – I was struck by how nice people are, as two people walking by
helped her staunch the blood with a towel I gave them, and while I called 911,
the sub shop owners from down the street hustled over and brought her a bottle
of water. They even helped me wash down
the sidewalk after the ambulance took her away.
And luckily, one of them is a med student so he didn’t gasp audibly (as
I did, I could NOT be a doctor) when he saw the gash. “Oh,” he said kindly, “it’s just a little
cut.” I think he’s going to be a great
doc.
