Today we slipped onto I-70 and stayed there until we hit Denver. The bookstore sojourn is not yet over. This afternoon, we made the Tattered Cover at its Colfax Avenue location.
I first heard of the Tattered Cover from a young couple befriended by Gary back in 1995. They heard we were planning a three week road trip to CO, and immediately recommended it as a must-visit in downtown Denver.
I don’t recall the exact location, except that the store sprawled over four floors in an old Victorian with creaky wood floors and a grand central stair. I was in heaven. I remember I bought a half-price volume of Georgia O’Keefe’s One Hundred Flowers, but was too frugal to buy much else despite the grand selection and seeing many things I could not find at home. Mind you, this was pre-internet, and before Williamsburg had its own proper bookstore. The big Barnes & Noble in Newport News was the closest thing we had — and a huge treat on the occasional weekend.
Located in a former theater, the Colfax Tattered Cover is enormous, with a selection that easily rivals Boulder Bookstore. I could easily have spent hours there — but as mentioned, space is limited. Instead I focused on art and architecture magazines associated with the West. The Big Sky Journal and Modern in Denver are a couple of my favorites.
I first began haunting bookstores when I was about nine. B. Dalton Booksellers was at the local mall, and featured all of the Walter Farley Black Stallion series. The Children’s Bookshop sat in a busy section of Pacific Coast Highway (requiring a driver), and was operated with love and sensitivity by a retired school teacher who always had a robust selection of horse books. But my favorite bookshop of all time was Bertrand Smith’s Acres of Books, located thirty miles down the freeway in downtown Long Beach. Bertrand Smith’s was where my collecting caught fire, and where I made my best finds.
Established in my grandfather’s time (and even patronized by him), Bertrand Smith’s specialized in used books, and occupied multiple warehouses, with shelves reaching 13-14 feet high. I specialized (at the tender age of nine) in horse books, generally found in the Western, Juvenile and Magazine sections. Books typically cost between $0.50 – $1.0, and I built my inventory as fast as my allowance (and getting a parent driver) would let me. Fortunately, there was a camera shop nearby that Dad liked to visit.
At Bertrand Smith’s, their practice of wrapping up your purchases in brown paper, secured with tape and string, made getting home like Christmas all over again. I ransacked their shelves all through the 1970’s, but unfortunately, by the time Bertrand Smith’s ceased operation in the late 1990’s, I was long since gone myself.
This morning the air tipped in at the high 60’s as we made our way through Moab on the community walking trail. As we walked, what struck me was the soft cricket-song — a particular timbre I associated with fall. Some combination of temperature, time of day and humidity brings forth this gentle hum — which was calming as we faced leaving our adventures behind.
On I-70 this afternoon, at mile markers 178, 190 and 201, the view of mountains ahead was a panoramic mix of granite grey and deep velvet green. No haze today — just cotton candy clouds and a high temp at the Vail pass (10,000 feet +) of 59 degrees.
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