It was maybe 15 years ago, while driving on one of our nearly-annual treks to the Wisconsin State Fair, that I spotted a store on a street corner very close to the perimeter of the fair grounds. It was an old, dingy, unremarkable storefront but in its front window was a set of cute dolls of the Seven Dwarfs from Walt Disney’s animated classic that I thought were worth a closer look. (Not that I’m a big fan of that film- but they just looked kind of cool.) I also managed to catch two words on the store’s sign … two words that never fail to make my heart sing: USED BOOKS! It wasn’t in the cards to stop right then and there because we were on our way to the fair and about to pull into the parking lot- plus I was in the car with Kathy, who does not share my affection for dusty, disorganized and dilapidated used book stores. (Go figure!) So I made a mental note to remember to drive up to Milwaukee on my own sometime and check the place out.
Over the course of more than a decade, we returned to the state fair at least ten times- and I’m sure that we passed this same store on at least half of those occasions (it would depend on which route we had taken to or from the fair) and every time I spotted it, I would remake the same mental note – only to let it slide to the back burner again and again. I think it was only on our visit to the fair this summer that I finally remembered to take note of the name of the place and its address (thank goodness for the bumper-to-bumper traffic that slowed us to a crawl which made it easy to do so.) It was Schroeder Used Books and Music on the corner of Greenfield and 76th Street … and I promised myself that I would not let the summer finish without finally walking through the door of this intriguing store. (By the way, those plush toy Seven Dwarfs were STILL in its front window!)
It was last Thursday, thanks to a surprisingly empty schedule, that I decided to seize the opportunity to drive up to Milwaukee and finally check out this store that had intrigued me for so long. I couldn’t find a website for it but decided that it was a pretty safe bet that it would be open by the afternoon, so I timed my arrival for right around 1:00 and hit it right on the nose. (Thank you, GPS.) Unfortunately, the door was locked- the lights were off- and there was no sign posted indicating the store’s hours of operation. I could see that the shelves were crammed with books, but otherwise there were no signs of life whatsoever.
Then my gaze drifted to the floor just inside the front door- and I saw that there were pieces of plaster or tile that appeared to have fallen from the ceiling … and no one had cleaned up the mess. I immediately realized that this store was not just closed for the moment- but had been closed for some time.
Nervously, I took out my iPhone and once again googled Schroeder Used Books & Music. This time around, I found an article in OnMilwaukee (written by Molly Snyder) from five years ago that talked about the store’s elderly owner and founder, William Schroeder, as well as his ‘life and business partner’ Alma, an eccentric woman who enthusiastically greeted customers while sitting on a pile of magazines, surrounded by fast food wrappers and other garbage and apparently oblivious to how unsettling it must have been for anyone walking into the establishment for the first time to see a sight like this. The article also mentioned that the store was no longer buying any more used books because it already had much more inventory on hand than they would ever be able to sell. (The article described that inventory as including, in addition to thousands of books and record albums, 8-track and reel-to-reel tapes, appliance manuals, encyclopedias, comic books, stuffed animals … and vintage porn.)
This was five years ago.
I toggled back to the first page of my google search and finally noticed for the first time two words in red on the screen that had somehow escaped my notice before: CLOSED PERMANENTLY.
Sadly, I made my way to the front window of the store – and there they were: the Seven Dwarfs that had originally caught my eyes all those years ago. The only difference was that there was now an enormous plush toy of the Tasmanian Devil in front of them that had not been there when I first saw the store. The juxtaposition of that with the beloved Disney characters was mighty strange, but it’s also the kind of thing that one often sees in stores like this, where there is just SO much stuff and only so many places to put it all.
I made my way a little further down the block and found another door to the store, and this one sported a ‘closed’ sign that seemed to be pretty emphatic. And yet, when I looked into the store through that particular door I saw what looked like a perfectly viable store that was actually much neater than a lot of similar sorts of establishments that I have visited in the past. I actually took out my phone just to double check, but those words were still there, in red: CLOSED PERMANENTLY.
IIt was only after I got home and did some poking around that I uncovered confirmation of what I feared might be true: that the store’s owner, William Schroeder, had died. According to his obituary, he passed away on March 2nd of this year at the age of 88 – and his funeral was held right across the street from his store at Church & Chapel. The obituary mentioned that he was survived by several children from previous marriages – and survived by Alma, the woman profiled so memorably in the aforementioned OnMilwaukee article. The obituary not only described Schroeder as a lifelong book enthusiast but also as a former game warden in Alaska and a turkey farmer! Clearly, he was an original in more ways than one.
And so was this store, as far as I could tell, although it certainly was reminiscent of all kinds of other used book stores that I have visited over the years, including my favorites: the Tattered Cover Bookstore in downtown Denver, Toad Hall in Rockford, Illinois, Selected Works Used Books & Sheet Music in Chicago, and The Strand in New York City. All of these except The Strand are now gone. But each of them- and countless other stores like them- were breathed into existence by someone whose love of old books could not be confined to their own home and their own private life, but had to be shared with the world. William Schroeder seems to have been that kind of guy, and he actually had three different stores in the Milwaukee at one time …. but one was destroyed by fire and another was leveled to make way for a new apartment complex. This store in West Allis was his last. And the thought of it being closed forever makes me sadder than I can say because it closed before I had the chance to walk its musty aisles in search of treasures. It’s a pursuit that more and more people are eschewing in favor of procuring their used books from websites like Amazon and Ebay – which is undeniably easier and more efficient because these websites tend to have everything under the sun, and a couple of simple clicks is all it takes to make the purchase. But in doing so, you lose out on the unique pleasure that comes when you explore the shelves of a bookstore with no clear idea of what you might find. Sometimes you find absolutely nothing- but sometimes you find treasures- and nothing can replace that sweet sensation of holding a special book in your hands … maybe one that has eluded you for years OR maybe a book that you did not know even existed until you laid eyes on it for the first time.
Just what will happen to everything that is housed in Mr. Schroeder’s store remains to be seen; perhaps the inventory has already been snapped up by the Half Price Books chain or by some other entity. But maybe something like an estate sale or public auction will be conducted. And if so, I would very much like to be there … not to buy any books, but to buy one of those Seven Dwarfs dolls in the window.
It might sound Dopey to you, but doing so would make me very Happy indeed.
