A Yearned-for Time and Locale: A Essayistic, Descriptive, Autobiographical Writing O' Mine 6/06

If there is one bookstore that I spent a lot of time at that I miss and yearn for more than any other, with the possible exception of Laureate's, it is Stroudwater's Books, which used to be located on Lafayette Road/Route One in Portsmouth, NH at and in a plaza where I often spent much time as a younger child. It was one of the first places that I saw and began to read some of the books by some of the authors (Stephen King chief among them) that would delight, terrify and greatly influence me as a writer and as a reader-a voracious, ravenous reader. It was clearly a forerunner to Barnes N' Noble-even as old as that supposedly is-in that it had a cafe of sorts towards it's rear. I went to that cafe once or twice and one memorable time, had my first cappuccino, which I hated. I remember that somewhat adjacent to the cafe section, there was a large segment of the store devoted to the selling and display of used books-some of which, many of which I got over time. I used to go to that plaza that housed it (a plaza that now sports such eclectic, outlandish places as Planet Fitness, Kinko's Copies, Londonderry Pianos, Ethan Allan or Pier One, and Philbricks Farm Fresh Market...in fact, Philbricks stands on the exact spot on which Stroudwaters once-in 1993 to 1999-stood), back in the days when I was like six or seven or so and Woolworth's was still extant. Yet, after Woolworth's closed it's doors, I did not really go to that plaza again until Stroudwater's opened. So there was like at least a two or three year gap between the last time I was at Woolworth's and the first time I was at Stroudwaters, which I went to once or twice with my diminutive Freshman gym class in 1998 when Mr. Buzzel coached it. But that is yet another story, a mere fabric that is a part of the vast tapestry of my life and the mini-arras built into it that housed my history with Stroudwaters and all the special memories I had of that place-the entire layout of which I can recall extraordinarily, photographically well. I could easily describe it right down to the tiniest detail, even though it has been about eleven years since I was last there. In fact, I can remember one of the last times I went there. It was in July or August of 1999 and I bought my first copy of the LOTR trilogy there...though of course, that was not the first book or books I ever bought there. Still, I could tell many a story about that time and that place. And that area-for not only could I describe the interior of the store, but the exterior, the surrounding environment, the roads and the parking lot, the soaring radio antenna behind it, and the radio station that sat adjacent to it, and the Margarita's Mexican Restaurant that flanked the opposite, far end of it; all that and more could I describe and will I describe...later, in another post. For now, let this suffice.