Sold a café journal and an “Outlaws, Rebels…”
The journal went to a woman with short grey hair, dark grey shirt-jacket and brown-gold patterned slacks. She usually comes to the café afternoons – and felt slighted no one had asked her to contribute. She has a rich background in journalism – newspaper, magazine, TV and radio – here and in Atlanta – her positions often ending due to a clash between her progressive politics and management’s less progressive ones.
She also has worked and a dog walker and dog boarder, her second in command being a black, 90-pound Belgian shepherd who, as described, seemed both fluent in English and dog. He lived until 16 and was an amazing creature. (I am a dog guy and love dog stories.) Now she has a little white brioche.
A lovely conversation.

The “Outlaws” went to a fellow with white hair in a pony tail, red-and-white checked shirt over a red tee, grey slacks, and red-and-grey hiking sneakers. He is an electrician, guitar-maker, and visual artist, both of whimsical postcards usually sent to his 13-year-old son of whom he has recently lost custody and full-size, abstract grids based on mathematical formulations of his own creation.
We had a fine conversation about how we each got into what it is we are doing. He told me the perhaps apocryphal story of the origin of the phrase “Bob’s your uncle” and I told him the certainly apocryphal story of “If the Creeks don’t rise.”
Another wonderful conversation.

In other news…
1.) A couple months ago this fellow who resembles a giant puffin in hiking shorts and rents a room from a cafe regular wanted an “Outlaws” but not the copy on my table because a cover corner was bent. We arranged to meet the next day, so I brought an unblemished copy, but he did not show. I kept bringing it and he kept not showing, so I stopped bringing it because I didn’t want to risk bending another corner. Then he came and we started this dance again.
Finally I handed a copy in a mailer to his landlord to give him. I said it was $15 and he could keep the mailer. The next morning the landlord told me the tenant was abroad. By the time the tenant had returned the landlord had misplaced the book. By the time he’d found it, the tenant was abroad again. Finally I asked for my book back because I had another buyer. “Oh, I gave it to him,” the landlord said.
“But no one gave me $15,” I said.
Completion of this transaction is pending.
2.) A friend of limited means in NYC inquired about acquiring my forthcoming “Bob on Bob.” I said it would be $10, plus postage ($3.92). She asked if I’d send a pdf. I said I didn’t send pdfs, but if she wanted to pay $10 and avoid postage… She said I had sent her a pdf of IWKYA.
“I sent you a pdf?” I said. “Didn’t I send a (free) copy of IWKYA? Didn’t you keep it in quarantine for weeks? Didn’t you just say you hadn’t read it yet because you had sore hands from all the letters and postcards you are writing in order to save democracy? If you already had a pdf, how did sore hands prevent your reading that? Could you not print a copy and lift one sheet of paper at a time? Could you not read on screen and push “Page Down” one finger at a time?
Believe me, I put this more tactfully. But if she did not read one free book, damned if I will send her another.

Sold a “Lollipop.”
The buyer, a Hispanic woman in a SHE sweatshirt and short shorts, works as a researcher in public health. The notable thing about this transaction was that since I’d last used Square it had changed its sign-in requirements as if to prevent a flood of patrons from receiving unearned money in their accounts. I was baffled, but the researcher stepped in, swiped, swiped again, and… Voila! I had made $9.64 and Square its 36-cents.
Also Hank Rosenfeld and I finalized our deal. I received “Jive 95,” his rib-tickling, eye-rolling oral history of KSAN (Boy, were those people nuts – but good talkers), and he received an “Outlaws, Rebels…” and a “Most Outrageous” – and I threw in a “Cheesesteak.”
Finally, a fellow with white hair in a short pony tail and shades stopped by. “Wanna buy a book?” I said.
“I’ll have a look,” he said.
He picked up “Goshkin.” “That’s interesting,” he said.
And left.
My opening may need work.

In other news…
1.) I’m reading a book by a friend about a civil trial in which he was a plaintiff. When he got to voir dire, he designated the race of every prospective juror, including Caucasians, which caused me to note that, while I designate when people are African-Americans and Hispanics and Asians, I leave whites alone (See above), and I wondered if this reflected racism on my part, as if I am operating on an assumption “Of course, people are white,” even though, world-wide , most aren’t, and, in fact, at this very moment. in this very café, it is eight-to-one against.
I feared some memo had gone out on which I had not been copied, but when I asked my friend, he had no explanation – nor why he had not designated the race of the judge or the lawyers or other principals in the case.
This, I figured, was between him and his editor.

https://www.firstofthemonth.org/meetings-with-remarkable-men-2/

I fleshed out a post I’d put up at FB. A representational portion of the new piece follows:

(W)hile at Brandeis I never took a course from Herbert Marcuse or Abraham Maslow or Maurice Stein or “Tuesdays With” Morrie Schwartz, all of whose thinking would have great influence on members of my generation. Nor did I hear Marcel Duchamp, whose thinking would have great influence on me, when he spoke at the Rose Art Museum my junior year. (In fact, I never entered the Rose Art Museum. In fact, I knew nothing about Marcel Duchamp except “Nude Descending a Staircase” and, as nudes went, I preferred “Playboy.”

