It’s Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Tuesday, November 30
After several days of travel and relentless vacationing, today was a very quiet day…It was as needed as it was planned….My goal is to stay off of LA freeways until it’s time to head to the airport Thursday, not the easiest of tasks here.
The primary goal today was to go to the pastrami joint in the old neighborhood…It’s a walk-up joint with seating in the back and there’s still a sign asking you not to feed the birds, tho the sign itself has changed over the decades and one of my earliest memories is going there with Pa Sparrow, with him setting me on the ledge so I could supervise matters…Nothing has changed except for the fact they no longer offer 10-cent coffee…Well, the grill is no longer gas, it’s been electric for a long time – and the surrounding neighborhood is Asian now – but other than that, the experience has not changed in the fifty years I’ve been going there…The pastrami hasn’t changed at all and a small order of onion rings is still enuff to feed the fleet and I couldn’t finish everything.
Before that, I stopped by an athletic field at Cal Tech because this is where the first Rose Bowls were played and I’d never seen that despite going to a nearby JC for a bit before joining the Navy and then I ended up in the old neighborhood…This really wasn’t planned, but it’s tuff to get from Pasadena to the pastrami joint without going thru the old neighborhood…I passed a couple of old houses and the old grade school and it was not particularly poignant at all.
I had a good start on a nap going when the alarm went off to scoot to my 1530 appointment at a used book store…They are only open to the general public on certain days and otherwise, they’re by appointment, tho it was no trouble getting one for the same day…The store is owned by a Turkish couple and boy, the woman half would not shut up…Dude, you’re customers are readers who enjoy browsing used books at leisure and without interruption…Shut up…Since she asked, I told her I generally enjoy history, biographies and mysteries and then BOOM she wanted to personally bring out entire collections for my review and then she noted – apropos of absolutely nothing whatsoever – they had acquired a private collection of three thousand volumes of assorted stuff and boy that is taking a long time to catalog and I really wanted to throttle her because at first glance their collection appeared to be really good and deserving of a leisurely browse.
I ended up with seven books and based on the prices noted inside ol’ Sparrow was expecting to pay upwards of $70 and then you tack shipping to The Shire on top of that and you’re probably looking at close to a C note…No sir…Ol’ Sparrow was out the door for less than $30, he is not making that up.
I couldn’t believe it…The paperback to tide me over until I got home: free. The large book with a coffee stain: free…On the others she was slashing prices from the get-go, about a third of the price noted inside…The total was so modest yours truly was able to pay cash for it…I tried to get her to keep the entire $40 to pay for shipping but she didn’t want to hear any nonsense like that.
Sparrow’s Sleep Log: The Sleep Log is suspended…An estimate for the week may – or may not – be reckoned later…God bless all of you.
———
The Diary of a Nobody is a novel. All elements are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Anything else is a coincidence.
It was inspired by the 19th-century British novel of the same name.
Gaylon’s books can also be found at The Reading Salon.