D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
December
2008
Another Chapter
O'Keefe's Books enters its 25th year, selling books new and old and offering a cozy place to chat about them. Plus no Denny's, Twisted Vine's swan song, HMS growth and more.
"What's odd about this one is not that it's lasted this long but the strange turn its path has taken," says Dennis O'Keefe, turning over in his hand a palm-sized book. The cracking brown leather cover of the small volume gives a hint at its advanced age.
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Dennis O'Keefe in his store, O'Keefe's
Book Shop, which enters its 25th year of business this month. |
"This is about 300 years old," he goes on, opening the cover and examining the first couple of pages. "Yup, 1717. But that's not the weird thing. Take a look inside."
A review of the frontispiece and title page reveals an ancient-looking typeface, writings in both Latin and French. But that's not the weird thing, he says. Thumbing past the introduction and a few pages of text leads to — a hole. The edges of the rest of the pages are, in fact, glued together, their centers removed to create a secret hiding place, maybe three-by-four inches square.
O'Keefe laughs. "Yeah, somebody just hollowed it out and made it into a little safe. Who knows when or why or what the heck they hid away in there?"
He muses that the book may have been altered a long time ago, when it was newly printed and not worth very much. That would mean it lasted for quite a while in its current incarnation as a secret hiding vessel. Else, an owner may have converted the book more recently, when the now-ancient first edition could have been a handed-down family treasure.
"Or maybe somebody bought it at a used bookstore like this one for next to nothing," O'Keefe says with a wry smile, "and thought it would make a good little incognito safe, totally unconcerned about its value as an old, possibly rare book. In any event, it's an antique now and it's certainly a curiosity!"
Sitting at the desk of his own used bookstore, O'Keefe holds forth — as anyone who knows him knows he is wont to do — about books, about the people who love books, about both endurance and change. As a familiar sight in the chairs outside his store's front window, O'Keefe has seen a fair amount of change in the 24 years his shop has occupied this spot on Broadway in Silver City.
"I've seen some businesses come and go, some people come and go, for sure," O'Keefe says with a glance out the window toward the intersection of Broadway and Bullard Streets, a quintessential corner of the historic downtown. He recalls the thriving street when his shop first opened, then the period when so many businesses closed up shop. The last few years, he notes, have brought something of a rebirth, a new commercial life in the town. "We've stood through it all," he says with humorous pseudo-drama.
O'Keefe credits his mother, a voracious reader, with providing the catalyst for his bookstore's inception. "I started it up with my mother and brother," he says of the business. "Basically she was just drowning in books so we decided to rent the storefront and started selling the books we could stand to get rid of. You know how that goes," he adds with a smile. "Well, it's hard for some people to part with books."
Since then, he's bought books from locals and at estate sales, always looking for things that will enhance a particular category in his inventory, which O'Keefe describes as "a little bit of almost everything — art, poetry, reference books, classic fiction, general fiction, biographies and autobiographies." Most of the books he sells are used, but he also carries new titles of local and regional interest.
Although he says he thinks that running a used bookstore is harder than operating one for new books — "It's just harder to go find them," he says of used books — he prefers the used business as it also appeals to his love of recycling.
"Besides, then I get to meet the really neat people who want to sell their books, talk with them about their books. And it's great to see the look on people's faces when they find something unique, or even just what they'd been looking for, some obscure book of poetry or something," he says with a whimsical smile.
After 24 years in the same little storefront, O'Keefe is comfortably ensconced amongst the shelves and his old desk. With mock seriousness, he points out the business' card-catalog system, a somewhat dusty series of drawers with index cards, the books' titles, authors, publishers and prices carefully inscribed by one of his relatives in an old-fashioned, flowing script.
"The dust here shows you just how often I rely on this system," he says, pulling a card at random. "Ha! I'm sure this book isn't even here anymore." He places the card back into the file. "What a nice idea that was! But, no, I don't keep it up. If I did that, I wouldn't have time to talk to anyone. I mean, what's a bookstore for, right? Anyway, I think I pretty much know everything that's in here."
