Signs: Both Old and New
People have been complaining about our road signs. I don’t blame them. Many are small. Some are faded and unclear. For Christ’s sake, the one on Christie Road, the one by the bridge that crosses the creek, has been engulfed by overgrowth so that you can’t find it even if you know precisely where to look. These are the old signs. The new ones Sydney hand-painted in April before we opened for the year, I helped to construct those beauties out of the thinnest plywood sold at Home Depot and proudly installed them myself, pounding them like stakes into the thawing ground with a rubber mallet. Now, at the end of our first season as book barn owners, our main sign for Riddle Road, the hidden, tree-lined dirt country lane on which our store resides, falls down in the loose soil any time it rains or the wind blows too hard. Not to mention the one at the end of North Road, on the way to Cossayuna, which at the moment looks to be an arrow pointing straight up to the heavens, saying “Owl Pen This Way!”
After six months of running this business, I know one thing for sure about Barbara Probst, the founder of Owl Pen Books. I know it from speaking with some of the older generations who have come through our barn doors, and from reading her unpublished memoirs stacked in a cardboard box on a shelf in our den. She would’ve found both the customer complaints of getting lost in the Washington County countryside and our sad attempts at providing new signage hysterical. After all, what person could open a bookstore in a chicken coop, on a dirt road, amidst nothing but rolling farmland, who did not possess an acute sense of humor about most things?
My wife and I share this sense of humor. My wife, also, believe it or not, is seriously taken by astrology, and I find this funny.
When the real estate listing for Owl Pen Books showed up on her Facebook feed just over a year ago, Sydney didn’t immediately see it as a “sign.” However, after I suggested we look into what buying the beloved sixty-year-old bookstore in a barn might entail, she needed to check the stars for reassurance. The alignment of celestial bodies told her we were headed in the right direction.
She then relayed to me what they, the stars, had shown and, of course, I said, “Great! You do know that’s a bunch of nonsense, right?” To which she rolled her eyes and replied, “Whatever. You are such a Cancer.”
This is our magical dynamic, the secret of our seventeen-year relationship. She thinks our stars are aligned, and my healthy cynicism just reaffirms her superficially irrational beliefs. We are a perfect match.
As pairings go, our family is appearing to be a good fit for owning and maintaining the Owl Pen, a bookstore that an elder patron once described to me as “all the books you’ll never need, in a place you’ll never find.” This doesn’t mean we can always be the most polite stewards. It takes some degree of effort not to snap at every wayward customer who bangs open the creaky screen door to cross the threshold of our chicken coop full of books to exclaim, “well, you guys are hard to find, aren’t you!” or “we got lost a few times coming up here!” Instead, we smile and try to say something lightheartedly apologetic, but we hear this nearly every day. Though we’re grateful anyone wants to drive out on the winding roads through an array of never-ending Bob Ross landscapes and hilly farmland to our magical book barn, it is difficult to not roll our eyes when they say, “thank goodness, for GPS!” Or “Our GPS went out in some areas.” Anyone who can manage the GPS in their car also might know how to find us on the internet, either at our website, or in the various articles that have been written about us this year. Undoubtedly, in all these promotional places, it is mentioned in the gentlest of terms that our place of business is out “in the boonies.” The obscured location of our “faraway hill” would seem to be the charm of Owl Pen. I’d ask all our frustrated customers, Isn’t the absurd, off-the-grid isolation, the hidden-ness of the store, isn’t that the whole point? After all, it’s practically baked into the myth of its creation.
For over sixty years, people have been traversing the corn-covered hills of Washington County searching for Owl Pen Books. Now, as it enters its third generation of ownership it has been discovered by enough people over six decades to be granted the official status of “Historic Business” by New York State. We could take this as a sign, that under our first season of management, Owl Pen Books, a wild vision of copywriter turned chicken farmer Barbara Probst, carried forth by aspiring booksellers Edie Brown and Hank Howard, is finally receiving some long due respect. It will now be on an official list that no one will reference, on a map no one will read.
