Over the past few weeks several bloggers have referred to one of the leading soft-core stars of the fifties and sixties, Orrie Hitt. James Reasoner has even run letters from Hitt's daughter and tonight he reviews another Hitt title.
All this brings back memories of discovering soft core in the late fifties. The only shop that sold it locally also sold beat literature. Both were cool with me. Of course you could also buy racing forms there too.
A used bookstore opened around 1961. A endearingly whacked woman named Mrs. Miller ran it out of her living room. She crammed a lot of paperbacks into her shelf space. She sold everything, bestsellers, sf, mystery, romance. One wall was filled with what she called "zippy" books. I took my good friend Doug Humble there a few times and he thought we were in an alternate universe. Mrs. Miller was seriously overweight and had a heart condition. Yet she chain smoked Kools and chomped on chocolates constantly. She also never shut up. I can still see Doug's eyes filled with tears of laughter. He covered his ears with his hands a few times when she couldn't see him--mugging that he was losing his mind.
Any time a customer walked in when I was there she would good-naturedly point to me and say "You know what he likes? He likes them beatnik books and he likes them zippy books." Then she'd burst into painful cigarette laughter.
I bought dozens of books from her over the years, many Orrie Hitts among them. She was out of Dickens and I had this great crazed affection for her even though she drove me nuts.
When i was growing up in the 60s i bought most of my paperbacks off the spinning racks at Drug Stores. There weren't that many true book stores around, and they were too far to reach by bike. When i went away to college, a cigar and magazine store in town had a "back room." I got an eyeful there, of books and magazines i had no idea existed. Never bought any of the merchandise, but felt this intense magnetic pull every time i entered the store to buy cigarettes.
ReplyDeleteGreat story, Ed. I like them beatnik books and them zippy books, too.
ReplyDeleteMy apologies to Frank Loose. It was he not James Reasoner who wrote the review tonight of the Orrie Hitt novel.
ReplyDeleteMy apologies to Frank Loose. It was he not James Reasoner who wrote the review tonight of the Orrie Hitt novel.
ReplyDeleteNo apology necessary! James posted it. It was on his site. Ed, your Mrs. Miller reminds me a bit of the mother of a close friend of mine. I spent a lot of time in their house while I was growing up. She always had a cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth, like a man would, and it bounced up and down as she talked, the smoke curling up around her eyes, clinging to her hair. The ash would grow longer and longer, holding me mesmerized, until it fell off onto her lap. She chain-read books like she chain smoked. Looking back, I'm surprised she never set fire to one with the tip of her cigarette, as her eyesight was bad and she held the books close to her face. Every room had piles of books she had finished or was about to tackle. She was quite a character and would talk to me about the books she was reading, how a character was getting into deep yogurt because of such and such, and how i should watch out for myself. As a youth, I was always surrounded by adults who loved to read, and i was blessed because of it.
ReplyDeleteThat's a great story, Ed. She sounds like she was quite a character. Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteJeff P.
I've spent my entire career trying to write a zippy book!
ReplyDelete