(In order of completion)
1. William Maxwell. Time Will Darken It. The first of three novels by Maxwell in a single volume I found in a Free Little Library. (I had already read the third and am now reading the second.) This one is a portrait of a family’s life in a small mid-western town in pre-World War I America. Steady, re-assuring old-fashioned fiction.

2. Jarislav Hasek. The Good Soldier Schwek. Recommended by a young man in the café. Schwek may have inspired Catch-22, but I am about the only one I know not to have been crazy about Catch-22, and I didn’t care for this either.

3. Claire Keegan. Small Things Like This. Another fine miniature by Keegan. Immaculate style and strong story.

4. R. Crumb. The Book of Mr. Natural. If you were a Mr. Natural fan, this compilation of his strips and stories may knock you out, but I wasn’t, and it didn’t.

5. Benjamin Labatut. When We Cease to Understand the World. I had read this two years ago and realized I had forgotten everything about it, so I decided to re-read it, and, boy, was it terrific. I am sure it will stick with me now.

6. Sarah Bakewell. How to Live. A biography of Montaigne. A philosopher/neighbor recommended it as superior to Bakewell’s At the Existentialist Café. I disagree.

7. Italo Calvino. If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler… Not for me. Way over my head. Maybe in the future, but I doubt I’ll try again.

8. Iris Murdoch. Jackson’s Dilemma. I am a big fan of Murdoch, and Bakewell touted this, her final novel, but it seems primarily of interest because Murdoch wrote it while in the early stages of Alzheimer’s and the effects are observable.

9. Ivana Armanini. Love, Resist, Etc. A collection of strips by a cartoonist to whom language is mainly a page marker and visuals are paramount. It gives your eyes a trip and your mind a workout.

10. Amor Towles. A Gentleman in Moscow. Two friends had raved about this so imagine my excitement to find it in a “Free” box. Now I will be even more excited to pit it back in one.

Sold a “Best Ride” and a café journal.
They come with a story.
When a new owner bought the café and re-did it to suit his vision of what would play in Paris, he put up shelves for authors to display their work. Several did, including some I’d never laid eyes on and some who believed the cafe needed several of their books. I contributed a “Best Ride.”
The other day a fellow held up a copy and told me how much he’d liked it. “Where’d you get it?” I said.
He pointed at the shelf.
“Wanna pay me?” I said.
This led to a fun conversation. Hank is from Detroit, an ex-ballplayer, current writer, and friend of Lenny, who, when the cafe’s Hall of Fame opens, will be the first inductee. Lenny had tipped Hank to my book. Hank has just published “Jive 95,” a history of KSAN, the San Francisco radio station which was my favorite the first years I was here. We arranged to swap works the next day. He did not appear, but Lenny, who has multiple pieces in the journal and is out of copies himself, acquired one from me for Hank.
I look forward to further conversations – and transactions.

In other news…
1.) That sale of IWKYA to a 6th grade friend I reported last “Adventure” fell through in an unsettling way. I had mailed it and he was to mail a check. Calling to learn my address, he mentioned he was sending me a book which, he recalled my saying, I was short copies of, a statement I did not. His check never arrived but the book did – the IWKYA I had sent him. Inquiries confirmed his advancing dementia. The next day I read in the “Chronicle” the obit of a woman I had made out with in Philly 60 years ago. She had become a physician – and lived five minutes away in El Cerrito, all news to me.
Both of which served to further unsettle my sense of footing in the universe.
2.) Foot traffic has been, well, mixed. (A) Middle-aged white guy picks up a “Lollipop,” and when I ask “You have a Chicago connection?”, puts it down and leaves. (B) College-aged African-American woman excitedly looks at several of my books. She is in a rush, accepts my card – and hasn’t been heard from since. (C) Colorfully dressed 30-ish African-American woman examines “Outlaws, Rebels…” “Are you an artist?” I ask. “An enthusiast,” she says. She takes out several dollar bills but is short. I give her a card, and she promises to be back.
3.) Received an e-mail from a cartoonist who said he enjoyed my stuff at TCJ and wanted to send me his new book about a family of goth vultures. While I am familiar with vultures, I say, goths are after my time. But, sure, I will be delighted.
Still a kick to know strangers read me.

