Volume Dealers
After this gentle interrogation I was given an address. I found my guide, along with eight other books for my story on Cairo. I’ve been back often since, each time leaving with additions to my bookshelf I didn’t know I needed. My last trip netted me a biography of the beer-making Busch family, one about Warren Buffett for my father-in-law’s birthday, and a three-volume Civil War set by Shelby Foote.
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The Rybskis are choosy about who they let look around. They move most of their stock by phone and over the Internet. They estimate (conservatively, I bet) that they have 75,000 books on the premises. American history is their focus, but they stock anything they think is interesting and will sell. The couple may be the best source of pre-owned business literature in the world, stocking titles many dealers wouldn’t bother with. If you need a copy of Waste Not: The Safety Kleen Story or The Kansas Beef Industry, they have both in very good condition. “Other people are interested only in real hot items, rather than little obscure things, which I like,” says Jack. “Like a history of the zipper industry or something, who the hell wants to really read it? I take pride or something in getting it. It’s sorta neat, I think.” He mentions a book Mary found at a yard sale on the history of shoe eyelets. “We sold it,” she beams.
Mary says there’s a healthy market in business histories, and Jack adds, “There are about three guys who collect just banks.” But the inventory runs from an impressive array of art history to piles of old area high school and college yearbooks. They carry local histories from towns and cities across the country, with a wealth of examples from Illinois. There’s even some fiction: horror/fantasy nuts can find first-edition H.P. Lovecraft novels and other Arkham House goodies worth hundreds of dollars. The most expensive book the Rybskis ever sold was a 1939 first edition of Alcoholics Anonymous by Bill W., referred to by AA members as the “big book,” for $3,500.
Not long after that, Jack met Mary, who was in the midst of her own divorce. Mary grew up in Grayslake, back when it was almost all farmland. “My dad had 15 acres. He worked in the city for the telephone company, and we were out there in the middle of nowhere.” Mary went to Marillac College, just outside Saint Louis, then almost became a nun.
Jack says Mary’s the one responsible for the growth of the business, not only because of her efforts at computerization and modernization, but also because of her solid business sense.
The few people who do visit get to wander around the Rybskis’ massive yard. After they bought the three lots next to their house 15 years ago for $5,000 apiece, they put in an extra garage next to the one they had, and both are now crammed full of inventory. Besides the garages and an aboveground pool, the rest of the property is devoted to nature and discoveries. Odd pieces of local buildings mingle with the store-bought statues, including book-reading cherubs and children. Jack will proudly point out that that piece of facade on your left is from a torn-down high-rise in Hyde Park, the bench on the back fence is a block of limestone from an old Highland Dairy ice cream factory, and the nicely laid old cobblestones winding through the garden were once pieces of “Kedzie Avenue from 47th north to 35th.” There are remnants of the storefront of an old bar that once stood down the street, and bricks, Jack gleefully notes, from the remains of an old factory on the banks of the Kankakee River.
