BYE BYE BOOKSTORE

This is a sad time for book lovers. Mostly Books, 111 E. Sixth, is selling out.

The book store was opened in 1988 by the late Roger O’Connor and his wife, Jan O’Connor.

“We had perhaps 1,000 books,” she said. “We had lost all our books in an arson fire in Carthage, Mo. First we bought just this building, but in a few years we also bought the two adjoining buildings, as well.”

There are now approximately 50,000 books spread over the three buildings, not to mention other items such as maps, movie posters and publicity photographs, posters from World Wars I and II and other paper collectibles.

“I think that books breed in the night,” O’Connor said.

For a time, she also operated Coffee by the Book, a coffee shop, in the building next to the book store. It was the location for many book signings, readings and programs, as well as concerts.

The store did well, with customers well beyond Pittsburg. “Very early on we started selling online, all over the world,” said O’Connor, who made trips to the Pittsburg Post Office nearly every day to mail off books.

Then her husband died on Oct. 5, 2006, following a brief illness. In addition to his wife and books, he was survived by two daughters, Shannon and Kristin.

“The heart and soul of this book store was Roger,” O’Connor said. “I tried to keep it going, but there was just no way. Roger and I were together 24 hours a day all those years, and we had a great time. It was just no fun coming in the store alone.”

There were also memories on every shelf, around every corner. “Sometimes it would just hit me,” O’Connor said. “I’d see something and remember where we got it, what we were doing when we got it.”

She will sell the buildings and their contents in two auctions. The first, at 10 a.m. Saturday, will be for the books only. Second auction, at 10 a.m. June 27, will cover the posters, maps and paper items, the buildings and some of O’Connor’s antiques and collectibles. There will be a sale preview at 2 p.m. on the Friday before each auction.

Serving as auctioneer will be David Meyer, who has known the O’Connors for years. “Roger was our best source of knowledge when we were dealing with an estate that had a lot of books,” he said. “Roger would tell us what was a good book and what wasn’t.”

He and O’Connor have been going over the 50,000 books in the store, sorting out the choicest items. He said the upcoming sale has generated a lot of interest in the book-collecting world.

“We’ve sent out over 300 flyers to book dealers,” Meyer said. “There was a guy in from St. Louis last week who spent half a day here.”

There are other books that aren’t collector’s items, just good reads, including mysteries, popular fiction, science fiction and westerns. What Mostly Books does not have are romances.

“Roger didn’t think they were literature, so we never carried them,” O’Connor said.

Meyer admitted that auctioning off 50,000 books will be a job, but he’s had challenges before.

“Twenty years ago I sold out a chicken farm at Weir that had 5,000 chickens,” he said. “I sold a peacock that day, too, that was perched on a barn. The guy paid for it, then said, ‘How  do I get it?’ I said, ‘You’re on your own,’ and it was gone when I left. I never thought I’d have numbers to compare with those 5,000 chickens.”

O’Connor and her husband felt it was their job to place good books in good homes. After that has been accomplished, and everything else is sold, she plans to move on.

“I’m not sure yet where I’ll be going,” she said, “but I’m going.”