Book hunting in Mandan, North Dakota

Huntington Books in Mandan, North Dakota is not for the neat freak. True bibliophiles only need apply.

Books are stacked, shelved, and balanced every which way, though they are arranged by categories. The westerns have their own room, as do mysteires, classic, romance, education, travel, cookbooks, children’s books…it’s pretty dang awesome. You can find an antique worn French dictionary, German bibles, Norwegian devotionals, manuals on how to use 2007-era software, 8-track tapes, VHS tapes — oh, it is glorious.

I went with a friend today, and we arrived right around lunch time. We could smell the microwaved lunch, which the proprietor and and older fellow were about to eat right there at the little table next to the cookbook section beneath a precarious stack of hardcover cookbooks higher than my head. It wasn’t really the break room. I’m not sure what it was. The further back the stores goes, the less clear it is what is store and what is employee space. As we looked through the cookbooks, we overheard the conversation between the two as they tried to eat lunch while customers came in and out. First, they said grace over their meal, and it wasn’t a rehearsed kind of grace — it was an actual prayer like my dad or mom might say before we ate. And then, they just began talking about the day.

“…my blood sugar was really high,” the old fellow said. “Doc said I needed to make some adjustments.”

“Is that so?” she replied.

“I cut back on ice-cream and that did the trick,” he said. “That’s the only change I made and that’s all it took.”

“How much ice cream were you eating?”

“About a gallon a week.”

“Oh my goodness!”

“I really like ice cream.”

My friend and I hid ourselves behind the stack of cookbooks, smiling and quietly chuckling as their conversation went on. We were surrounded by old cookbooks that reminded us of grandma and mom, and being in a conversation that seemed like something I’d hear at home or the cafe in Hampden just made me feel…right at home. At some point, a customer came in and she got up to go help them. Before long, the older fellow hollered to her.

“Can you get me some ketchup?!”

She was on her way back towards the table. “Oh, yes, sure.”

Then, another customer. She got up to help them and was soon busy at the register. By this time we’d moved towards the front of the store, and heard the phone ring. The older fellow answered the phone, and then hollered, all the way from the back of the store, “Say, it’s for you! Pick up the phone!” She just shook her head and finished ringing up the customer.

Everything about the experience is wrong and awesome. The store seems to break every modern rule of business.

No credit cards accepted, handwritten receipts are used, totals tallied up in their head, paper sales tax sheet as a reference, and so much stuff everywhere that it would be easy to walk out of there without paying. No shuffling the employees or backroom business to an actual backroom. Some books aren’t priced, and so she’ll go on the internet right there at the register onto BookFinder to see what the book is worth, make up a price, and give you a deal on the spot.

“If you buy the Brains Benton book right now, I’ll give it to you for $10. Otherwise, I’ll mark it at $12 and put it on the shelf.”

How can I resist?

I bought the book.

I also found two Hardy Boys books to add to the collection, bringing my missing tally to only six. Oh, and a Happy Hollister book.

The mass confusion and haphazardness somehow add to the sense that finding a book is worth the price. It’s a treasure hunt. It’s not like going to Barnes and Noble where everything is neat and tidy and you go in expecting to find what you find and getting annoyed when it isn’t on the shelf. No, this used bookstore is a place where you walk in without any plan whatsoever, not knowing what you’ll find and more interested in the adventure that is the search. You can’t leave disappointed — anything you come away with is gravy.