Barber's Bookstore

09/13/2026

Tales from inventory #116: General Sherman is supposed to have said "If I owned hell and Texas I'd rent out Texas and live in hell." Well thank you General Sherman. We didn't like you much neither. Of course that was before air conditioning. Well, today's exhibit is a self-published book from 1972 called "Hello Mr Devil". It was written by a Mr Tom Watkins of Waco, God rest his soul. Mr Watkins says the book came from his daughter's request that he present his 100 best jokes. He gave the proceeds from his book to charity. I was perusing them and spotted this one. Bear in mind that the joke's from 1972. You could get away with jokes like this at that time:

A banker had occasion to go to London on business. This was at a time that you couldn't pick up a telephone to talk across the ocean. So as he left, he told Mose to hitch up the horse and buggy and come to the station to meet him on the day he was scheduled to return. He got back on the expected date and Mose was there to meet him. As they started out to his farm he asked Mose what had happened in his absence:

"Nothin special, Boss."
"Surely there is something that happened that I should know about."
Mose still insisted that there was nothing of importance.
The banker said "Wait a minute, Mose, are you trying to put something by me? I know there is something you should tell me. What is it?"
"Old Tige died."
"Yes, what happened to Old Tige?"
"Wal suh, we think that he ate some burnt horse flesh and that is what killed him."
"Burnt horse flesh! Where in the world did he get any burnt horse flesh?"
"Wal suh, when the barn burned, two of your horses burned up."
"The barn burned? How came the barn to burn?"
"Wal suh, we don't rightly know, but we think that some sparks from the house when it burned set the barn on fire."
"The house burned!"
"Yas, suh."
"What caused the house to burn?"
"Wal, suh, we don't rightly know, but we think that the wind blew the curtains into the candles around the casket and that set the house on fire."
"The casket! Whose casket?"
"Your mother-in-law's."
"What happened to her?"
"Wal, suh, when your wife ran away with the ice man the shock killed your mother-in-law."

Pay me $9.50 for the book & I’ll quit telling these jokes.

Barber's Bookstore, 901 Throckmorton, Fort Worth, mon-fri 11-3, sat 11-4, sun 1-5 barbersbookstore dot com

09/12/2026

Tales not from Texas #41:, part 1: One summer in college I went to Nashville on a bus to try to get my first computer job. I was met by Phil Rutledge screening job candidates for Lynn Martin. In those days before Jimmy Carter deregulated the airlines, commercial airline pilots made more money than they do now & Mr Martin was trying to invest all that extra money. What he'd come up with was a little software package for churches. It helped with the bookkeeping, made the preacher aware of when his flock had birthdays coming up, etc. Primitive stuff by today's standards. Phil took me to lunch. They were wanting me to translate their product from a computer language named databus which no one knew, to basic, a computer language most people knew. Not a difficult programming assignment. Phil explained to me that since the clientele were churches, despite the nature of computer programming, I couldn't bust out into a long string of profanity. "That woman is looking at you", he said, in the middle of the lunch. I turned around. Lovely woman. I suppose Phil was trying to see if I'd come up with some coarse joke, which wasn't uncommon in male company in those days. Finally he started questioning me about my religious beliefs. Seems my faith wasn't quite deep enough for him. "We're looking for a good Christian computer programmer", he told me when dismissing me. To his credit Rutledge seeing that I had very little money got me an interview with a friend of his in Chattanooga. But the gentleman did not like me and I did not like him. I didn't want to drag my butt back to Fort Worth for the summer; travel was my goal. My next door neighbor at my wretched acommodation, stepped forward. Mr F said I should apply for a job at the place he worked. He said he'd been a burglar at one time in his life and had gotten caught. Now he fixed small electric motors. I was in for a more interesting summer. Barber's Bookstore, 901 Throckmorton, mon-fri 11-3, sat 11-4, sun 1-5. barbersbookstore dot com (PS I was going to illustrate our post today with a lovely photo of the celebrated Ryman Auditorium in downtown Nashville which hosted the Grand Old Opry for 50 years. But if I did this some anonymous bot from the third world would step forward, tell me I'm using a copyright image, and tell me to pay up. So taking my advertising budget into consideration you're going to have to use your imagination today.)

