Passing the book

We had a phys ed teacher in high school whose motto was "Many hands, light work."  He would croon this over and over as he stood rocking back and forth on his Chucks while we sweaty adolescents lugged bleachers, bags of equipment, and wrestling mats all over the place.

Converse "Chuck Taylor" shoe

And when I say "rocking back and forth on his Chucks," I mean Chuck Anderson and Chuck Biedronksi.  No, I'm kidding.

But in history you probably heard about bucket brigades, that colonial form of firefighting where a line of people would stretch from a pond to a building on fire, and people would pass buckets filled with water to throw on the blaze.

The problem there, of course, was that the fire would usually spread much faster than Jebediah could pass a water bucket to Benjamin, Jethro, Isaac, Increase, Nehemiah and Jonas. On paper, the bucket-passing scheme worked well.

Speaking of paper, how about the story of a beloved English bookstore called October Books, over in Southampton?  The store has been a huge part of life for more than 40 years over there, right on Portswood Road. It's been one of those bookstores that is more than a place to get a copy of a Danielle Steel pageturner; it was also a gathering place for locals in search of a “local, radical and eco-friendly” community center.

But as with many businesses everywhere, being a cool place to hang around and jawjack with other locals does not mean the cash registers ring often enough to pay the rent.



So, a year ago, the bookshop operators told the landlord they would be leaving when the lease ran out, and they found a suitable space right down the same street. They bought the place - it used to be a bank - and prepared to move.

The community, knowing the value of a bookshop with close ties to the people of Southampton, chipped in over half a million bucks to swing the deal, and the only problem was how to tote thousands of books from the old store to the new?

Someone came up with idea of a human chain - a book brigade, if you will - and you can be sure that lots of people said that would never work.

But it did.

The distance between the two stores is about a tenth of a mile, and the organizers figured they'd go for it, and put out the word that they were planning to activate the chain on a Sunday morning, which turned out to be rainy.

“We wanted to do something everybody could get involved in,” one of the organizers said. “The idea of the human chain really came about because it didn’t need people to be physically fit or really strong. Anybody from young children to pensioners could get involved. That’s certainly the community that turned out.”

And on that damp Sunday morning, no one showed up with dampened enthusiasm. They hoped for 150, and over 200 people showed up, lined up, and passed those books in an hour!

I'm going to suggest this idea to any and all American diamond merchants, beer outlets, and computer warehouses that plan to move. Count on me!