For Fish Creek, the first weekend of the fall season is the last weekend of September when the Fish Creek Civic Association sponsors what they call the inside/outside sale. On this weekend the retailers and businesses in the town are allowed to display merchandise outside. Most of the businesses take advantage of the sidewalk sale to reduce inventory left over from the summer season. Here at Peninsula Bookman we put out tables of books for $1 each.
Over the course of the year I am commonly buying collections of books, private libraries, and other large book lots. The general rule is that I have to take all the books, not just the ones that I would want to display in the store. Over the course of the year we accumulate loads of these cast-offs. Some of them have condition problems, others just don’t fit the regular inventory, but many of them are still worth reading, just not really worth devoting space to in the store. There are at least a few customers that make it a point to turn up for the event every year and load up.
This year we rolled out about 1,800 volumes, which is somewhat less than last year when we had well over 2,000. Today is the last day of the sale, and I have to load the boxes up one last time. Happily there are fewer books to move after three days of the sale. From here they will be donated to Feed My People in Sturgeon Bay where they will be sold in the thrift store.
Eventually lugging all these boxes around forces one to wonder whether it is worth the effort or the lower back pain, but then it is pretty hard to just throw away a book…
