Artist Date: Homestead Book Store… 15.3.2015

Last March I wrote about an Artist Date to used book stores… and this year I am following it up with the upcoming closing of a long-time favorite of ours: Homestead Used Book Store, located in Marlborough, NH.

Every year we participate in both the spring and fall Round the Mountain Book Sale, in which four used book stores in and around Keene, NH participate in. Homestead has long been the one store we are most excited to visit. This year, when we received the notification of the sale dates of the spring sale, there was a note at the bottom of the card stating that:

“Homestead Books is going out of business and will no longer be participating in the Round the Mountain Sale.”

We were horrified and heartbroken at the same time. Homestead? Out of business? It just seemed impossible. Homestead has been there for us for almost 13 years and I have been visiting at least once a year since the early 1990’s… to suddenly have this valuable resource taken away was unthinkable.

Yesterday we traveled out to Homestead to visit Bob to thank him for his amazing store and to let him know how much we would miss both him and Homestead. When we arrived, there were cars in front of Homestead but when we reached the door there was a handwritten sign that simply said “Closed”. We had traveled over an hour and a half and to have the store closed at this point was very disappointing. Thankfully, after peeking through the windows, we saw Bob sitting at his desk by the front door and ventured in… anyway J

Bob's desk... you can actually see most of it now...

It was a shock to see our beloved store in such a state of disarray: most of the lights were off and the books at the entrance were all piled up haphazardly, a lot of the shelves were empty.

We were able to talk to Bob for a while about the store closing and possible future plans; he mentioned that there were a lot of regulars, like ourselves, that had made the trip to see him before the store closed for good on May 1^st, 2015. We talked about the changes in the book selling business over the past 20 years and how stores like his were able to stay open despite the advent of Amazon and the online book selling boom.

The entrance to Homestead Books as it is now:

The children's book section:

One of the fiction aisles:

Hoemstead has long been a great resource for art books and to see the art section completely decimated was a total shock:

The now empty art section:

Bob allowed us to wander through the store and see if we could find any last minute treasures. It was a bittersweet afternoon: as wonderful as it was to visit with Bob, the circumstances surrounding the visit were sad, knowing that we would only have one more opportunity to visit: next month at the Round the Mountain Sale… although Homestead is not participating in the sale, Bob has assured us that he would be at the store for one last visit...

... Thank you Bob for being there for us for all these years... it's going to be very hard to let this particular store - and you - go :(

Jenn White

White Rooster Studios