Priscilla Richardson

Recent columns

• Column archive: Priscilla Richardson
• Clean technology latest move for Botetourt man
• 'Tree City' Buchanan celebrates Arbor Day

School will be open soon, so must it be time for another Evening in Buchanan? Yes, alert reader. Tonight, the fifth annual event will start at 6 and go on till about 8:30 or 9, rain or shine. It features carriage rides and balloon ascents, strolling musicians, a special movie and shopping. Lots of shopping. Free admission, but if you purchase a $5 booklet you get meal and merchant discounts and also prize-drawing tickets.

A little bird told me that most folks leave work and enjoy dinner in Buchanan first, using the discount book. Then they take in the activities.

One Buchanan shop normally open only two days a week always has a special fascination for me. It's Fireside Books, owned and run by Paul Simpkins. And it will be open tonight until the last customer leaves. Because, as we bookstore aficionados know, it can be difficult to leave a bookstore.

Simpkins carries a lot of Civil War, history, Virginia and other books of local interest. He came by his interest in selling books the way most people do, by being hooked on reading. "As a book lover and book fan and reader," Simpkins said, "I read every day of my life. I work all day in the store, then go upstairs and curl up with a good book -- and air conditioning."

He may only have formal selling hours on Friday and Saturday, but he works every day on restoring the 19th century building on Main Street that he and his wife, Barbara, purchased 13 years ago. "It had no AC and faulty heating," Simpkins said. "I had to deal with all these things and still try to give customers the royal treatment when they came in. Once they find me, they're shocked to find that I carry probably 50 [thousand] to 60 thousand books. They don't expect that in Buchanan."

Simpkins uses his spare time writing a book about the novelist Mary Johnston (1879-1936). She spent the first 16 years of her life in Buchanan before she wrote 23 books. Her novel "To Have and to Hold" twice became a silent movie, in 1918 and 1921. She also wrote a nonfiction piece about the great Colonial leaders of the South who helped form our nation.

Johnston had a personal advantage, too, in creating her stories. Her father was an officer in the Botetourt Artillery, so by using her father's diaries she had authoritative background for her Civil War novels.

"Johnston's books have stayed in continuous print from 1898 to this day," Simpkins said. The University of Virginia has done some reprints of her books, and Simpkins has a complete collection of her works. "I started collecting when I moved to Buchanan. It took 10 years to gather all 23. The last one she wrote had only a single press run. When she announced she was a suffragist, her writing career suffered badly.

"The last novel, 'Hagar,' was her life's story, although she denied it. In it she announced she was for votes for women. She also believed in mixed marriages between Jews and Gentiles. She said it was OK to marry, but a woman should get a job and become independent and then enjoy men.

"These were very advanced views for her time. Men didn't want to buy and bring home books to encourage their wives to go out and have careers and become independent of them."

Or even worse, vote.

Johnston visited Buchanan frequently as an adult and gave the town a copy of each of her books. However, they were lost in the flood of 1985. Simpkins expects to make a permanent loan of his own collection to the Buchanan museum when it materializes.

Grounded from newspaper writing and the state's vocational rehabilitation service by health issues, Simpkins follows doctor's orders. He rests when he needs to. However, he continues his search for Johnston books on the Internet, so he will have a copy of every possible edition.

But you don't have to search to find Evening in Buchanan. Just show up and have a ton of fun with the whole family, and lots of Botetourt friends.