09/05/2026

Announcement: So General Houston lay dying at his home in Huntsville in 1863. Word got out and a couple of journalists he didn't particularly like came to his house for some words of wisdom. He decided to let them sit in his front yard for a couple of days. Finally he called them in. He motioned one of them to a chair on the right side of his bed, and the other to a chair on his left. He said: "I die like Christ. Between two thieves." But that's not what I wanted to talk about today: We will not be open Monday, September 7th, Labor Day, this year. Barber's Bookstore, 901 Throckmorton, mon-fri 11-3, sat 11-4, sun 1-5. barbersbookstore dot com

08/30/2026

In 1907, explorer Sir Aurel Stein convinced a monk to open a sealed cave. What they found inside changed history.

The chamber in China's Mogao Caves held a lost library. It contained over 40,000 manuscripts, paintings, and artifacts.

These items came from the 4th to the 11th centuries. They recorded life along the ancient Silk Road.

The collection included the Diamond Sutra, the world's oldest dated printed book. Stein's discovery revealed a lost chapter of medieval Asia.

It showed the reach of trade, art, and printing. But Stein took many treasures to Europe.

This act sparked a lasting debate over cultural heritage. His story is one of great discovery and great controversy.

08/25/2026

08/22/2026

Tales from the book trade #83, Heard at the cash register. Mr Hays Part 2. Mr Hays turned his attention to the wonderful advances of the last few years in archaeology: 1) You can extract dna from teeth, these days and map the movements of different tribes as they make their way through history. 2) You can extract tooth enamel to determine where a person grew up and their diet. If you suspect a spy in your organization, tackle him, and extract a tooth. (This is the hard part.) From there you can analyze his tooth enamel. Russia, you say? Spy found. 3) He said you can take an ancient pot these days and they can analyze what kind of food it contained thousands of years ago. 4) I asked about the Lidar radar. As you fly over the jungles of Mexico and points south the outlines of ancient cities appear. He explained that if you have the top of a stone wall six inches down it is invisible from the ground, but there's a slight temperature difference since the stone cools more slowly. So you fly over at night and the stone walls appear. 5) It's always a big thrill for these guys when an inscription from a neighboring civilization mentions one of their kings or an event in the Old Testament. It helps them nail down a timeline. So the Israelis are doing a first-rate job of mapping, digging, and documenting every square inch of their country. They're reticent on a couple of points though: 1) Not a single Hebrew gum wrapper or b**r can has surfaced from the flight out of Egypt in Exodus. And 2) when they discover an ancient cemetery they're real quiet on the dna analysis. I know these guys can nail down the culture represented in a cemetery, Canaanite, Phoenician, Egyptian, etc. I would think that in the Hebrew cemeteries they could extract dna from the teeth of all males and if I understand my Old Testament correctly they'd all share a y chromosome going back to Father Abraham himself. And from there I would think it would be only a matter of time before they would discover that same y chromosome in male members of portions of the modern Jewish community, tying them directly back to their ancestors the ancient Hebrews. And I would think that once this connection was made the Israelis would be up on all available rooftops with megaphones making us aware of the antiquity of their lineage. At least that's what I'd do. But I haven't heard anything. Barber's Bookstore, 901 Throckmorton, mon-fri 11-3, sat 11-4, sun 1-5 barbersbookstore dot com

