Ode to the lost bookstore. And Memories.

I'm always in awe what triggers a memory.  While reading my daily perusals of news reels I came across the article about companies closing in 2010.  One fading company is Waldenbooks.  Most people don't know what that is, Barnes 'n Nobles being what it is today, but when I was younger, it was the place.

The place where my father and I would go and peruse aisle after aisle of books.  I don't know how long we would go, or if books were bought each time, but I do remember being able to immerse myself in the pictures, titles and passages, knowing my father was close by doing the same.

I remember being on the ground, reading and looking up, or rather up and down the aisle, to see my father standing, leaning over with his glasses perched on the edge of his nose, reading some sort of textbook or history book or maybe a biography.  If the glasses weren't on the nose, they were in the mouth, hanging by the hinge (what the heck are the side parts of glasses called, the 'arm'?).

I know my love for books is mainly from inside, and I'm just a nerd who reads more than most, but it's also from my parents encouraging me to read, reading to me at night, and those trips to Waldenbooks with my father.  He, I'm sure, had no idea I would treasure those memories years later.  I myself didn't realize the effect that memory would have until I did what I do all the time....

Read.

(Not to neglect my mother, in her defense she would drop me off at the library to peruse to my heart's content once a week.  I was always disappointed because at the time there was a limit to check out books and I always wanted more.  Hence the weekly trips; I would read them all in a week.)