Sold an IWKYA to a fellow I’ve known since 6th grade when my literary claim to fame was “Dognet,” a “Dragnet” satire I’d cribbed from a stand-up comic’s routine. We remained friends through my law school years and in sporadic – sometimes very sporadic – touch until recently when email and phone contact became frequent, a common phenomenon, I suspect, among us older folks.
Then sold a “Lollipop” to an electrical engineer in town from San Diego with his wife to settle their son in at UC. The Dad works in the manufacture of computer chips of the type the US is trying to keep China from getting its hands on. His conversation was full of words like “photons” and “plasma” and “lasers,” with which I was familiar, but I could not understand a single sentence. He was ten when the events described in my book were on TV and decided to learn more about them.
My next transaction was not as easy as it sounds. The local chapter of the Authors’ Guild has been holding monthly get-togethers at a downtown brew pub. Five of us at the most recent: the organizer, Sven, me, another guy, a Caucasian woman and a Korean-American woman. When I mentioned I sold my books at a café, the Caucasian woman said she walked by it every day and would buy one. Let’s say her name was July X. But when I got home, I realized I would not be there as early as I’d said I would, so I decided to e-mail her.
When I retrieved the email to the group announcing the meeting, there was no July X among the recipients but there was a, let-us-say, June Z. So I e-mailed her.
June Z replied she did not know who I was or what I was talking about.
I apologized.
Then Sven sent another group e-mail. Again, June Z was included but not July X. So I emailed June Z and asked if she had a pen name.
She replied that June Z was her pen name. Her actual name was June Y.
So I emailed Sven and asked if June Z was AKA July X or vice-versa. He said, Ooops. He had left July X off his emails – and sent me her address. I then told her of my changed business hours, and she told me she had visited my web site and wanted both “Cheesesteak” and “Fully Armed.” (I offered her an Author’s Discount – and threw in a “Best Ride.”) Then I visited her web site, saw her books, and proposed a swap.
She will bring some next week, so I don’t know what I’m getting.

In other news…
1.) My Checkered Demon “Buy Bob’s Books” sign drew to my table the first café patron under 50 years of age to recognize S. Clay Wilson’s work. This fellow, in his mid-to-late 30s, was tall, overweight, with shoulder-length dark hair, Grateful Dead-related tattoos on both arms, and self-identified as an artist-writer-musician. I was in the midst of discussing the Anonymous Artists of America with my tablemate, Rex, and this fellow said they sounded like they’d be right up his alley. Then he introduced me to his girlfriend, thin as a needle, all in black, black hair dyed blacker, her own tattoos. He said they’d check out my books the next time they had money, the artist-writer-musician business not being lucrative, I suspect.
I gave them my card and have not been seen or heard from them since.
2.) “Kit” and “Jill” were two cute-as-button kids, both in baggy, comfy grays, he with a discrete nose ring and she with brown hair in a tidy bun. Jill noticed “Cheesesteak.” “I’m from Bucks County. Are you from Philadelphia.”
“I probably left Philly before you…” I looked at her. “Before your parents were born.” (I am always surprised to find myself saying things like that.)
“Where else can we get your books?” Kit said.
“No where,” I said – and gave them my card.
They have not been seen or heard from since.

Sold one book; swapped another.
The sale, a “Cheesesteak,” was to “Natasha,” a 20-something African-American, with rhinestone-studded eyeglasses and shoulder-length hair under a multi-colored knit cap. She has been working at home since Covid, which does not suit her. “I need interaction. I’m a social person.” She wants to read more. She wants to learn. We agree, despite our differences in background, as far as my books go “Cheesesteak” is a good beginning.
The swap was of “Most Outrageous” to my café pal Gene for his latest. Faithful readers will recall him, perhaps under a pseudonym, as a retired architect and author of humorous seniors erotica. This time, “Train Six, Party Mix,” he has widened his range to a ninesome (of which I have, so far, met five), the youngest of whom are in college. The action occurs in transit from Berkeley to Chicago and seems well-researched. I have learned a lot, for instance, about some not-on-the-menu possibilities within dining cars.

In other news…
1.) I shared my hard-earned self-publishing wisdom with “Judith,” a retired professor of pedagogy, who has turned from academic prose to poetry and essays. A mutual friend asked if I would counsel her, and I said I would be happy to, especially if she bought one of my books. Unfortunately, the friend had spoken highly only of IWKYA, which I happened to be non-holding the morning Judith showed, so my advice turned out to be gratis.
2.) And the café has seen the return of “Sam.”
He used to be there every morning, sitting in a corner, wrapped, regardless of the weather, in a wool Raiders jacket, eating a yogurt acquired at the supermarket. Sam had a ferociously untrimmed beard and ghastly pallor, but he was nice enough that no one begrudged him the loans he promised to repay the first of the month – and never did.
Then Sam disappeared. He was gone over a year. “How you doing, Sam?” I said.
“I’m doing good,” he said. “I’m going to repay you what I owe you.”
“No rush,” I said.
“And could you buy me a coffee? I’m kinda desperate.”
I handed him a five.
Later “Michaelangelo,” the café’s well-known multi-media artist and I were discussing this visitation. “You never know who’s going to walk in,” he said.
“But ‘Rick’s’ gets Ingrid Bergman,” I said, “and we get Sam.”