08/15/2026

Tales from the Book Trade #83: Heard at the cash register Mr Hays part 1. Well I had an Israeli come into the shop the other day. A Mr Hays. Big guy. Speaks perfect American. I sent him to the Judaica section and he bought a book. Like my dear late father Mr Hays is interested in archaeology and has had the good fortune to have the time and resources to participate in about 40 archaeological digs, here in Texas, Israel, & beyond. He sat to my left. If you sit there you have to have opinions. (I had one modest triumph in the field of archaeology. I was digging ground for a rose garden for my delicate little mother on West Berry Street just south of TCU some decades past. I ran the dirt through a sieve. A flint scraper emerged about the size of my palm. It was used for processing hides. I'll turn it into the Children's Museum next time it appears.) As you may know a Hungarian Jew named Theodore Herzl concluded in 1896 that the Jews needed their own country. His idea was to buy up Palestine, a province of the Ottoman Empire at the time, piece by piece. I asked Mr Hays how the Jews revived Hebrew from a dead language. This had never been done before. Credit belongs to an Eliezer Ben-Yehuda who moved to Palestine in 1881. Since ancient Hebrew does not contain words for fighter jets & nuclear reactors he had to make stuff up for his new dictionary. As Jews arrived from around the world he persuaded them to use Hebrew as a common language and use his dictionary. Sometimes Ben-Yehuda made up the new words, sometimes the community did. The crowd-sourced words were not always to his liking but he added them to his dictionary anyway. As his young son began to speak Ben-Yehuda insisted on speaking to him only in Hebrew making the kid the first native speaker of modern Hebrew. Speaking as a former child I would rather resent it if my dad insisted on me only speaking a language none of the other kids in my neighborhood could understand. Barber's Bookstore, 901 Throckmorton, mon-fri 11-3, sat 11-4, sun 1-5, barbersbookstore dot com

08/10/2026

Tales from Texas #87, Richland Hills 14. I guess candy was my downfall. There was 7-11. 3 blocks away from Reeves Street. Candy there. Younger Brother Wesley had figured out that we could stand on a chair and undo the chain on the inside of the front door. Made my escape. I was 3. I had a nickel which put me securely in the middle class. Hiked the 3 blocks to 7-11. This is Richland Hills in about 1960. Unless I step in front of a car, absolutely nothing is going to happen to me. Tall gentleman in his 60s there chewing gum. Me: "I can see your undershirt." He made no reply. Me: "It isn't polite to chew gum." Him: "It isn't polite to run around in your underwear. Did you think about that?" I clearly wasn't going to best this guy in verbal combat. I reached up to the counter, collected the little brown paper bag holding my five cent purchase and headed home. And... Here's Grandfather Claude pulling up in his salmon-colored Plymouth. He graciously offered me a ride home. We get home. Mom's not happy with me. Grandfather retrieved his tool box from his car and moved the chain on that door six foot up. No more adventures for Wesley and me. And then there's that dustup I had with that bank. Let's move forward 3 years. Richland Hills. 1963. I've just turned six. Lyndon Johnson hadn't debased the coinage yet so silver coins were still in circulation. My dear little Grandmother Browning (image1) gave me a $20 check & 2 silver dollars for my birthday. (image2) My parents were pleased when I was persuaded to deposit my $20 & 2 silver dollars in Northeast National Bank. $20 was their minimum. In not too many weeks I figured out that I could get my money out of that bank and go buy candy. To a six year old this was like guns and wh***ey. My parents had explained to me what a safety deposit box was. So I figured the bank had my money in there in something like a green fishing tackle box. (image3) When I wanted cash they'd reach into that little green box & pull out my cash. In not too many weeks. I notice that I'm down to $2 & change. To me this means that my two silver dollars are still sitting there in the bottom of that box with some change. Time to retrieve my silver dollars. I close my account. Two one dollar bills and some change. "Where are my silver dollars?!" I demanded indignantly. They'd given em to someone else. Northeast National Bank was ashamed of themselves. Not long after that they closed. And left Richland Hills. Never to return. Barber's Bookstore, 901 Throckmorton, mon-fri 11-3, sat 11-4, sun 1-5. barbersbookstore dot com