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What A Difference A Year Makes . . .

I can't believe the price of fame and what it can do to a person. Once a little bit of notoriety creeps into someone's life, they feel they have the right to turn their back on what brought them the fame in the first place. I witnessed this first hand on a recent book-shopping excursion.

It all started sometime in late summer of 2000. My wife and I took a day trip up to Archer City, Texas. This is a small community of 1,600 about 120 miles northwest of Dallas. It is one of those road trips that requires both hands on the wheel and both eyes on the road unless you want to squish an armadillo or run into vultures eating someone else's roadkill. I am talking about really flat and boring scenery. A place as large as Texas is allowed a few thousand square miles of El Vista de Drabo. I think I counted 4 turns between my house and Archer City.

There is Sherlockian reason to my madness. You see Archer City is the home of Booked-Up, the largest used bookstore in the state. It is owned and operated by Larry McMurtry, the same Larry McMurtry who wrote Lonesome Dove, Terms of Endearment, and In A Narrow Grave, Essays on Texas. The Last Picture Show was filmed in Archer City as well as its sequel, Texasville. Mr. McMurtry even won the Pulitzer Prize for Lonesome Dove. He has rub shoulders with many, many famous people. Presidents, actors and actresses, and other famous writers. Through all of this, he remained approachable.

I know this because on the trip with my wife, he was coming out of Booked-Up Building One (there are a total of 4 buildings to hold the more than 6,000,000 books) as I was going in. He stopped and said hell-o. I introduced myself and we shook hands. We exchanged a few pleasantries and he got into his beat-up Lincoln Continental a drove off, heading south. That is the direction of the Dairy Queen, the town's only eating establishment.

Book-up is like the vacuum cleaner for used bookstores. If a shop is going out of business, thinking about going out of business, or was ever open for business, eventually Book-Up buys them out and all of the books end up in Archer City. I happened across 3 bound volumes of The Baker Street Journal, old series. I recognized from a defunct bookstore in Ft. Worth. The owner of the shop was going to sell them to me off and on for more than a year but never did. Maybe this is why he went out of business. One day, Larry McMurtry walked into his shop and made him an offer on everything. Poof! The next time I called, the owner was outside hanging a "Closed" sign on the door. I felt just like Jabez Wilson.

Well I bought the journals and took them home. As I was cataloging and preparing these volumes for their new home in "the library", I began having visions of gradeur. I decided I wanted to ask Mr. McMurtry some questions about book dealing and Sherlock Holmes and such. I sat down and wrote him a letter and posted it to him in care of Booked-Up. I thought I would like to interview him for The Holmes & Watson Report.

Imagine my surprise when the next week I received a 2 page, hand written letter from Mr. McMurtry that included him home telephone number!!! My visions of grandeur soon turned in paranoia. I had Larry McMurtry's home phone number. What was I to do? Well my dear sweet wife kept a level head. She simply said he expects me to call him or he would not have sent the letter with the number included. Of course she was right!

Even at this late date, Mr. McMurtry was still just an everyday Joe.

Luckily, I jotted down a series of questions because when I called, he answered the phone on the second ring. I introduced myself and he remembered me as the Sherlockian from Dallas. We had a pleasant chat and he was extremely nice. The results of the interview can be read in the January 2001 issue of The Holmes & Watson Report. This interview however seems to have been to shot in the arm that pushed Mr. Larry McMurtry over the edge of fame-stuffiness.

I have just returned from another visit to Archer City with one of my local Sherlockian friends. Larry was there but he was very aloof, even after re-introducing myself as that Sherlockian from Dallas. He simply grunted a hell-o and turned away to continue what he was doing. As we were getting ready to leave I noticed a newly place sign. It read "Book-Up no longer sells any of Larry's books. He will not autograph anything. If you wish to buy an autographed book by Larry, try "such-n-such bookstore." Ironically, Larry McMurtry had signed the sign! He only became this way after being interviewed for The Holmes & Watson Report, I'm sure.

Happy Collecting!!