Just then, a couple in touristy-looking duds comes in and asks O'Keefe if he might have a copy of a specific book — The Roadside Geology of New Mexico. As if to prove his point about the superiority of the card catalog in his brain, O'Keefe perks up with an, "Oh, yes I do!" He gets up and plucks the book immediately from the shelf. He writes out a receipt, gives the buyers their change, then settles back into his chair, a self-satisfied smile on his face.
O'Keefe says that he graduated college with a degree in civil engineering. But he found he was bored with office life after one year and got into the business of building custom adobe homes in Santa Fe and doing architectural design on the side. He still does the design work — in fact, it subsidizes the bookstore.
"I decided I like books a lot better than houses, but the work with houses allows me to do this," he says, gesturing with a sweep of his arm over the stacks and shelves around him. For a number of years, he kept his drafting desk in the bookshop. But that got too cumbersome, he says, and took up too much space where he could put books.
A big nature lover — he was out hiking this morning and barely got back in time to open the store on schedule with his posted hours — O'Keefe also sells artsy cards and framed photographs from his hiking travels. Breathtaking shots of some of his recent trips hang near the desk.
He also does book repair. To illustrate, he pulls out a bag with several old leather-bound volumes, Bancroft's Works.
"These are over a hundred years old," he says, flipping open a cover to check. "Yup, 1884. I don't re-bind, I just put them back together," he explains. "I love working with them, the old books, and people who love books in general are interesting people."
Interestingly enough, O'Keefe says he came late to his love of books.
"Other than required schoolbooks, I'd read almost no books before I was 30," he says. "My mom, though, like I said, was a voracious reader. And with her example, something sparked me to start reading for pleasure. Then I started collecting, like every book lover does, I suppose."
A reader of both nonfiction and fiction, O'Keefe says he cannot pick just one genre as his favorite.
"It has to do with relating to the authors," he says, trying to explain why he reads what he reads. "The thing I love to wonder about is why writers write. I like it when I can see that what they're trying to do is to understand something. They've got something to say, some idea of maybe fixing the world or just understanding the world that we all find ourselves in."
He pauses, then shakes his head. "Yeah, that's it. When I see that happening in a book, I'm there, I'm in."
O'Keefe's Book Shop, 102 W. Broadway, Silver City.
Tues.-Sat. 10 a.m.-4:30 p.m. 388-3313.
Update
Silver Citians can forget about a Denny's coming to the old Golden Corral site on Hwy. 180. Commercial realtor Court Hall confirms that a potential Denny's deal fell through and that the property has just been sold to Jim Nennich, the local Snappy Mart mogul, who will install a liquor store at the property.
Last Call
Jim Kolb has announced that he will close The Twisted Vine wine bar in Silver City at the end of this year. Check this month's 40 Days and 40 Nights listings for a plethora of events and musical offerings as The Big Man closes the joint out in style. "The End" comes Dec. 31, with the Vine open 5-10 p.m. 108 E. Broadway, 388-2828.
New in Town
Don E. Milam has opened Milam Home Services, a Silver City-based business offering small home repairs. 388-2254.
Rosie Martinez has opened Casa de Rosie, a new bed and breakfast at 2140 Calle del Norte in Mesilla, just about a hundred steps off the historic Plaza. Martinez has a business degree and has run a restaurant in the past. After cooking and caring for the needs of her family of five, Martinez says she felt having the B&B would not be that much more work. 523-0861, www.casaderosie.com
Can you hear me now? Advanced Hearing Care has opened a location at 4351 E. Lohman Ave., Suite 103, in Las Cruces. The company already has offices in Alamogordo and Ruidoso. It offers diagnostic hearing evaluations for individuals from birth to adults, diagnostic evaluation of dizziness and balance problems, automated auditory brain stem analysis for newborns and more. 521-9795, www.advancedhearingcarenm.com