Used Treasure

100 Creepy Little Creature Stories, compiled by Robert Weinberg and Martin Greenburg (1994), purchased over the summer from Powell's, City of Books, on West Burnside Street in Portland, Oregon at $9.99 and Everyday Things in American Life 1776-1876, by William Chauncy Langdon (1941), from a Goodwill "as-is" store at .50 per pound last week.

Creepy Little Creature Stories is a fantastic find, 100 short and short-short horror stories by writers Arthur Conan Doyle, H. P. Lovecraft, Manly Wade Wellman and approximately ninety-seven more, spanning the Victorian era to the present. Here are modern and sordid tales of exaggerated gore and coy stories of another age whose then-horrific images are barely worth a fondly condescending snort today. Many of these stories are unintentionally funny but none boring, some wonderful. Arthur Conan Doyle's tale of Arizona was hysterical, nowhere near as good as Franz Kafka's Amerika but if you've read that, you'll recognize the author's similar, knowledgeable experience of his subject here. Donald A. Wollheim's "Mimic" is here, the inspiration for the movie of the same name, very creepy - although not as gory. The price of the book is a great bargain to find H. P. Lovecraft's marvelous "The Unnameable," which may have been either semi-autobiographical or the author's argument with his own critics, working out his own statement on his stories.

Everyday Things in American Life, by William Chauncy Langdon, is an encyclopedia of the mundane things of life in the United States between 1776 and 1876 and uses photographs, diagrams and explanatory text to tell us how people commuted, received their news, grew their food, clothed themselves, celebrated and fitted out their homes. Exactly how did you cut down a 100-foot tree in Maine in 1776 and then get it down the river to be sold and where did it go? Discover how large blocks of ice were harvested in lakes in the northern states, how they were stored and how they were sold and transported to other parts of the country, and even overseas, to be used to store food in the eras before electric refrigeration; the life of the wagon drivers on the "national road" through Maryland to New Orleans; purchasing goods from a traveling trader, a department store on wheels. Reading this book gives a detailed picture of what life would have been like beyond anything a movie or the television can present.