It is my opinion that Ms. Probst, an intelligent and fearlessly independent woman, opened a book farm in a barn, knowing a thing or two about people. She was operating under a kind “if you build, it they will come” model that predated Field of Dreams. Sure, she advertised in local papers and promoted her creation by all the means possible at the time long before the internet. But I’m positive that she knew, those who wanted to find Owl Pen Books would find it. They would see the tiny road signs. Those who were not that interested or didn’t care enough, would miss them. There was no worry, for these uncommitted souls were not her customers.
Sydney and I, when retelling the story of how we came to be the owners and operators of the now historic Owl Pen, always find an opportunity to insert a quick anecdote about the reaction of our friends in Los Angeles when we told them our decision to leave California, to run a bookshop in a barn in rural upstate New York. There were many who were supportive and inspired by our big move and bold life change. Some seemed envious. Others, on the other hand, for varying reasons, were vehemently opposed. And they were not shy in their naysaying. Whenever we revealed our grand plan to a loved one, it became a type of psychological test, a Rorschach of their personality. One longtime buddy of mine actually said, “If you’re looking for a life change, why don’t you sell your home, keep a condo in LA, and buy a house in the desert. You can Airbnb one of them.” He meant well with his show of concern. But he wasn’t seeing the signs we were seeing.
This continues to this day, most recently with friends and family on the east coast. An old classmate from high school came up to the store a month ago. I could see she was mesmerized by the whole property. She said she saw the potential in our two-hundred-year-old farmhouse, which we will start renovating while the store is closed for the winter. My friend wasn’t just being polite. She really got it. She could read the tiny road signs and follow the “logical” irrationality of our path.
An aunt of mine who came to visit on a rainy summer afternoon described the same house as “a bit primitive.” After taking a tour of the house and the store, I overheard her FaceTiming with my ninety-five-year-old grandmother, telling her how she could never live here. I don’t blame her. She has her own signs to follow, and they’d probably never lead her to make a home on “Faraway Hill.” My aunt may not be a regular Owl Pen customer and that is okay.
My wife and I have met many people who are more naturally suited for a lifestyle that lends itself to wandering about the countryside looking for a barn full of old books and records. These are our customers. We’ve gotten to know more than a few. It is hard to express the gratitude we feel for all the support we’ve received from the surrounding community, the generations of regular patrons of Owl Pen, as well as the adventurous new visitors who have read about us in the local newspapers and recognized it as a sign that they had to come looking for us. (We would appreciate if customers could read the sign about how to properly use our new compostable toilet before using the store outhouse known as the Chalet de Necessité… but more about that in another blog post.) The point is simply that Sydney and I appreciate all of you who have squinted hard enough to follow the signs up to see us each week from May through October. You’ve given us faith that we did read our own stars correctly. Heck, I might even start reading my daily horoscope and listening to Sydney’s astrological prescriptions…but then again, probably not.
Winter will be here soon. The signs of its approach are clear. The bitter cold and inevitable snowfall of the coming months get talked about as some boogieman that our family has yet to have encountered. Many customers say to us, “yeah, tell me how much you enjoy living here after your first winter!” Keep in mind there are many elderly people who have lived in the area their whole life, without retiring to Florida. I know this because they are our customers. (The ladies usually buy mystery novels and the gentlemen come for biographies of American historical figures and/or books on fishing.) Well, we’d like to do better than that, by presenting a monthly essay/blog for the Owl Pen. For the next six months, we will reflect on our time running the bookstore and learning the book business, while keeping you informed on exciting updates for next year. We will ruminate on country life in Washington County, and most interestingly, we will explore the vast archive of Barbara Probst’s personal narrative writing and delve deeper into the history of our beloved Owl Pen Books. Who knows, maybe we’ll just complain about the endless winter. Anyway, we hope you will give us a read each month and check in with us from time to time on our website www.owlpenbooks.com where we will be selling Owl Pen merch and carefully selected books, prints and records.