Flashback 2011: Borne back ceaselessly into the past

    Every morning I check Facebook memories. It serves up vignettes of the boys at home, and columns I'd forgotten about, such in this enigmatic entry:

    Of course I had to know what headline I was talking about. I went into NewsBank, and found the column below, whose headline is taken from the last line of "The Great Gatsby" — "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."
    The column is a reminder that no kindness goes unpunished. I'd thought to write a column celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Book Bin, my local bookstore, and tripped over the fact that the current owner was not the person who started it, an error on my part for sure, with the slight mitigation that she allowed herself to be interviewed on the topic and never said anything to make me think otherewise. Anyway, this is a lot of fun — notice my various descriptions of Northbrook — and I thought it might amuse you on a Sunday.

     Sue Warner has a gold charm bracelet, and on that bracelet is a charm that has a dollar bill tightly folded in a little box, and on that box is engraved "Book Bin 11-11-71." The date she and three other women opened the little book shop in my leafy suburban paradise of Northbrook, though I’m tempted to start calling it "my many-chambered warren of secrets of Northbrook."
     I met Warner, a resident of the puzzle box of mystery we call Northbrook, after Sunday’s column on the 40th birthday of the Book Bin, juxtaposing its survival against the collapse of the Borders behemoth, also 40. I interviewed Janis Irvine, the store’s current owner but not — as I thickly assumed — its original owner.
     "I started the store," Warner said, claiming that Irvine, who bought the store later, is inclined to sometimes obscure that fact.
     "This is not the first time this has happened in print," she said. "I’ve lived in this town 44 years, there are lot of people who’ve lived in this town for years, and they all get madder than heck at her when she does this. She doesn’t need to do that. . . . People who were there for the original opening, it makes them furious, because she wasn’t even my first employee. If you want to know the truth, for a period of time I didn’t even go in there."
     I should point out that Irvine never claimed to have started the store — I asked what inspired her to enter the book business, but not directly whether she was the founder.
     Every story has two sides, and after I picked my jaw off the floor, I phoned Irvine.
     "Good God, the woman is never going to stop," Irvine said, after I told her why I was calling. "I started working there the next year. I never intended to lie to you or take on another year at the store I started at in 1972."
     Did I mention that the two women were business partners for 20 years? They were.
     The more I dug, the more worried I became. Irvine says she started working at the Book Bin in 1972. So is that true?
     "I was the first one hired in 1973, and worked there 17 years," said Sissie Erinberg, a resident of the hall of mirrors also known as Northbrook. "Janis came in after I was there."
     For the record, the store was unarguably begun by Warner, her old college roommate Judy Rummler, plus Joyce Eddington and Georgeann Butterfield. "We each put in $2,500, got a line of credit from the bank," said Warner.
     And how, I asked Warner — not wanting to repeat my original blunder — did the idea of starting the Book Bin first come to you?
     "If you want to know the truth, my first child was a year old and my husband asked me, ‘What are you going to do now?’ " said Warner. "The question rankled me."
     And that’s how the bookstore got going.
     Or was it?
     "Joyce Eddington was the one who got us together" said Rummler, who now lives in Minneapolis.
     "It was Sue Warner and I," said Georgeann Butterfield, who lives in Connecticut. "We pulled in the other two."
     At this point, rather than engage in full-blown battle over the origins of a humble book shop in the scorpion’s nest of lies known as Northbrook, seeing how I have to live here, at least for a few more years until my two boys are out of high school, and given that stopping by the Book Bin is one of the few remaining pleasures in my life that hasn’t been plucked away by grinning fate, I’m going to draw this matter to a close by declaring all parties innocent. Of course, Janis Irvine would want credit for a store, which, if she did not actually whelp, she certainly weaned, and of course, Warner et al would want their role as the birth mothers recognized.
     No, the fault is entirely mine, for assuming that the woman celebrating the store’s 40th was the same woman who started it, for dangling the apple of credit where I should not have dangled it. A savvier guy wouldn’t have done that. What’s important is that the store is here, now, celebrating its 40th with a party and a 40 percent off sale from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Thursday. And amazingly, Warner, Rummler, Erinberg and myself all plan to be at Irvine’s party.
      "I’ve had a lot of jobs in my lifetime, but the most fun job I ever had was there," said Rummler. "It was a labor of love. The most important thing now is not to hurt the Book Bin. I’m sure it was a misunderstanding."
     "I loved it. I loved opening the boxes of books. I feel very loyal to it," said Erinberg. "She’s done a great job of keeping it open."
     "I’m extremely proud of it, that doesn’t take anything away from them; Janis and [her husband] Lex have done a wonderful job," said Warner. "But I also think the rest of us should be remembered for making it happen."
      And now you have been.