The River Daughter’s House Building Something for All Times and Not Just This One by David Kern
On
November 3, 2020, in the middle of a worldwide pandemic, while most of the nation nervously watched the election returns, in Concord, NC, I and a group of my closest friends were eagerly putting the final touches on a wooden countertop meant to cover up the paint-splattered remnants of a decades-old checkout counter. Roughly eight feet long and waist-high, these shelves and drawers had served many small businesses in our town. We were preparing it for its next use: bookshop point-of-sale. My wife Bethany and I were embarking on a new journey, one we had dreamed of since before we were married, when we would drive to visit each other in our separate cities and spend the day in bookshops, imagining what it would be like to live surrounded by so many books. We've always loved the experience of reading books, but we're both also lovers of the unique organism that is a book. We are fascinated by book layout and cover design and the art of preparing a book for press, by the way books smell, both new and old, and by how people respond when they flip through a book they are interested in. It's trite to say so, but we have always been enamored with the magic of books. That Tuesday we were two weeks from opening. Our bookstore was going to be called Goldberry Books and we were going to fill it with as many beautiful things as we could. You might remember that Goldberry is a character from The Lord of the Rings. She's called the Riverdaughter, with a voice "as ancient as Spring, like the song of a glad water flowing down into the night from a bright morning in the hills," and she is Tom David Kern and his wife, Bethany, own Goldberry Books in Concord, NC, where they live with their four children.
6
The River Daughter's House
Bombadil's beloved, enchanting wife. Bombadil, of course, is legendary for his weirdness and his songs, but most importantly he and Goldberry have made a place in the wilderness where peace reigns. I have always believed that their steadfast commitment to the peace of their place was crucial to the success of Frodo's quest and the ultimate destruction of Sauron's forces. As we worked, I remember thinking of that famous C. S. Lewis quote where he says that friendship "is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art…. It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival." And I remember being consumed by the sense that no matter how much longer I survived I couldn't experience much more value than that. And I prayed then and there that the shop we were about to open would bring similar value to my neighbors. In truth, from the beginning this endeavor was community-made. Our friends and family helped to clean and paint the space, build and install extensive floor-to-ceiling shelves, add titles to our inventory system, and peel stickers off used books. Soon, what we had originally conceived of as a side project became our life's work, and thanks to those same friends and a myriad of loyal new ones, here we are, little more than a year later, confident in the work we've been led to. My friend Tim talks a lot about third places: places that are neither home nor work, but are where community is made, shared, and preserved. He talks of coffee houses and art studios and parks and, yes, bookshops. He believes that no community can thrive without a thriving third place scene. We hope Goldberry Books will be a third place for all sorts of people. We hope our shop can be like the barbershop owned by the eponymous character of Wendell Berry's novel, MemoriaPress.com