All my books are available at www.theboblevin.com
Gene’s is available thru Amazon.

Sold three books.
Two were “Outlaws, Rebels…,” which is a book I rarely bring to the café because not too much of my public are fans of underground/alternative comix, but “Rex,” the former animator had wanted one, so I had laid a copy out for him last week when, as previously reported, it was snapped up by that biologist. This week I had brought another, but, just as Rex was about to walk through the door, it was snapped up by “Y,” a prior customer. Finally, the next day, I put it in Rex’s hands directly, forcing me on-line to replenish my stock since it is out-of-print and I can only market the “pre-owned.”
My other sale was an IWKYA to a visitor from Colorado. She had a long brown braid under a flowered Giants cap and had two small boys with her. She and her husband, if I understood correctly, co-own a business which takes echo-cardiograms for doctors and hospitals, and their youngest son, who is 11, has already announced his wish to become a cardiac surgeon. So I may have tapped into a market there.

In other news…
1.) My most notable non-sale was to a fellow wearing a soiled flat-brimmed straw hat, tinted glasses, green billowing sport jacket, and purple low cut sneakers. (He said he would buy a book the next time he had money.) He was unfamiliar with even the most well-known UG/alt cartoonists, but he recommended to me a Belgian creator of woodcut novels and a local politically inclined poster artist, both of whom I didn’t know. We were getting along fine until the conversation reached a point where he was telling me about neighbors who were attempting to link him to a Nazi Manson family (or maybe he was linking them to it). Either way, I regretted having already given him my card.
2.) And in a p.s. to last week’s “Adventure,” it came to my attention that it was illegal in California to possess a switchblade with more than a 2″ blade. However, on the advice of my counsel, Sydney Powell and John Eastman, I believe I have a good Second Amendment defense should it come to that.

Gave a café journal to a retired pediatrician in Carmel, who regularly reads my blog and is intrigued by the characters my “Adventures” bring to my table. And I sold two books.
An “Outlaws, Rebels…” went to a young, pony-tailed, Hispanic physics professor, who knew nothing about underground/alternative cartoonists and wanted to learn. And a “Cheesesteak,” was purchased by a middle-aged, grey-bearded physicist, who had lived in Philadelphia for nine years, some of them near Clark Park, which exists in my memory because (a) the steepness of its hill loomed like Annapurna to seven-year-old boys with sleds and (b) its playing fields were the neutral site for the titanic struggle between my mid-elementary school, post-dinner softball gang, the Osage Indians (I guess we would be the Osage Guardians now) and our arch-rivals from one block west. (We won. I had a lead-off walk, advanced to third on two ground-outs, and was stranded.)

In other news…
Two notable encounters occurred.
One was with a man of about 60, who was on his way to Bandimere Speedway in Colorado for the Mile High Nationals, the largest drag-racing event west of the Mississippi. I was digesting the improbabilty of a life-long drag racing fan following a physicist and molecular (or cellular) biologist to within three-feet of my double espresso, when the fellow to his left shanghaied the conversation through references to fuel mixes, cam shafts, and carburators, and I retreated into memories of James Dean hurtling toward the cliff’s edge in “Rebel Without a Cause.”
The other involved Berne, the photographer-turned-tree-trimmer (See “Adventure 368″), who, in the intervening weeks, had seemed in the process of de-acquisitioning some holdings. He had asked me if I knew any yachtsman who might wish to purchase a pair of waterproof binoculars. I, in fact, knew a sailor on the Bay, and, though no sale resulted, Berne gave me a horseshoe for my trouble. (It now hangs on my study wall next to my Bill Sienkiewicz pen-and-ink.)
This time he wondered if I knew any knife collectors. When I said I might, he laid four on my table and had me take a photo and email them. My friend replied he liked the looks of one, “If it’s not a knock off.” Berne took offense at the suggestion. He wanted $25, and when my friend declined, I bought it. What the hell, I figured. I’d’ve loaned Berne $25 if he’d asked. This way I had a five-ounce steel Kershaw, with four-inch blade.
I could have used an instruction booklet. It took two days and three more conversations to clue me that if I pushed this button… WOW! And then to show me how to close the sucker without jeopardizing my thumb.
Let brigands beware. I am walking with new swagger in my pocket. Of course, my opening inquiry will be, “Do you have a gun?”

All of Bob’s books are available at www.theboblevin.com.