Monday, August 1, 2011

Kay's Bookstore


One afternoon in June, 1955 my father was downtown looking for a summer job. Picture a street teeming with men in hats, suits, skinny ties. On this date like so many others he may have ducked into Kay's on Prospect near East 6th Street.

Owned and operated by Rachel Kowan (Mrs. Kay) Kay's was a three-story bookstore, and its mosaic tiled floors and walls were stuffed and stacked with books. The more I hear it described the more I imagine Lucien's library in the Sandman series, the one that contains every book that was only ever dreamed-of or never-completed. Esoteric and odd, you could find it, and much more, including arcane philosophy, anarchist manifestoes and a surprisingly collection of porn.

Like so many of his generation, you could find Dad perusing "health" magazines espousing the life-extending benefits of nudism. He recently described to me on thought-provoking photograph of a young woman grilling in the rain, wearing only a waist-length slicker.

And, you know, a smile.

On this particular day in question, my father was having little fortune lining up any kind of summer gig. He eventually stepped around the corner up to Euclid and into the Cleveland Trust rotunda, and applied. For his efforts he was hired as an alternate teller and general dogsbody (his words.)

Later my grandfather reported his surprise when a manager approached him in the commissary a few days later to rib him about not telling him that my Dad was now working as a teller. My grandfather replied with equal surprise that he didn't know either!

Source:
Anecdotal Evidence
Read this extended report on Kay's, including more great stuff in the comments section.

8 comments:

  1. I have such good memories of Kay's. First, I discovered the Beat writers there, as Kay had a shelf of them located adjacent to the cash register. Second, the day I walked in to hear Kay telling a caller that the only way she could have seen pornography in the store was to go upstairs and deliberately seek it out, therefore, get off the phone and stop whining. A true lost jewel.

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  2. My late brother, Joel Turner, worked at Kay's around 1975 for about two years. In 1978, Joel, and I, with our sister Pamela, and our parents, opened Undercover Books in Shaker Hts. The original location was Van Aken Center at the end of the rapid line. I am now a book editor and literary agent in NYC. Personal book biz memories linked to here: http://philipsturner.com/about-philip-turner/

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  3. I was almost in tears upon hearing that Kay's had sold it's inventory to an out-of-town dealer and was closing.
    My only problem with Kay's was limited funds. I would go in looking for a specific book and find five or six more I wanted. I worked downtown and spent many lunch hours in there.

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  4. I watched Maggie Thompson of Comic Book Guide being interviewed on Zoom the other day; she mentioned Kay's and at long last I had the name to go with my memories of browsing in the store back in the 1960s. I found science fiction books and the Pogo comic strip book collections. I also remember telling a friend while in the shop that there was porn upstairs, and the woman working at the front desk correcting me. (I can't remember precisely what she said.)

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  5. As a high school student I discovered Kay's and bought my first art books there. Those books started me off on a journey that took me through art college and beyond. I loved the quirkiness of the store - stacks and racks of books in seemingly no order or category logic, it was always wonderful to work through a shelf or pile and be surprised.

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  6. I still have my copy of kids letters to president Kennedy I got from Kay's when I was a kid😀

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    1. That's incredible! I love books like those, real letters written by real people.

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  7. Walking in the front door and seeing “Kay” herself high up on what seemed to me a raised pulpit, surveying that huge space filled with books, is one of my fondest memories of Cleveland. Science fiction on the second floor. 😉

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