bobbie-jean

This is either Bobbie Brown or Jean Rance (I don't remember which one she is--she gave me a business card with these two names and, for the life of me, cannot recall which of the two she goes by). So, Bobbie-Jean is a co-owner of the Half Price Book Barn, a tinygrimy Fort Worth used book shop that has been around for forty-eight years. They are currently at their third location.

We got to talking. Apparently, she also has a son named Brian (and indeed spelled the correct way, with an 'I' even though, she laughed, people transpose it with the 'A' often to get 'brain;" I told her I feel his pain, the dyslexic masses frequently make this mistake with my own name and I told her that while I do appreciate the undertone of that compliment I would hardly consider myself smart. I told her, for example, that I wished I had more business smarts. She said she wished her son did too. I laughed. She said Brian means strength--something I obviously knew but I just nodded and joked that I was far from that as well. We chuckled a little more about that).

Anyhow, I discovered the Half Price Book Barn coming home from tutoring a few weeks ago. Their shop is a very run-down, minute pseudo-shack in the, um, 'up-and-coming' part of town. And, since my general rule is to pretty much stop into any used bookstore I drive by, this place was no exception. After tutoring today, I had my camera and I really wanted to snap some shots of the broken-binding romance pockets, the dated microwave cookbooks, the disorganized and boxed chaos of it all. Then I realized I just needed to capture the co-owner herself, the sole employee (the sole soul besides myself in the whole building). This was the best of the six or seven attempts (Bobbie-Jean's counter where you pay is this little square window that separates her from the 'backroom' of the store--I never saw below her chest, she is like this disembodied woman floating around behind some mysterious counter where even more books are stacked, precariously and dustily).

Ah, if I was a member (preview: within next week or two this will be happening), I imagine this shot would look better on the full-screen mode. Until then.

Update: pretty sure that bald eagle was inflatable.