I have to write this quick so we can post it right away.

Kristina said, “Dad, write it now because we were just there.”

So I opened by notebook and grabbed my pen.

We had just got back from driving up the coast, Altadena to the Bay Area, and wanted to stay overnight in Morro Bay.

Partly because we could stay overnight and then the next day take the side trip over to Harmony, a little town which Chaz had never seen. We told him about it.

Kristina and I had stopped there not so long ago and I of course remembered lo those many years ago when Shirley and I discovered it by accident and almost bought the whole town.

Seriously, really, literally. We turned off the main road and turned the corner past a BIG SIGN on the left that said, “TOWN FOR SALE. One Million Dollars or Best Offer.”

We thought about it and did some calculations. Someday I’ll tell you about it.

But the real reason this time that we stopped in Morro Bay was really for two reasons.

One was that lo those many years ago, about 60 or more, the Secretary of Longfellow School in Pasadena where I was teaching Fifth Grade at the time had retired and moved with her husband to Morro Bay where their children had bought and were running a bakery on Main Street. She could help in the store and her husband would drive the little truck and deliver loaves of bread to the surrounding communities. She said we should come for a visit. We were good friends. She made coffee in the office and I had a big cup, a face mug my students had given me because it had a moustache, and I drank a lot of coffee to stay awake.

Whenever we went through Morro Bay after that, we always meant to look them up but never did.

Don’t ask me why, because I don’t know. How can I explain what I don’t know? That’s never stopped me before, It’s probably because we had someplace to go and Morro Bay wasn’t it.

But the Real Reason I’m writing and posting this post now is because, just after we posted the blog about when “There Used to be Bookstores,” and I said I needed to write an update because I inadvertently left out some that I absolutely should have included, I was expanding the list and am shocked that I didn’t, and my good dear friend in Palm Springs wrote that she “read the whole thing and loved it,” and Kristina looked on the internet for videos about bookstores, especially in California and Oregon and France, she came across a video about this bookstore in Morrow Bay, and since we were going to the Bay Area from Altadena and taking the Coast Route because inland I – 5 with the horrible 3-digit heat was like Mordor, we would take the Coast Route, Highway 1, and pass through Morro Bay, we could visit that bookstore which looked absolutely wonderful.

So we did.

Coalesce Bookstore, 845 Main Street, Morro Bay, CA, 93442.

It’s even better in person than on video, and the video was enough to make you want to go to there.

I’ll skip the details of where we stayed overnight, and where we ate, because it had swordfish and was good enough to have its own blog.

So we slept overnight in an adequate motel, got up early enough, checked out by 10:00, had coffee and a kind of breakfast sandwich at a shop which I won’t mention, because the coffee was better than the food, and Yes I would go back for the coffee, but not for the food, and I was trying to find the words to say why not, and came up with the phrase: “You’d go there if you were hungry, but I’ve never been that hungry.” But the wording is unkind, and I’m not, which is why I never mentioned the name.

The bookstore opened at 10:00 and we were right there.

We went in. Kristina and Chaz looked around right away. And I started talking to the friendly and intelligent woman behind the counter I thought was the owner or part-owner, but no, she works there during the summer but teaches school full time during the year, so she was a lot like me and we had a lot to talk about. I do go on and on too long, because I had so much time to make up for, never having met her before.

“Dad,” Kristina said, coming over to rescue her, “She has customers waiting in line,” so I went toward the garden out back, and she and Chaz went on looking at the books, which are irresistibly arranged in little alcoves.

I had already noticed, when we first entered at the front, there was a narrow gate between the store and the wall of the adjacent building. I think it said, “Weddings” or “Wedding Chapel.” But the little alley was so narrow that the bride and groom would have to be awfully skinny, and would probably have to go through the store, which I did.

“I’m not getting married,” I said, in case anybody was wondering, because there were people already there in the garden looking around.

I joined them.

They weren’t there for a wedding either.

Three steps down, and I was in an enchanted garden. Plants and flowers were climbing the walls and hanging down in planters in a profusion of colors, and clever garden ornaments, and to the left, glass doors and then a glass wall through which you could see the wedding chapel inside, a lovely altar at the end, folding chairs stacked against the wall, all ready and waiting. I thought of my own wedding 64 years ago at the Chapel of Roses on Hill Street in Pasadena, and I waved at the empty room before me as I filled it with memories.

At the back of the garden was an unlocked gate, no sign to say no, so I pushed it open enough to see that even the trash barrels were landscaped.

Back to the back of the store, up the three steps that were easy even for me to climb, and Kristina said, “I was looking for Hillerman books for you in the Westerns but didn’t find any.”

With my practiced eye, you remember I was going to have a bookstore myself, I removed from a shelf in the Mystery section two Hillermans I didn’t have, and she was impressed, “You found them!”

Both were by the daughter, Anne Hillerman, who writes like her father and keeps the stories of Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee still going even after her beloved father’s death. I’ve already read one Anne Hillerman book, and here were two more, which I grabbed off the shelf.

I explained in an earlier blog how I discovered Hillerman from the recommendation of a student. My students were always teaching me while I was teaching them, which is as it should be.

The two used paperbacks are: Spider Woman’s Daughter, $4.95, and Cave of Bones, $3.95, both in good shape and ready for me.

The other woman at the front was an actual owner who knew some local history and might be able to find out more about the aforementioned bakery of my school secretary’s children. We had a nice long talk and I told the usual jokes. I gave them both my card at their insistence or at least acceptance. I hope they give the blog a look, now that they’re in it. It’s a way of keeping touch.

[Update: This morning there were six views from San Luis Obispo, obvious newbies looking at the blog’s origins, so IT’S WORKING! Yay!]

Then Chaz brought over a hardback of another Anne Hillerman that I didn’t have, Lost Birds. I’m filling her own shelf.

There’s a circle printed on the cover of the hardback advertising Dark Winds, based on the Leaphorn, Chee & Manuelito novels, “Don’t miss,” “only on BMC, BMC+” (but maybe also available on other internet TV outlets, however that works. Kristina tells me Netflix and Amazon Prime also show them). We’ve been watching them and they’re really good, from the auspices of Robert Redford, whom I also miss terribly.

Anyway, I highly recommend Coalesce Bookstore whenever you’re in town. They put a different bookmark in every book I bought, with memorable quotations from famous authors’ memorable books, like the one I’m looking at right now, John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley. And here’s Langston Hughes, “Hold fast to dreams.” And Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms, “Wherever I am…”

Some authors I didn’t know before but do now.

Chaz bought a hardback of a book he really wanted, and it didn’t cost an arm and a leg, so he could carry it as he walked out of the store without limping.

We buy local to support independent enterprise.

So, the next time you’re in Morro Bay and drop by Coalesce Bookstore, I just might see you there.