Strange Coincidence

It was definitely … eerie. I was sitting around yesterday, mulling over our trip to Second Chance Books in Geronimo when I suddenly felt a tickle of memory. Didn’t I …? It seemed very familiar, somehow, and when I ran down the record of a dream I had posted here six months ago, I found myself a little dumbfounded.

‘[M]y brother John drove me to a second-hand bookstore in a small nearby town. Only when you drove up close enough could you see the small, hand-lettered signs announcing the name and hours. It was cavernous and nearly windowless; it looked like it had once been a barn or a large garage at one time. The floor was rough and uneven … there were rows of bulging mismatched shelves [of books] against the walls …

‘And what a motley lot of offerings they were. I identified lots of texts that were obviously assigned for old college courses, once-classic books reduced to paperback form, things no one read anymore. There were faded fantasy books from decades old trends and fashions … Rows and piles of all kinds of niche volumes, the detritus of the reading of generations. For me, a perfect hunting ground.

‘John and I started browsing with hope springing eternally in our hearts.

‘After what seemed about half-an-hour I had selected a load of six or seven dusty old [books], vaguely interesting but nothing to set the world on fire. But at the store’s desperately low, low prices worth the gamble. … The day was starting to warm up. … We decided it was time to leave. “We had seen everything Snake’s Bend had to offer.” - Buying Books, posted July 29, 2025

There are, of course, significant differences in details, as you will see if you look back at the original post. But ‘a second-hand bookstore in a small nearby town’? With ‘desperately low, low prices [making the books] worth the gamble’? Second Chance Books in Geronimo did not exist in July; it opened just about a month ago.